Lives opened and trashed "Look, Ma, watch me crash"

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

04/12/94 : Vitalogy - Pearl Jam

Our third visit with those Seattle slackers and I've actually quite enjoyed our previous visits, so I'm quite looking forward to this one.

It's mostly a kinda ramshackle grungey rock kinda sound which I don't mind but found myself wanting a bit more variety. Until I got to "Bugs" which is very different and I was begging for them to go back to the original sound. "Better Man" is a much nicer example of something different and I liked it - "Stupidmop" is very odd indeed which is allowed because it's the last track, but I could have done without 7:28 of it. Overall, I thought this was an OK album but on first listen it felt a bit aimless and unstructured, although I suspect a lot of work went into making it sound like that. I can see a few more listens back in the 90s might have made it a firm favourite. but it never got the chance back then and it certainly doesn't sound fresh these days. I strongly suspect that Kings Of Leon listened to this in their formative years - a lot of their stuff can be traced back to this.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on their second week of a thirteen week run, with this being as high as it got - bizarrely it debuted at #54 and then shot up in its second week. The rest of the top five were The Beatles at The BBC (a new entry) and best-ofs from The Beautiful South, Bon Jovi and Sting, with the next highest new entry being Pope John Paul II and Father Colm Kilcoyne (#54) - apparently this did very well in Ireland and Spain.

Wikipedia has more than I was expecting (229 milliPeppers) and it tells us this is their third album and it tells me that it's not grunge at all, but punk rock and hardcore - the US has a very odd definition of punk rock, but I'd accept it's a grunge album with a punk attitude. Apparently, they didn't put a lot of effort into making it sound unstructured - they recorded it quickly whilst they were on tour. It was however somewhat of a stressful time for the band with guitarist Stone Gossard deciding he wasn't going to play mediator any more, singer Eddie Vedder deciding he was in charge, lead guitarist Mike McReady going into rehab and drummer Dave Abbruzzese getting fired! 

Critically, the album was very well received although a lot of people put some quite negative comments in amongst their overall positive reviews. The release schedule was interestingly contrary (as Pearl Jam often have been throughout their career) because they released the vinyl format before the CD and cassette version, which explains the initial low debut chart position in the UK and it did the same in the US, debuting at #55 and then jumping to #1. It did well in the rest of the world as well, getting to #1 in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Sweden - quite how I managed to avoid it until now is unclear.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for a couple of quid but if you want a sealed vinyl version it's going to set you back £200.62 - I just want to know WHY it hasn't ever been opened! I didn't mind this but didn't feel it was as obviously enjoyable as my previous visits with the band - but I suspect I would have grown to love it at the time and I can imagine it holds fond memories for many.

27/11/94 - A good example of "not my kind of thing"
11/12/94 - Not as bad as they'd have you believe