Music:Last weekend, I buried my grandfather. This week, a close colleague of mine passed away while at work. This year is my third year teaching, and every year I've taught at least two inclusion classes with Ms. Smith. Her death shocked me. She appeared in good health and was only in her early 40's. My grandfather was 91. Ms. Smith's last words were, "Dory, please don't let me die." My grandfather died, saying, "I guess Pat's getting tired of waiting on me." My grandfather leaves behind him an extended family of children, grandchildren, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Ms. Smith leaves behind an eight year old daughter and what feels like an unfinished legacy of reaching special needs children.
Under these circumstances, I've spent the last week listening to Pearl Jam's ninth studio album Back Spacer. The album is everything Binaural should have been, mixing Pearl Jam's punk roots with their folk roots seamlessly. Critics have pretty much limited the discussion of Back Spacer to its first three or four songs, claiming that they show the band can still rock, while throwing out random references to Ten, which just might be Pearl Jam's weakest and most immature album.
The isolated anger and frustration that bore songs such as "Once," "Why Go Home," and "Black" has given way to the maturity that songs like "Alive," "Jeremy," and "Oceans" hinted this band could achieve but at the same time failed to fully grasp. "Jeremy" was always a song that mattered, not because it was angry, but because it identified with the shooter. "Jeremy" mattered because it blamed the rest of the world for dehumanizing Jeremy to the point he would bring a gun to school. His crimes were an indictment of how our society functions, and the adolescent questions of how and why such events could occur have now given way to a mature doctrine, found in the lyrics of Back Spacer's "Unthought Known": "Dream the dreams of other men. You'll be no one's rival." Back Spacer is a manual on how to prevent anyone from going through the trials that produced the anger and rage found on Ten, making it the more important work.
Under these circumstances, I've spent the last week listening to Pearl Jam's ninth studio album Back Spacer. The album is everything Binaural should have been, mixing Pearl Jam's punk roots with their folk roots seamlessly. Critics have pretty much limited the discussion of Back Spacer to its first three or four songs, claiming that they show the band can still rock, while throwing out random references to Ten, which just might be Pearl Jam's weakest and most immature album.
The isolated anger and frustration that bore songs such as "Once," "Why Go Home," and "Black" has given way to the maturity that songs like "Alive," "Jeremy," and "Oceans" hinted this band could achieve but at the same time failed to fully grasp. "Jeremy" was always a song that mattered, not because it was angry, but because it identified with the shooter. "Jeremy" mattered because it blamed the rest of the world for dehumanizing Jeremy to the point he would bring a gun to school. His crimes were an indictment of how our society functions, and the adolescent questions of how and why such events could occur have now given way to a mature doctrine, found in the lyrics of Back Spacer's "Unthought Known": "Dream the dreams of other men. You'll be no one's rival." Back Spacer is a manual on how to prevent anyone from going through the trials that produced the anger and rage found on Ten, making it the more important work.More importantly, Pearl Jam's Back Spacer continues to prove that pigeon holing this band as brooding cynics who take themselves too seriously was always and still is a huge misinterpretation of their catalog. Songs like "Amongst the Waves," with its chorus "Riding high amongst the waves/ I can feel like I have a soul that has been saved/ I can see the light/ coming through the clouds in rays," are driven by their perspectives of optimism and spirituality. Back Spacer even features an ode to the Super Sonics leaving Seattle, and, in a song that was inspired by an NBA owner's rejection of their home city, Pearl Jam finds a hopeful perseverance: "Supersonic, Truth be told/ I don't need you to live, But I'll Never let you go." A nice touch to this song is the cartoon Sonics Sasquatch next to the lyrics in the album art. Pretty serious, huh?
Pearl Jam, once it dealt with its own demons, has always been a band driven by the idea that everyone is connected by our shared humanity and, in being human, that we share emotional states and experiences. Eddie Vedder sings it time and time again on Back Spacer: "Slide on next to me/ I'm just a human being." It's strange that a band driven by such Transcendental-hippie ideals has earned a reputation as always being outraged and depressed. Perhaps, what depressed us most about Pearl Jam is that their love actually demands one change the way they live, as opposed to the love sung in a Beatles song that makes no mention of "paths cut by the moon," Henry Adams forces of nature, or a spirituality that is more than a hook and a melody.
The love Pearl Jam shares on Back Spacer got me through this week, and I don't know how many bands are capable of achieving that time and time again.
Television:
While shows like Community were well-hyped over the summer with strong marketing campaigns that earned them spots in Rolling Stone's "50 Reasons to Watch Television," a lot of them have failed to meet the hype or the potential of their casts. Modern Family, on ABC, is by far the funniest new show I've seen in a while. I stumbled upon this show this past Wednesday flipping channels, and it's the first family sitcom since Arrested Development that appears to be both interesting and relevant to the times in which we live.
While shows like Community were well-hyped over the summer with strong marketing campaigns that earned them spots in Rolling Stone's "50 Reasons to Watch Television," a lot of them have failed to meet the hype or the potential of their casts. Modern Family, on ABC, is by far the funniest new show I've seen in a while. I stumbled upon this show this past Wednesday flipping channels, and it's the first family sitcom since Arrested Development that appears to be both interesting and relevant to the times in which we live.
In just the pilot episode, viewers were treated with Ed O'Neill's return to prime time television, a father shooting his own son with a pellet gun, and a gay couple presenting their adopted Vietnamese baby as if it were Simba from The Lion King.
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