National Chip Week

currently listening to: "Immortality" - Pearl Jam (Vitology)

Yup aparently its national chip week.

I went to the chippie after the gym tonight to undo all the work good i'd done, you know how i'm getting to love that belly of mine.

Once more the gym music was ridiculous, and i drowned it out with Pearl Jam's "Vitology" album.

Every track, apart from the last one "STUPID MOP" or "Hey foxysexymophandlemomma, that's me" (depending on when you bought the album) is a winner. I haven't listened to that track in years, it freaks me out a little, and so as far as I'm concerned the album ends with the somber but perfectly crafted "immortality" which is said to be about Kurt Cobain, but hey, i've got no proof.

Every time I rediscover Vitology its like meeting an old friend and going over old times. I have such vivid memories of the time I first heard it, I was 15, and therefore in school. I dismissed it at first as being not what i'd come to appreciate as a Pearl Jam standard sound, with tracks like "Spin the black circle" verging on punk and "Betterman" then "Nothingman" being the absolute opposite. After a couple of plays trough the album it grew on me and i've come to know all of it word for word.

I found as I changed and started to grow up through my later teens that the sound that Pearl jam were producing was growing up too, from the angry raw sound of "Ten" and "Verses" to something new and more textured through "Vitology" to my favorite "No Code".

I've enjoyed everything they have produced since, with varying enthusiasm. "Yeild" sneaked up on me and I only started to enjoy it in its entirety recently, "Binural" is the one i've listened to least, and i figured they were winding up to finish. "Riot act" became the soundtrack to my early 20's, through job changes, moving out into Belfast.

I could talk these guys all day but, well, i should be asleep. I only came on to talk about national chip week. The long and the short of it is, if you like early Pearl Jam, but never gave the later albums a listen hoak them out, they are well worth it.