Power surge: Pearl Jam's stoked and ready to rumble

MomSeattle · DadSeattle · SPI · MySeattlePix · My account

Local

US/World

Sports

Business

A&E

Life

Comics

Photos

Opinion

Blogs

Buy Ads

NWsource

Friday, December 6, 2002

Power surge: Pearl Jam's stoked and ready to rumble

By GENE STOUT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER POP MUSIC CRITIC

Like a racehorse that's been stabled too long, Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready is biting at the bit to perform Sunday and Monday at KeyArena.

COMING UP

PEARL JAM (with Brad, Steve Earle and Mudhoney)

WHAT: Benefit rock concerts

WHEN: Sunday and Monday at 7 p.m.

WHERE: KeyArena

TICKETS: Sold out

"I'm totally psyched about playing this show," McCready said by phone from his home in Long Beach, Calif. "I think it's going to be really rocking."

Kelly Curtis, the band's longtime manager, hasn't seen the band perform a real concert in more than two years.

"I'm really curious," he said this week. "They haven't played a whole show for a long time, so this should really be something to see."

Pearl Jam's two hometown benefit concerts will raise money for nearly 25 organizations, among them the Vera Project, a local non-profit dedicated to fostering all-ages music and arts programs.

The Seattle band hopes to raise $400,000 from the pair of shows. To date, the band's semiannual hometown benefits have raised about $1.2 million for various causes and organizations.

"We've been knocking on their doors since we started," said Vera Project executive director James Keblas. "We always thought we were a good match for Pearl Jam and that they had strong philanthropic values."

Pearl Jam will ask concertgoers to bring non-perishable food donations -- a can, a bag or a truckload -- for Northwest Harvest, which has experienced a 30 percent drop in food donations at a time when local unemployment is among the highest in the country.

In addition to its two shows at KeyArena, the band performed last night at The Showbox and will perform again tonight at the downtown club. Both shows sold out, as did the KeyArena shows.

Pearl Jam plans to launch its next tour in February in Brisbane, Australia. The Seattle shows will offer a preview of the tour, which follows the recent release of the band's seventh studio album, "Riot Act."

The album will be the last for Epic Records under the band's current contract with the label.

"I wish I had a crystal ball," Curtis said of the band's future with Epic. "We aren't any further along than we were six months ago. There have been some negotiations, but they stop and then they start up again, and then they stop.


		Design: Mark Evans/P-I

"I don't think we're feeling any desperate need to have a deal. If anything, it's the opposite. We're kind of looking forward to not owing ourselves to anybody or anything."

"Riot Act" made its debut on The Billboard 200 album chart in late November at No. 5, but now sits at No. 36 in the Dec. 7 issue. It's a week when acts such as Shania Twain, Jay-Z, Avril Lavigne, Eminem, the Rolling Stones, Kenny G and even a defunct Seattle band, Nirvana, are commanding higher chart positions.

But chart strength is perhaps less important to Pearl Jam these days than a strong communal environment for creating music.

"They all kind of have lives and they're a little older now and they've gotten to this real comfortable way of being in a band," Curtis said. "It's something that's really healthy. Everybody's OK with it."

McCready admitted that after the 2000 Roskilde, Denmark, festival, where nine concertgoers where killed when people rushed the stage during Pearl Jam's set, the band needed time to ponder its future.

"Our last tour was very tumultuous," he said. "I think we finally got to the point where we needed to take some time off and figure out what we were going to do and just live our lives for a while outside of Pearl Jam."

The band -- McCready, singer Eddie Vedder, guitarist Stone Gossard, bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Matt Cameron -- returned to the studio earlier this year refreshed and ready to work.

"The vibe to me was a pretty positive one," McCready said.

"Riot Act," the follow-up to "Binaural" in 2000, is packed with the sonic power of a re-energized band. It opens with the psychedelia-tinged "Can't Keep" and closes with the bittersweet "All or None."

Each band member contributed songs, making the album more a group effort than previous records. But Vedder's songwriting and vocals command much of the attention. His subjects range from politics ("Bush Leaguer") to pain and loss ("Love Boat Captain"). The latter reaches out to the families of the nine concertgoers killed at Roskilde.

Melodies, lyrics and hooks are strong throughout the album, though the sense of melancholy is inescapable.

Playing with the band for the first time in Seattle is keyboardist Kenneth "Boom" Gaspar, a friend of Vedder's from Hawaii. Opening Sunday's KeyArena show are Steve Earle and Gossard's other band, Brad. On Monday, the openers are Brad and Mudhoney.

Pearl Jam has added such beneficiaries as the Actors' Gang (a Los Angeles theater ensemble), the Citizens Campaign for Commercial Free Schools and the Future of Music Coalition (an organization seeking to educate the media, policy-makers and the public about music and technology issues).

"Seattle is where we call home," Curtis said. "As members of the community, it's important to us to play a role in supporting the people, programs and places within it."

For Keblas of Seattle's Vera Project, which recently opened an all-ages performance venue on Fourth Avenue, Pearl Jam is a godsend.

"We're taking a 50 percent cut from the city's budget for the next two years. When we're taking cuts like that and the community steps in to make the difference, it's a huge, huge help.

"Once you get a group like Pearl Jam that's identified you as important enough to give you this much money and support, people are attracted to that and it snowballs. Other people just naturally want to get involved."

P-I pop music critic Gene Stout can be reached at 206-448-8383 or genestout@seattlepi.com.

Add P-I Music headlines to