Pearl Jam 20- some thoughts ( aka ima get serious for a minute)

 I wrote this a few month ago when Pearl Jam 20 initially came out and never ended up posting it. Well now Eddie Veddar is coming to town so it's relevant again right? Right? Well either way I'm going to lay off my usual snarky tone and tell you a serious story for once.

So I watched the new Cameron Crowe documentary on Pearl Jam "20", and I felt this was a platform I could use to tell this story and talk about the film. 

       

When my children were young I decided I needed to take them to a church that emulated my beliefs in religion, which are (in short) that all religions are basically driving at the same point and we should all love each other etc. I also craved a place to find some direction spiritually especially since at the time I was a stay at home mom and honestly pretty lonely so finding people with similar beliefs seemed like the direction I needed.  I'm not about to get all religious on you (ok maybe a little). This is ultimately just a story about music don't fret. I decided to try out Unity Church of Fort Worth. I loved it pretty much right off the bat. There were two amazing people playing the music portions Melinda Wood Allen and David Tipps. Melinda mostly sang and David played guitar and sang. I don't remember what they played the first few times, but I know that at some point within the first month they had Rock N Roll Sunday and I was sold. This church is predominately people in their late 40's and 50's so there's a lot of classic rock but I loved hearing that. It encompass the music I grew up listening to with my mother and that eventually led to my heavy interest in music. With the whole congregation standing around dancing to whatever song it was Janis Joplin or The Grateful Dead or something I knew that I could connect with this place and these people. All music speaks to you on a different level than any sermon or religious text can.  There's just more power there and when I'm listening to music and other people are listening to it with you and we are all dancing or singing it doesn't matter if it's my church or Lola's there an energy there that is moving. That moves you closer to pure joy. This was a place where I could take the energy I get at shows and give it context with religious text and meditation. So I know for sure that Melinda and David were a main reason that I came and they were a driving force in my spiritual journey.

Here's one of the first songs I heard at the church that gave me nostalgic warm fuzzy's:

 

So a few months ago David Tipps died from complications involving several anuerisms.  It totally sucked! I really was upset about it more than when some of my relatives have died. Three weeks after his death the annual Rock N Roll Sunday came up again. I ,and I assume some other congregation members, thought "how are we going to do this without him?"  That Rock N Roll Sunday music program ended up turning it into a memorial for David.Jerko Dabelic (to give you some reference to my normal blog material he plays for the Fate Lions and Sunward) had joined the music program prior to David's death and so he stepped up smoothly. Also David's daughter performed and turned out to be as talented as David.  She and Melinda sang this Pearl Jam song

 Her voice wavered some but she managed to get the words out. The moment and the song choice were perfectly cathartic for me and I'm sure the entire church present that day. A song I previously considered run of the mill and borderline cheesy suddenly found a special meaning for me. In that moment I liked Pearl Jam more than I ever had before.

When Pearl Jam first came out I never liked them that much. They were ok. I owned "Vitalogy". Now they're older and I'm older. Really terrible bands are around that are worse than Pearl Jam's worst song. And now they had a new song that held special meaning for me. With that in mind and hope for some heavy duty Seattle nostalgia I decided to watch "Pearl Jam 20". Cameron Crowe happens to be one of my favorite director's  so I was pumped for that alone.

Please note I'm a little obsessed with all things Cameron Crowe so this is biased for sure.

This is my favorite band of all time ( Nancy Wilson is Crowe's ex )

This is my favorite Romantic movie

This is my favorite movie of all time

My renewed interest in them after David died carried me to the movie, so I thought it was ironic that the band formed from this place of grief after Andy Wood died and one of their first hits was Eddie Vedder working through grief from his father's death. Like any documentary about a band ( like all the Behind the Music's -except Green Day's- proved) this movie makes you like them a little more. I  found particular interest in As a teenage I considered them somewhat generic. So, Eddie Veddar's struggle with that and finding a way to separate from the fame and delve into the art of the band interested me especially. The other interesting aspect of the band was the lack of a struggle amongst the band members than in other documentaries about bands where they all end up bickering about who's in charge and break up. I even appreciated the Neil Young collaboration and I HATE Neil Young.

The movie humanizes Pearl Jam a bit. So it helped me to accept them as people who are trying to figure all this life business out. Which I guess leads back to why I went to church in the first place. To figure life out.