the cover art all of my friends agree is like, what? i heard a theory that it has to do with a green party's avocado something or other, but i don't know. it's cool to see the kids back into them. although i like eddie with the ukulele on songs like the man we'll soon forget. that's a good one.
eddie has always had a talent for taking on the point of view of different people. i think "daughter" probably won me over, but when i found out that he wrote the why go home song about his female cousin who'd had some problems with her folks, i was even more impressed. then of course there is "betterman," which is completely from a woman's point of view, and a lot folks love that song -- it's a concert sing-a-long that has always surprised me. supposedly it's about his mother (happy mother's day) but at concerts all these dudes, in particular, sing, she lies and says she's in love with him, can't find a better man, can't find a better man -- he's quite a feminist / humanist i think, whether he means to be or not. although, i think he means to be. i remember when i was in college they played somewhere down in north carolina, he got up in front of the crowd with gloria steinem beside him and said, listen to this lady, she's got a lot to say. we're not playing unless you listen to her. rather ballsy. i've always liked him for that, and i didn't even see that show; the hubby did and told me about it.
i also found out that they are doing another charity or two -- this one is for an elementary school's environmental program.
nothing beat the molo sessions though in the eddie, eddie, you are the anti-rock star, rock star for me category.
i'll never forget when they promoted nader. a friend of mine worked at some place in portland where nader was speaking and she called and was like eddie vedder is playing this, i can get y'all in. do you want to come? of course we were in mississippi at the time, so we couldn't -- it was last minute, and we just couldn't fork over several thousand dollars to fly out for the weekend. it would have been a nice thing though -- to meet eddie and nader -- she handled the pr for the whole thing. that's her job. (although she always says eddie is an asshole -- i always say, it's his job to be an asshole to you because of your job -- and i don't really want to meet him and find out otherwise)
on sunday mornings one of our nearby radio stations plays songs that they don't throughout the rest of the week, and i heard an Emmylou Harris / Mark Knopfler song this morning "Right Now" it was great. Really great, made me happy to be listening to radio again.
about as happy as a pearl jam album album makes me that americans still make great number two rock n' roll albums -- someone has pointed out that that's their lot in life, and the hubby agrees nirvana was always number one and pearl jam, our favorite, will always be number two.
a lot of folks call them the seattle survivors. i think it fits.