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Were just a few weeks away from the upcoming re-issue of the legendary debut album from Pearl Jam (featuring completely remixed tracks from long-time collaborator Brenden O’Brien, the never-before-released MTV unplugged performance, and other goodies) set to go on sale March 24th.
Every Pearl Jam fan should check out this recent Q & A session with the band at the Daily Record.
It’s a rather long (and poorly edited, I might add) interview, but offers some great insight into the early days of the band in addition to details about the upcoming re-release. The band chats about their early rise in Seattle music scene, their favorite songs, the future, how they’ve stayed together for so long.
Jeff Ament discusses how the band had been wanting to re-mix their debut ever since it was originally released:
Jeff: “A little bit of hindsight but not necessarily the 17 years that its taken to get to this point! Ever since we made our 2nd record weve been thinking about remixing Ten. The original version has a little bit more of an 80s production. When Brendan mixed Vs., I asked him can you remix Ten just for me so I can listen to a drier more direct version of those songs?”
It seems Sony’s been wanting to do a re-issue as well, for some time. In addition to the re-mixes, the band also discusses a documentary with director Cameron Crowe that’s in the works as well as the now-legend MTV unplugged performance that until recently was only available in bootleg form.
Jeff: “Sonys been asking us to do it for a long time but Kelly our manager has had the idea to do a 20 year anniversary retrospective movie so hes been on board with [film director] Cameron Crowe for the last few years. He presented the idea to us of reissuing some of these records leading up to that and I was really excited about doing Ten.
I wasn’t happy with the way the original package came out. We had pretty severe restrictions in terms of what we could do. They didn’t let us put it out on vinyl and that was a rough blow to us at the time cause I don’t think I even had a CD player. I was one of the last people that I knew that got a CD player.
Early on I found out it was better to make bad art yourself than to have somebody else create what they thought would represent you. Ed and I have always been super hands on with all our art and Ten was the one time in Pearl Jam where the finished product really wasn’t 100% what we intended.
There was a bit of headbutting going on with the Sony art department at that time. The version that everybody got to know as the Ten album cover was pink and it was originally intended to be more of a burgundy color and the picture of the band was supposed to be black and white. I felt this reissue was an opportunity to go back and finish what we started.
We had a hard time actually finding original photographs so all we had to work with was black and white photographs so we have a slightly different version of what the original color was. We gave it a sepia tone finish.
Ed and I dug through boxes and boxes of memorabilia and journals that we kept during the tours and the making of that first record and we created a journal with a lot of those artifacts and it was super fun. I think it was the first time that either one of us had dug through that stuff for 17 years and it filled in some memory loss that we had from that time. I think it has turned into a really cool package, a real fans package.”
Mike: “When we did MTV Unplugged we had flown in that day from Germany so we were all tired, jet lagged and hungover. We rented some guitars that were OK and we didn’t feel that comfortable about it but we knew it was something that was good for us to do.
Nobody in the band has ever been that excited about that performance but MTV Unplugged has been very exciting to many fans over the years like dude when are you going to release that? So we are finally gonna release that because of the fan demand.”
In addition to this introspective interview, go check out the new interactive game at pearljamtengame.com. Solve the puzzles to hear each re-mixed track!
And for those of you who are not aware of how AWESOME this re-issue is going to be, here’s the complete rundown one more time of what you get can get:
1. Legacy Edition (2-disc set in mini-LP style slipcase):
- Disc 1: original Ten tracklisting digitally remastered (original mix)
- Disc 2: original Ten tracklisting digitally remastered and remixed by Brendan O’Brien, plus six bonus tracks: “Brother,” “Just a Girl,” “State of Love and Trust,” “Breath and a Scream,” “2,000 Mile Blues” and “Evil Little Goat”
- Re-designed packaging
2. Deluxe Edition (2-disc set plus DVD specially designed hardbound package):
- Disc 1: original Ten tracklisting digitally remastered (original mix)
- Disc 2: original Ten tracklisting digitally remastered and remixed by Brendan O’Brien, plus six bonus tracks: “Brother,” “Just a Girl,” “State of Love and Trust,” “Breath and a Scream,” “2,000 Mile Blues” and “Evil Little Goat”
- DVD of Pearl Jam’s previously unreleased 1992 MTV Unplugged performance including never before seen bonus performance of “Oceans” with 5.1 surround sound audio remix
3. Vinyl Collection (2-LP set)
- LP 1: original Ten tracklisting remastered for vinyl
- LP 2: original Ten tracklisting remastered for vinyl and remixed by Brendan O’Brien
4. Super Deluxe Edition (2-disc set plus DVD, 4 LPs and replica cassette in linen-covered, slip-cased clamshell box):
- Disc 1: original Ten tracklisting digitally remastered (original mix)
- Disc 2: original Ten tracklisting digitally remastered and remixed by Brendan O’Brien, plus six bonus tracks: “Brother,” “Just a Girl,” “State of Love and Trust,” “Breath and a Scream,” “2,000 Mile Blues” and “Evil Little Goat”
- DVD of Pearl Jam’s previously unreleased 1992 MTV Unplugged performance including never before seen bonus performance of “Oceans” with 5.1 surround sound audio remix
- LP 1: original Ten tracklisting remastered for vinyl
- LP 2: original Ten tracklisting remastered for vinyl and remixed by Brendan O’Brien
- LP 3 & 4: Drop in the Park – Live at Magnuson Park in Seattle on September 20, 1992 (audio mixed by Brendan O’Brien)
- Cassette: replica of original “Momma-Son” Pearl Jam demo cassette featuring “Alive,” “Once” and “Footsteps”
- Package also includes an Eddie Vedder-style composition notebook filled with replica personal notes, images and mementos from the collections of Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament, a vellum envelope with replicated era-specific ephemera from Pearl Jam’s early work and a two-sided print commemorating the Drop in the Park concert.
Can’t wait to nerd out on Pearl Jam come March 24th!
The post New Pearl Jam Interview And Interactive Game Reveals Details on “Ten” Reissue appeared first on Digital Media News & Training.