Found 8 posts tagged as "Pearl Jam"
Pearl Jam's Mike McCready at Toronto's ACC September, 2011, courtesy Getty Images.
Don’t you totally love it when a public figure uses that platform for good instead of evil, helping to de-stigmatize a medical condition that’s grossly misunderstood and in doing so, giving voice to sufferers around the globe?
Stand up and take a bow Mike McCready, guitarist with Seattle rock stalwarts Pearl Jam, who has spoken candidly in a recent interview about Crohn's disease and the symptoms he suffers, which can be very unpleasant. But knowledge is power, and even difficult symptoms are made more manageable when viewed in context and with compassion.
During last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival, where music-themed documentaries were so abundant they constituted a full-fledged trend (see films about U2, Neil Young, Paul Williams, Paul McCartney), director Cameron Crowe’s outstanding Pearl Jam Twenty won raves.
2011 may well go down as the year of the rock memoir. Sure, there have been plenty of warts-and-all music tomes released in the past (see Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones etc) but rarely has one year produced such an eclectic list of titles by such a diverse group of artists.
Among those who put pen to paper describing sex, drugs, rock and roll in 2011: Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, Stone Temple Pilots/Velvet Revolver singer Scott Weiland, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, latter-day Black Sabbath bassist Glenn Hughes, Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler, KISS guitarist Ace Frehley, all of Pearl Jam (naturally… democratic to the end), Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and Van Halen/Chickenfoot howler Sammy Hagar.
He may have placed fourth on 10th season of American Idol but swaggering Cali-bred screamer James Durbin placed first in the hearts of millions of fans, not least because of his preference for meaty metal tunes over saccharine pop and his candor in dealing with Asperger’s and Tourette’s syndromes.
It’s probably fair to say that way back in 1986 when they staged a concert to benefit a school assisting profoundly disabled children, neither singer/songwriter Neil Young nor wife Pegi ever dreamed that 25 years later, their shows would become celebrated events on the annual rock calendar.
Or that they’d one day release a commemorative CD/DVD set featuring performances – wait for it - by Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Pearl Jam, Metallica, Chrissie Hynde, Dave Matthews, the Who, Tom Petty, R.E.M., Elton John and Patti Smith among others.
Remember when the idea of onetime SNL player Jimmy Fallon hosting a late-night talk show seemed kind of odd and not too promising? Now it’s hard to imagine a world without him.
To wit: next week, Fallon will honour classic rockers Pink Floyd with a week of all-star performances featuring the Shins, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, MGMT and Dierks Bentley, plus Floyd founding members Roger Waters and Nick Mason on his Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show.
If the litmus test of a band documentary is its ability to entertain non-fans - or in this case, a casual fan with some first-hand concert experience but no wild-eyed devotion – then director Cameron Crowe’s Pearl Jam Twenty is a raging success.
The film screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival, which coincided with two sold-out gigs at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. They were joined by Neil Young on Sunday night.
If it seems as though Nirvana’s groundbreaking Nevermind album is sucking up all the oxygen in the universe this month with its various 20th anniversary celebrations, it’s worth remembering that plenty of so-called grunge bands emerged from Seattle in the early 90s, irrevocably changing the scene.
Yet only one has remained more or less intact since then: Pearl Jam.
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