Alright, sorry y’all for the 7 full days in between these two posts, but I really do have a good excuse, my Pearl Jam tribute band, Riot Act was playing it’s first real gig last Friday and my week was rather consumed with that.  I’m going to tell you all about that some other time, but for now let’s continue on with this.

So we’ve dissected “Gonna See My Friend”, as I recall.  Tracks 1-4 on this album can really be thought of as one song.  They all rock, they’re all catchy tunes but not blatant pop, and they’re all short.  They are like eating ice cream, it just goes by too fast and you look up and it’s all gone, but that fact doesn’t dissuade you from eating or liking ice cream, it’s just the way ice cream is.

The Fixer.  This composition is genius.  I think I had to listen to it about 15 times before I could even hum along with the guitar riff it’s so, just, off… a classic Matt Cameron rhythmic invention.  At rehearsal last week for Riot Act we were flying through the songs (Andrew Griffin, our drummer, is quite proficient and generally only needs one listen to a song before he can play it to near perfection) and six seconds into The Fixer he mused, “That’s F%$^d up” and gave up on that one for the moment.  Cropduster from Riot Act (the album, not my band) and Slight of Hand off of Binaural were in odd time signatures (I think 7/4 and 19/4 respectively – don’t really know about that last one, you try counting to 19 while listening to a really nice song, it’s hard.  If anyone knows please clue me in!) and sometimes I get the feeling that Cameron does that just because he can.  He’s a modest showoff, but then again he should be.  He is in Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.  What a resume.  Hey what do you do for a living?  I’m in Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.  Ha.

Johnny Guitar: random Pearl Jam topic of this album, every album has one.  Having no other information I would have guessed this was about Johnny Ramone, who apparently was quite a mentor to Eddie Vedder, so much so that immediately after his death EV sported a Mohawk for a short time, and still obviously depressed even after winning a Grammy was quoted “I don’t know what this means… my dad would be proud” in that apathetic way that Eddie says things when he accepts awards.  At the show I attended in October he said something to the effect of “sometimes you get your inspiration off a bathroom wall” immediately preceding the onset of this tune.  I give up.  Pearl Jam, you win again in the confusing me department.  At any rate, Stone Gossard has come up with yet another amazing bridge in this one, I love his bridges, they are random but they always seem to fit.  It’s like if music was life he would be autistic.  Two notes and a syncopated rhythm get the job done in a way I would have never been able to conceive of.  It’s like if you gave him mayonnaise and a pickle he could make you the best cheeseburger you’ve ever had.  Thank you, Stone, for being musically autistic.

In addition to the fantastic bridge and random topic, this song does something that PJ generally accomplishes at least once per record: it has a non-conventional form.  One of my favorite past PJ example of this is Faithful off of Yield (which held the title of my favorite album until Backspacer came along.  Now it’s neck and neck).  Give that one a listen, it’s form is verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus, verse.  It takes serendipity to write a song that doesn’t follow some variation of verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus.  That segment was for all you songwriters out there.

to be continued again…

picture is the album art for Backspacer

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