Pearl Jam Might Be THE Most Fan Friendly Band Of Our Time
You’ve really got to hand it to Pearl Jam. They’ve sold millions of records and played sold out shows all over the world and they still remember what it’s like to be a fan. They have to, or they wouldn’t think to do things like this.
Before file sharing, pirating music meant trafficking in live bootlegs. Some bands embraced this, most labels did not. I was always amused that the labels had so much trouble with the bootleg industry because it seemed to me so easy to put that black market out of business. In typical industry fashion, they ignored message the fans were sending and missed out on a chance to make some money and keep the fans happy. I don’t feel sorry for the plight of these dickbrains. The bootleg market should have told industry insiders that fans were interested in complete, single-show live recordings professionally recorded but not professionally massaged, touched up, or polished. How does the industry respond? Sporadic, live albums culled from any number of shows with a slick, ProTools sound.
“Jam bands” like The Grateful Dead — they’re a lot more than just a jam band, and I’m not even a Dead fan — welcomed fan taping and trading. Pearl Jam took the concept one step further. They recorded the shows for the fans and sold them at very reasonable prices. They’ve sold a metric buttload of these, and yet other bands and the labels themselves have continued to ignore fans’ wishes and the success Pearl Jam has had granting them.
And now this Gorge set: A 7-CD box set of live music featuring more than 70 different songs and an acoustic set thrown into the mix. THIS is what we want! And how much is Pearl Jam going to make us pay for the 7-CDs of what we want? $35. Eddie Vedder sometimes says things that annoy me and I haven’t loved every song or every album, but I am dedicated Pearl Jam fan. Offerings and gestures like this make that a pretty special thing to be.
In addition to making great music, Pearl Jam is a band with the heart of a fan.
Filed under: Tags: Musical Musings and Random Ramblings, Pearl Jam
A lot of bands are now doing a buy the show after you see it type deal, where soundboard copies of the concert are being burned moments after the last notes are played. Minimalistic packaging, but a cool idea.
Proof once again that the industry is full of people who have no clue as to what music fans really want.
Good for Pearl Jam, I say.
absolutely correct. the people running things toss around crazy beancounter/marketing terms like “market saturation” when they worry about things like albums releases that are too close together or this collection of live material.
just plain stupid.
“Pearl Jam Might Be THE Most Fan Friendly Band Of Our Time…They have to, or they wouldn’t think to do things like this”
Like what? Sell live albums? Seriously?
This is fan friendly.
Ween encourages fans to tape the video and audio from their shows (from the soundboard if you’re nice), and has a torrent tracker set up for the fans to trade the shows with the band’s full blessing. Full dvds and high quality audio files spanning almost 20 years of live content. The only rule? Please don’t share their commercial releases, which the fans are more than happy to follow.
The last time Ween came to my town I was deathly ill, rendering my ticket to the show worthless. Fully depressed over missing these amazing greats, I dejectedly went to the Brown Tracker a few days later and found the whole show shot in crystal clear digital video and the non-lossy audio files for download and sharing with anyone.
Ween loves the fans at least as much as the fans love Ween.
Ben, you’re right that there are a lot of bands who encourage fans to trade show tapes and some of them are even good quality- but very few of the bootlegs I’ve ever traded for or bought were as good in terms of quality as the Pearl Jam shows I’ve bought over these past couple years. Fan recordings have always sounded like fan recordings… period.
That said, there are a lot of fan friendly bands out there and you’re right in pointing out that Ween is one of them.