MTV’s Unplugged series often seemed designed to reveal each member of a band at its most understated, stripped down to a bongo-tapping, acoustic -pluck, whisper essence There is a feint in that direction towards The start of Pearl Jam’s 1992 appearance, posted to YouTube this week for the first time in its entirety by the band: an Eddie Vedder with a baby face and chipmunk cheeks looks shy and speaks quietly, very laconic surfer who wandered north to a booming grunge scene
Vedder begins the program calmly perched on an ubiquitous stool But he quickly transforms into a possessed man as he sings his way through seven songs, taken from Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten, and their appearance in and on the soundtrack of Cameron Crowe’s Singles movie (A limited pressing of the Unplugged show was released on vinyl for Record Store Day 2019, and is also available to stream now)
It gets stronger as they move on, and Vedder’s nervousness grows, writhing in small gusts.He was by then already known locally to deal with tangled pipes through the ceilings of Seattle venues like his own gym in the jungle, but this was the first wider glimpse for most viewers at those manic acrobatics When he pulls off his « Alive » front cap, he shakes his long hair with a dry snap He starts rocking back and forth as he sings, kicking his legs, twisting and tangling his feet in it. the bars He is still seated, but he also has his head
And then the wheels really come off He unbuttoned first, then took off his corduroy jacket, and threw himself into the quick first verse of « Porch », biting down the lyrics as if they were looking at him the wrong way. « There will be no more middle ground, » he sings, angry and pointed As the group slips into the briefly soft deck, Vedder turns with his stool on the floor He laughs to himself, stands up. twisted onto his back, then straightened up, first balanced on his stomach as if paddling to catch a wave, then climbed to stand on the padded seat He pulls out a Sharpie as the group goes overdrive, writing in bold letters on his bare left arm the words PRO • CHOICE !!! (yes, with three exclamation marks) He ends the song with new lyrics about « choice in our time »
It’s almost as bizarre now, on the eve of the 2020 election, to watch it unfold as it did for the first time as a teenager in a not quite suburb in the early ’90s Like many kids whose first grunge exposure came via MTV, I was only vaguely aware of riot grrrl bands, and I certainly had never seen a guy so determined to advocate for abortion rights in the middle of what might otherwise simply have been a proto-coffeehouse acoustic rock performance To put this now-almost-old story into context: In 2020, Vedder joined Instagram to encourage postal voting In 1992, the year before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, he stood on a stool in a Queens soundstage, ruining the curve of white feminist rockstars
This was the start of Pearl Jam’s career, and like their Seattle comrades, Nirvana, they were less concerned with risking a big hit on commercial radio than with challenging the conservative policies of the first Bush presidency – or to sell brands The two groups performed Rock for Choice fundraising concerts, launched by L7, which raised funds for abortion rights organizations (Just for the kicks, you can read late critic Jonathan Gold’s review on a Los Angeles show here) Vedder even wrote an essay for Spin magazine a few months after the Unplugged performance which detailed the larger political landscape of international access to abortion and threatening groups like Operation Rescue posed to Roe v Wade – and in which he fondly imagined the life of a 10-year-old child he was not ready to father
The performance of « Porch » was shown out of order on MTV, and confusion persists in this YouTube version as well – you can clearly see one of those emphatic exclamation marks sticking out of its sleeve earlier in it. ‘The show But the dramatic performance has its rightful place as an absolute conclusion to an iconic appearance Making as much noise as five guys can figure out how to do in a tiny space without electric instruments, Vedder bounces back from punk-eyed madman. bugs and red and punk rock to shove his hands deep in his pockets, lean and mumble into the mic, then again to end the set with a flurry of cymbal smashes
« It didn’t sound like a TV show at all, » Vedder says almost as an afterthought as they step past the stage. But in his unexpected and unfiltered way, Vedder provided what maybe was the best example of this widely tamed series of the power of a TV performance, hip or not
Pearl Jam, MTV Unplugged, Eddie Vedder
News from the world – UK – Pearl Jam’s 1992 MTV “Unplugged” still vibrates with fair and relevant anger
