The A.V. Club is showcasing a series they call Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? and this guy in his mid-30s is absolutely loving it.
Part 3 is called "1992: Pearl Jam, the perils of fame, and the trouble with avoiding it" and as a big Pearl Jam fan, I was riveted. If you're a music fan who remembers the early 90s at all, you have to check this out. Here's an excerpt:
Vedder typically wasn’t so accommodating, especially once his status as Pearl Jam’s figurehead gave him the freedom to tell people no. He fought the push from Epic, Pearl Jam’s label, to release Ten’s big romantic ballad, “Black,” as a single because it appeared poised to become the band’s biggest hit yet. (“Black” became one of Pearl Jam’s most popular songs regardless.) “We didn’t write to make hits. But those fragile songs get crushed by the business,” Vedder told Crowe in Rolling Stone; Vedder thought “Black” was so fragile that, in a weird anecdote related by Crowe, he once chastised a group of Pearl Jam fans for singing it when he overheard them on a hiking trip.
It's strange to think of "Black" as fragile. I can tell you with great certainty as a guy who tracks such useless information that I've seen Pearl Jam perform Black live 5 times. I've also heard it approximately 389 times on 102.1 and another 1,933 times on CD, cassette and MP3.
It's not fragile. In fact, like Hulk Hogan in a match for the heavyweight championship of the world, it only gets stronger .
As proof, I submit exhibit A.
