There are reasons why some musicians are able to extend their careers decade after decade after decade. When I was a teenager I had a poster of Eddie Vedder on the ceiling directly over my bed, right next to a blue-tinted poster of a flannel wearing Jack Kerouac hitchhiking on a rural road; yes, I am old and I was a strange kid. Pearl Jam  is always just beneath my surface and will forever coerce a squeal out of me when it wafts into my car stereo during a flashback lunch; literally, I clap my hands and jump up and down in my seat like a giddy schoolgirl.  Socially conscious (if not a tad over-reaching and evangelical at times), loud without being bombastic, smooth without being suave, Pearl Jam’s music transcends age, epoch, and geography instantaneously; Pearl Jam is my past, present, and future all at the same time. It was Vedder who watched over me while I embarked on my writing career at the tender age of 13 with my first journal. It was Vedder who calmed my nerves when I drove to my first gig as a music critic. It will be Vedder who will inaugurate me into the next stage of my life, whatever the eff that brings.  And now they’re reissuing a seminal album, TEN, in a blatant grab for money (as are most of these things). *Sigh* Well, none of us are perfect, I suppose, and I took a vow when I was a tender young lass…for better or for worse, I am a Pearl Jam fan. Which is why I used this reissue as an excuse to scour Youtube for what began as a Top Five Pearl Jam Videos list, but couldn’t be constrained by numbers.

My all-time favorite Pearl Jam song is Yellow Ledbetter. This is what I term a “fan appreciation” video so its images aren’t anything special, but this is the version I prefer over anything live I’ve found so…

This video for Jeremy played incessantly during my formative MTV watching years, and credit should be given to these guys for discussing relevant issues in their music and packaging it artistically enough for MTV not to notice and flippantly feed it to thousands of unsuspecting kids…

[You'll note that Genesis 3:6 is flashed in the video, which reads "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate."]

Here are two videos from the 1992 Pinkpop festival at which Pearl Jam performed some of their best live material to date: Black and Alive, respectively

 

Even Flow (1991): classic Vedder/Pearl Jam. Note the excessively long hair, flannel shirt, and cargo shorts; this is the archetype for musical production in the 1990s.

Do the Evolution (1998) has amazingly descriptive visuals and is proof of two things: Pearl Jam was ahead of their time and a product of the greater Northwest.

Hide Away performed in Sao Paolo, I believe in 2006. 

Although this isn’t Pearl Jam, I believe Vedder’s work on the Into the Wild Soundtrack is as close to the real man as we on the opposite side of the stage will get. Here is Guaranteed...

And this is simply one of the best covers of Neil Young‘s Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World, performed in 1992 on MTV’s Unplugged.