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Soon I’m going to officially announce the release of an album that has taken me two years to produce. Before I do that though I feel the need to clarify this website’s tag line. “Free. Music.” It says. I thought it was pretty self-explanatory, but recently I read this.

Aside from the flimsy math being used, there is a deeper philosophical question to be answered here: Should art be free? I’m giving away something that I created. Its something that I spent a little money and a LOT of time on. It has a value. And from a broader fundamental standpoint I don’t believe that it is morally or legally right to take a person’s productive output without compensating that person for their work. Unless that person chooses otherwise. My music has a value, but only to me. If other people choose to listen to it that’s great, but its not up to me.  And if a dollar figure presents a barrier to someone listening; (someone who might really enjoy it) who am I to put that barrier in front of them.

That is what is meant by “Free. Music.” I don’t just mean that I don’t charge people to download my stuff. I mean that music (and by extension all art) can be free from the constraints of commercialization if the artist decides. If I put on a show there are tangible costs associated with it, plus my blood and sweat, which I should be compensated for. If I decided to produce a physical CD in a case with additional material, there are costs there that I should be compensated for. But not for a 4 minute piece of digital data that is out of my control the second it hits your hard drive. Something I would have made anyway, that you may or may not listen to and enjoy.

I am free to make the music that I want to make. I don’t have to satisfy anyone else by living up to the dollar figure I would arbitrarily place on my music. If I choose to charge people it is up to me to add value to my product such that they feel justified spending the money. But I’m not there right now. Right now I’m just happy to have people listen.

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In short: It is amazing. See it. Small screen, big screen, it doesn’t matter. See it.

A little more detail? It was disjointed in parts. A-linear and jarring from a narrative perspective. And it was maybe ten to twenty minutes too long. But film is not what we talk about here. I had this moment, driving to work two days before I went to see the movie, where in a rare instance of channel surfing I caught “Daughter” on the radio. I don’t listen to “rock” radio, and I don’t listen to Pearl Jam very much, so I don’t know how rare this moment was for the universe, but it was very rare for me. And in this moment it occurred to me how underrated this band is. Not commercially, obviously, but musically. I don’t even like “Daughter.” But there was this moment while it played on the radio that morning that I realized how good Pearl Jam is. They’re musically tight, they’re focused and creative, they do what they do (like it or not), and somehow have survived for twenty years. That is a long goddamn time, especially in rock and roll years. Most especially when compared to their peer group. Sitting there listening to a song I don’t even like I got very excited to see this movie, because I hoped it would help me understand how all this was possible.

Full disclosure: Mike McCready’s solo on “Alive” literally made me want to learn the guitar. And I love their live shows. But I don’t consider myself a hard fan. The band’s middle period (No Code through Riot Act) does not appeal to me subjectively. Like at all. I had written them off before 2006’s self-titled release. And I really don’t listen to them often. With that said, these are the things I learned from Pearl Jam Twenty.

1) These guys are incredibly talented. But not in that raw, sloppy, rock and roll way. They have real, practiced musicality. The members were known and well respected with their previous band before Eddie auditioned, but after he had they played a show together within days. With all new material. And they were good. And here’s the key: They’ve only gotten better since then. Go back and listen to your original copy of “Ten” if you still have it. They are better now. Each of them individually and as a band. Regardless of how you feel about their various creative choices over the years, it is obvious that they care about what they’re doing. And not just because it makes them famous and gets them money.

Which leads me to:

2) You know all that ever-cool rock and roll indifference that comes off as so much practiced bullshit when you see it on some bearded douchebag “indie” singer in a cardigan and skinny jeans? It is for real here. Obviously Pearl Jam wanted to be successful. But it wasn’t their principal goal. It wasn’t why they were making music. Which isn’t something you could say for most young “artists” these days. I think the entire industry has succumbed to an epidemic of superficiality and hero worship, with a generation of kids getting into music simply because they want to be famous. But the ones that practice, and get good, and realize they’re never going to be famous turn into cynical assholes who reject participation in the mainstream on principle. And where does that leave the rest of us? Listening to plastic manufactured bullshit performed by talentless hacks, while the truly good people toil away in obscurity, teaching $40/hr. lessons to the next generation of hero worshipping talentless hacks just so they can put a roof over their heads. Sorry, I’m ranting, I know. I’m not bitter, I promise. Not as a person that makes music anyway. I’m bitter as a fan. I’m bitter that bands that care about music have almost completely disappeared from the popular landscape. Because I’d like to hear more from bands like that.

There is a great sequence in the film where Stone Gossard is taking the camera through his house looking for memorabilia. And apart from the fact that he has almost none, the sequence culminates in a dimly lit stumble through his cluttered basement where, to his surprise, he finds a Grammy Award shoved in a dusty corner.

And finally:

3) I’m not sure there is ever going to be another band like this. I think the era of arena rock is effectively over. When trying to answer my own question from the Kurt Cobain post about recent rock bands, the best I could come up with is Arcade Fire, and they are certainly not a “rock” band. They are, however, a certified arena band. They are the only recent group I can think of that has come close to matching Pearl Jam’s talent, commitment, passion, honesty, and inscrutability. And they are also the only recent group I can think of that has come up from nothing to play arenas in a relatively short timeframe. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think that is the cocktail of traits it takes to reach a broad audience. I have no doubt there are plenty of artists out there with that exact mix of characteristics that we’ll never hear about. But I’m also pretty sure that the ones we will hear about won’t be what we used to call “rock.”

Ahh nostalgia. Wasn’t I recently lamenting the packaged resale of outmoded fads to aging yuppies and their gullible offspring? I was. But I was also lamenting the premature departure of something legitimate in favor of the next big thing. There is quite a bit made in the film of how the mainstream packaged Pearl Jam and their peers in a way that made the band uncomfortable. Its because they weren’t just of that moment. And they’ve proven that pretty conclusively over the last twenty years. “Grunge,” the laughable box into which youth culture of the early 90s was stuffed is surely dead. And justifiably so. But Pearl Jam is not. What they represent is not, despite insufferable howls to the contrary. Rock and roll lives on. Its timeless. That is my biggest takeaway from this movie. Now we need only find a way to teach our kids about it, so it doesn’t someday actually die.

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“Kids really don’t even care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life.”

-Kurt Cobain

I couldn’t hope to shed light on Kurt Cobain. I was fourteen when he took his own life. I saw the sadness of my group of “alternative” friends at the time, some of it genuine, most of it feigned. I felt nothing but a creeping disappointment. I was obsessed with Pet Sounds when Nevermind came out, and the first time a friend of mine put on the cassette I thought he was insane. I was ten at the time. I didn’t know being cool took effort. I later grew a strong appreciation for all of Nirvana’s work, got wrapped up in early 90s rock, and bought a skateboard, Airwalks, stylishly ripped and pockety jeans and flannels. Eventually I forgot about the Beach Boys almost entirely. I wonder how many people could agree on how sad that is. And when my female friends shed tears over Kurt’s death, however legitimate they may have been, I sat with them and talked to them and shared in their sadness. But all the time, if I had been honest, I couldn’t have told you I was sad. I had this sense that a free spirit was gone, someone who said true things and didn’t take shit. I appreciated that, and I wanted more of it. I was hungry for it. But I wasn’t sad. I remember a black and white picture in Time magazine of a girl who had carved “Kurt” in jagged lines down the length of the inside of her forearm. I had hormones, I felt angst, I got angry, I was fourteen. But I never felt that level of connection to the music. And the presiding motivator as I sat there and shared in the grief of my female friends was just this: Lust. I thought I might get laid. I could smell their hair when they put their heads on my shoulder and their braces flashed in the fluorescent light of our middle school hallway hangout, and my fourteen-year-old brain actually thought I might have sex.

My friend and collaborator Arjincharj posted the above quote on his Facebook wall recently. It’s from an interview in Rolling Stone in 1992, the gist of which is that Kurt was terrified of what would happen to rock music in twenty years. Well it’s been twenty years and can anyone argue with him? He was right then, about me and most of my friends, and probably the majority of his fans. And he was right in his prediction. What is rock music today? Can anyone name a “rock” band that has formed and gained prominence in the last ten years? What are the people that were listening to Nirvana twenty years ago listening to now? In this context its impossible not to ask ourselves what kind of music Kurt Cobain would be making if he were alive today. If I had to guess I’d guess it would probably sound something like Bon Iver’s last record, with lyricism (if there were lyrics) in the vein of Thom Yorke. I know he wouldn’t be making “rock” music.

I don’t know why Kurt Cobain made music. His interviews suggest it was because he loved it. Deeply. The story we were all eventually sold was that Nirvana existed in defiance of the corporate hair rock culture of the late 80s. But that’s just it, that’s what we were sold. And the only reason any of us remember a guy named Kurt Cobain or a band named Nirvana is because David Geffen decided he COULD sell it. The whole package. We can remember the angst and the anger and the music and the joy of being angry, but we can’t lie to ourselves that a lot of us weren’t just trying to get laid. And as honest as Kurt was, as little shit as he was willing to take, he DID allow himself to become a product. He and his band and his music were packaged and sold to millions of people who were looking for just that kind of product. And companies made millions because of it. Kurt and his family didn’t do too bad themselves. Did he sell out? Absolutely not. He actively tried to buck his success at almost every turn. From the opening track of In Utero to Nirvana’s performance at the 1992 VMA’s, there was clear resentment in almost everything he did after Nevermind. But then again, maybe that was just another part of the package. He cashed in on the commercialization of who he was, and what he did. That’s not an accusation it’s an observation. And for those of us who respect him and his work, we have to assume it was consciously done and self-aware. On the unplugged record when he relates the story of Leadbelly’s guitar, you can hear in his voice two levels of incredulity: The fact that someone would value a guitar at $500,000, and the fact that he could afford it if he chose.

In the constant hunt for the next big thing, some of us sometimes forget to remember exactly why the last thing was big. In our rush to forget all about it and move on we forget that it was important to us for some reason. It mattered to us, as individuals and as a culture. So now they sell us nostalgia for something we can’t remember liking. 80s clothing and rehashed new-wave pop music. “Rock” music doesn’t exist anymore. Its been marginalized and shuffled aside in favor of the trite suggestion of independence that’s been packaged and fed to us, just like “alternative” was twenty years ago. Does anyone really believe that Modest Mouse, or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or Wolf Parade, or Death Cab for Cutie, or MGMT, or Vampire Weekend, or name-your-“indie”-band exist in any public way specifically because of their “indie”-ness? They exist because of their “indie”-ness only insofar as indie-ness has become the new product. They exist because “indie” has been successfully packaged and sold, just like everything before it. It’s the death spasm of an entire industry: The attempt to commoditize the exact thing that is killing it. Meanwhile, in the far-flung corners of the internet, and on tour in shitty vans across the country, real independent music continues to be made. Quality music that vast tracts of people will never hear because the timing wasn’t right, or the package wasn’t saleable. We don’t choose what makes us happy, it’s a chemical reaction beyond our control, but we are clearly willing to be told.

In Kurt’s own words he took his own life because:

“The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100% fun. Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch-in time clock before I walk out on stage. I’ve tried everything within my power to appreciate it (and I do, God, believe me I do, but it’s not enough).”

That leads me to believe that he did it because he realized that he had become a product. Because he realized he had become the thing he existed to defy, and not simply because he was a “sad little, sensitive, unappreciative. . .miserable, self-destructive, death rocker” as he went on to say in his now infamous suicide note. But at the VMA’s in ’92 he stopped playing “Rape Me” didn’t he? He stopped playing it after the first four bars and switched to the song they wanted him to play. So what would have been enough? What did he need to keep going and find the joy he used to have? But more importantly, what did WE need? Why didn’t we expect more of him such that he was motivated to make it happen?

A more important question than what kind of music would Kurt Cobain be making if he were still alive is, what kind of music would he be making if he were a twenty-something kid making his own music in some far-flung corner of the internet? I don’t know. When Thom Yorke got burnt out he made Kid A, so maybe Kurt was right about himself. What I do know is that the friend of ours who taped Kurt’s final words to his guitar in ’94, who was on suicide watch himself in the weeks after Kurt’s passing, he didn’t own Airwalks, or flannels, or a skateboard, or stylish jeans. And he certainly never got laid. Kurt owes him an apology. And the woman who walks around today with his name scarred into her arm. Because for every 100 kids like me, selfishly trying to get laid, there was at least a few kids like that. Kids to whom the promise of Nirvana was real. Kids who cared about rock & roll.

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