"I look around the audience, and there's so many faces, and I've looked into the eyes of at least the ones I could see -- there's at least 1,000 faces -- and I've communicated directly to them and seen where they're coming from...One thing I don't feel is separation from the crowd. I don't feel like we're speaking from a platform, I feel like we are communicating on the same level."
-Eddie Vedder
Pearl Jam was formed in 1990, and their debut album, Ten, became one of the best selling alternative albums of the 1990s. Their sophomore album, Vs., set a record at the time for most albums sold in a week. The band quickly found itself overwhelmed by the sudden popularity of the Seattle music scene and the associated genre known as "grunge". A typical band and frontman would capitalize on that - over-promote their albums, make more videos, go on a world tour and sell tickets for top dollar. But not Pearl Jam, and not Eddie Vedder. Instead, Pearl Jam pulled back on album promotion, refused to make music videos, and launched a boycott of Ticketmaster for Ticketmaster's inflation of ticket prices AND set a cap on ticket prices to thwart ticket scalping. Less commercialism, more creativity.
Frontman Eddie Vedder is known for his intense live performances, thoroughly engaging with the crowd. In the early days, Vedder even participated in stage diving as well as crowd surfing. These days, Ed abstains from such antics, but delivers strong and very personal performances nonetheless. For example, he often waits until just minutes before taking the stage to formulate a setlist for the night's concert so he can get a feel for the setting and the crowd and put together a show to feed and feed off of their energy.So far Pearl Jam has released eight studio albums and was named "greatest American rock band of all time" in a 2005 USA Today reader's poll and was named "the most popular American rock & roll band of the '90s" by Allmusic...
One of my personal favorites:
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