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Example research essay topic: Pearl Jam As A Counter Cultural Band - 2,406 words

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Pearl Jam as a Counter-cultural Band The early ' 90 s alt-rock rebellion, which spewed from the underground like a geyser and saved rock-n-roll from hair bands, exacted a serious toll. Band break-ups, career nosedives, sell-outs and drug abuse death are as much a legacy of that dramatic period as the music. Pearl Jam is still standing - arguably the only band from the age that still matters. "I'm totally excited about still being around, " said Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready. While the group is still blessed with a sizeable mass of diehard fans, Pearl Jam's overall fame has declined over the years. Ten was their 1991 debut. It was sold nearly 10 -million copies.

When Pearl Jam lifted a real press embargo to promote the albums of last year's Riot Act, music scribes couldn't oppose taking jibes at the band's sinking recognition. Also it was all those years of being shut out of interviews. That was a beginning of counter-cultural transformation. But their take was way off.

Except for maybe Ten, Pearl Jam has always made the music they wanted to make, without much deliberation of market forces. You only need to listen to make this statement. Through the years of development, their sound has become less and less commercial, more experimental (at times self-indulgent) and introspective. Away from the group, members have each taken free rein in seeking out whatever mysterious side projects may interest them.

Were Pearl Jam smart in using MTV and Lollapalooza to rabidly break their first record and turning right around and dumping videos and big tours (once they had an audience in the millions to buy their records and pay for those tix, o' course) because they couldn't abide the ethical quandary they presented? Of course, they fudged most the old indie / mainstream lines and made millions! Sheer genius that was pillaged by countless bands. Rage Against the Machine very nearly did the same thing.

In fact, Eddie Vedder got to keep all of his cake and is still eating it, although his pieces keep getting smaller every year. Now all Pearl Jam has left to do is fade away. Nirvana rather famously burned out and became legends, which made them a far different animal from Pearl Jam. Of course now we can get a Pearl Jam anywhere. The white warmth of early recognition really obscured Pearl Jam, especially charismatic front man Eddie Vedder, who got slapped on the cover of Time and was heralded as the voice of a new generation. So much of Vedder's coping involved hiding.

Also Pearl Jam stopped doing video releases when video clips were still an essential tool of the deal. To short-circuit their celebrity, Pearl Jam weaken the commercialism of their sound moving towards counter-cultural side. What began as huge and raging became lean and seething, or reflective and acoustic, or just plain odd. And while hip-hop and acid influences have permeated rock in the last ten years, the band has proved particularly resistant to fads, preferring instead to stick with its massive guitars-bass-and-drums attack. The X generation factor, of course, is Vedder's brawny, passionate baritone, the most imitated voice in rocknroll.

Like just about any band that's been around a last decade, there were times when Pearl Jam almost shut down. "In ' 95 we didn't know what Eddie wanted to do, " McCready says. "There was real tension within the band. We were traveling by plane and he was traveling in a van doing a radio show in his van after the shows. We had to sit down and reevaluate. Did we still wanna be a band? Did Ed wanna be in the band? Fortunately, he did. " Another essential event happened in 2000, when nine fun's were killed in the crush of a general entrance audience at Denmark's Roskilde Festival.

After considerable sadness and soul-searching, Pearl Jam decided to go on. These days, it's stylish to refer to Pearl Jam as an act that's reached contented middle age. Drummer Matt Cameron turned 40 late; the youngest member is guitarist Stone Gossard. These assertions of comfort and maturity do not so much result from the members's essential ages as the band's aura of stability. McCready admits falling victim to the drug and alcohol excesses of the Seattle scene, abruptly adding that he's now "clean and sober. " Vedder, especially, seems to have outgrown his tortured shy phase. "Early on he was definitely not ready for the explosion of popularity, " McCready says of the PJ front man. "Neither was anyone else in the band, but he was the focal point. That was a real burden to him.

I think where he's at now, he's a lot more mellow now. " McCready adds that Vedder's status as a brooder was part reality and part media overstatement: "He has always had a humorous side to him. Being angst-ridden and all that, some of that was true, but he had a funny side to him that was never explored. It would just come out. No one is all one thing. I think at this point he's just a lot more comfortable. " Pearl Jam has reached a point of real collaboration in their creative dynamic. This is sensitive stuff.

Most of the songs are co-written by band members. No one has final say. Adam Kasper co-produced Riot Act with the band, but it's likely he was more catalyst than dictator. In the studio, McCready ones sad that in the studio there's a push and pull, a lot of compromise, to get to what you hope is the best thing for the song. One senses that Pearl Jam doesn't sweat a sub-platinum album too much. With 40 -million records sold, and a solid place in classic rock radio just a few years off, financial security would seem assured for the guys.

And they have an ongoing ace in the hole: Pearl Jam continues to be a extremely regarded live act, still a muscular arena draw. They built their live rep from the get-go in Tampa Bay. It was late spring of ' 92. The Ten album had gradually percolated to the top of the charts over more than a few months, coinciding nicely with their local entrance at Jannus Landing. I was not yet a fan of the group but had heard the buzz and joined 1, 500 other folks to see what all the fuss was about. The band assaulted the stage, bounding, leaping around, and combining pandemonium with tight group playing.

Vedder began coyly; his hair tucked into a baseball cap. A song or two in, he whipped off the hat and turned into a phantom. At one point, he shimmied up the center-stage pole that holds up its canvas roof; he steadied his tattered boots on a couple of bolts and then launched backward into the welter. Mayhem.

The set, which lasted no more than an hour, was pure catharsis. The crowd walked away astonished. The show has become fable - regarded as one of the best performances to ever take place. It didn't take long for the unrestrained physicality of Pearl Jam's shows to taper off, which has also made a payment to the band's survival. Understanding the current place of protest in music, however, requires turning away from that old vision of a throng singing choruses written by iconic troubadours, not to mention its 1980 's counterpart, the Live Aid-style celebrity marathon. Today's protest music more closely echoes the street politics rock has always inspired: the focus is scattered, the voices dissonant and the levels of involvement wildly mixed.

This noisy arena finds strength in its very diversity. The most potent protests may not even seem, at first, like protests at all. Topical balladry of the Woody Guthrie style is still prevalent; in fact, Guthrie himself has been revived by young artists like Billy Bragg and Wilco. But this tradition shares center stage with cries of liberation more inspired by identity politics and "do it yourself" punk. The closest thing to a contemporary anthem, Rage Against the Machine's 1999 hit "Guerrilla Radio, " mustered not unity but action for action's sake. "It has to start somewhere, " Mr. de la Rocha muttered in the song's stirring chorus. "What better place than here?

What better time than now?" Rage Against the Machine was never free of its own associations with corporate culture. Recording for a major label, promoting its albums on MTV's "Total Request Live, " the band fully engaged with the dominant culture it hoped to upend. Tom Morello ones sad: "We " re going to do our best to terrify them, ", Such a statement is in line with the trickster attitude taken by many activist artists now. Having crashed the corporate party, they take over the dance floor and make a ruckus until they " re thrown out.

Radicals have a term for such behavior: culture jamming. Coined by the art-punk band Negativland to describe its parodic defacement's of billboards and other mass- media outlets, the phrase encompasses any act of media sabotage, from newspaper hoaxes to computer hacking. Culture jamming is the act of infecting the mainstream from within. At its purest, this symbolic guerrilla warfare belongs to artists completely outside the norm, who sneak their views into the public eye under strict cover of anonymity. The counter-cultural phenomenon of Pearl Jam is also deal with current political situation but its attitude is very different from. To some, this may seem like the politics of lowered opportunity.

But this steal-the-spotlight effort is creating a vast field of activism whose impact is only now beginning to be known. On the most visible level, it is manifested in benefits like the rally for Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate for president post, that took place at Madison Square Garden. Eddie Vedder, Ani Di Franco, Patti Smith, Ben Harper and the rap group Company Flow provided the single for a stirring night of speeches by Mr. Nader and his supporters.

The mix of stumping and music got the capacity crowd so excited that it held a spontaneous midnight road rally afterward. What distinguished this occasion from the standard party fundraiser wasn't just Mr. Nader's fundamental agenda. It was the musicians' varied symbol of that notion of independence, so well- attuned to the mood of activism today. When Eddie Vedder and Ms. di Franco stood together on that stage, supporting the year's self-proclaimed non-corporate presidential candidate, they represented two prongs of a shared belief organization.

Independent artists like Eddie Vedder live anti-corporate lives and, of course, feel connected to anti-corporate politics. Major label stars like Mr. Vedder try to undermine from within, using their authority in struggles like the fight his band, Pearl Jam, waged throughout the 1990 's to limit what it saw as a monopoly by the ticket bureau Ticketmaster. Pearl Jam is the band's turf statement, a individual declaration of the significance of music over idolatry.

But the weight of Pearl Jam's popularity has fallen most solidly on Vedder, who spent much of his off-season wondering about the effects of being in such a high-profile band. Vedder had even gotten into a barroom fight defending the band. And one night, while sitting out on a deserted coastal sand bluff, contemplating life after the death of a friend, guitarist Stefanie Sargent of 7 Year Bitch, he heard strange voices coming from the hill behind him. They were singing "Black, " the fragile song that to Vedder had come to symbolize the over commercialization of the band.

He'd fought to keep it from getting overplayed, didn't want a tape made of the song. Vedder hiked out of the bushes to ask the surprised hikers not to sing the song. Months later, he still remembers their strange and concerned looks as they faced the angst-filled writer of the song. Two of Mr. Vedder's most impassioned recent performances, for example, have graced benefit albums. The first came on Pearl Jam's cover of the AM radio classic "Last Kiss, " which the band released as a single to earn aid for Kosovo refugees.

The second pairs Mr. Vedder with the party- punk band the Supersuckers, reinterpreting "Poor Girl" by the Los Angeles band X. That song appears on an album dedicated to a more radical cause: vindication for the West Memphis 3, a trio of young heavy metal fans convicted, on what many consider faulty evidence, of a 1993 triple child- murder in West Memphis, Ark. Today, Pearl Jam generally turns in two-hour-plus shows that extent the band's diverse, 7 CD catalogue, along with rarities and surprise covers. While not as catastrophic on phase, the quintet refuses to flog their newest "product" or become unsurprising. "I still run around and get crazy, " McCready says. "Ed doesn't climb around anymore. There's more songs; we play longer sets.

In the early days, there was a lot of excitement about starting to have a career. The main thing these days is Eddie's really kicking ass live. He has to carry the whole show. His singing is better than ever. I told him, 'It astounds me; I don't know how you do it for two hours. '" Pearl Jam has always been underground band. The band is in the line with Rage Against the Machine and other counter-cultural bands.

But Pearl Jams attitude was very different from even those who belongs to counter-culture music bands. The five of Pearl Jam are in opposition to war actions undertaken by US government and the voice of the huge part of American society. Their music is far from commercial and this point is in the very core of the bands success today as well as in the past. Bibliography: Cole, Patrick E.

Fans, You Know its True. Time. Dec. 3, 1990 Issue: 21 - 22. Death of music sharing is greatly exaggerated.

Arlington, VA. USA Today Feb 15, 2001. FINAL Edition: A. 11 Clarke, Martin Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder: None Too Fragile Plexus Publishing; 2 nd edition, 2003 Gunderson, Edna. "Deaths test Pearl Jam's Pledge to be positive. " USA Today 31 Aug. 2000. Hilburn, Robert. "He Didn't Ask For All This. " Los Angeles Times 01 May 1994.

Morrell, Brad Pearl Jam: The Illustrated Biography Omnibus Press, 1995 Neely, Kim Five Against One: The Pearl Jam Story Penguin USA (Paper), 1998 Stevenson, Jane. "What lies ahead for Pearl Jam?" Toronto Sun 01 Oct. 2000


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