Press Release- Talia Style

“But Eddie Vedder did it on MTV!” It was 1993 and I was being dragged from the school gymnasium, during a 7th grade spring dance because I had rolled up the sleeve of my brown corduroy jacket and scribbled “Pro-Choice” on my arm with a black permanent marker to emulate the stylish liberalism of my musical hero, Eddie Vedder. I had recently watched MTV’s special: Pearl Jam, Unplugged, and thought I would make a great statement by copying lead singer, Vedder’s, rock star behavior at my catholic school dance. My expectations turned out to be ill conceived and I was asked to leave the event early, albeit with a defiant smile across my 13-year-old lips.

For me, the idolatry started early, and Pearl Jam has maintained a constant presence in my life to this day. The band, which was formed in 1990, and released its first album, Ten, on March 11, 1991, has proved its endurance for well over a decade. Pearl Jam fans are a well organized and dedicated mass of music lovers all over the world, who are highly rewarded by the band they love the most with more authorized releases of live bootlegs than any other band, first dibs to registered fans on coveted concert tickets, and a complimentary Christmas single released on vinyl to all fan club members every year.

Pearl Jam’s last release of a full new album was Riot Act in December, 2002, but fans are currently salivating in anticipation of the release of their newest self- titled album, on May 2, 2006. The first single from this album, Worldwide Suicide, has been impressively credited as Billboard’s highest modern rock debut ever!

The first leg of Pearl Jam’s worldwide tour in support of the new album kicks off in Toronto, Ontario on May 9. A full schedule of released tour dates can be found on the band’s official website: www.tenclub.net.

Un-informed bloggers and music journalists alike may be referring to the recent events in Pearl Jam’s career as a “come-back”, but true fans and seasoned music critics are well aware that this continued success is to be expected from one of the greatest alternative rock bands of all time. Just as the trademarked brown corduroy jacket remains hanging in my closet, well preserved and stylish as ever, even 13 years after my 7th grade dance, so too will Pearl Jam remain for years to come, a omnipresent, continuing source of soul strengthening musical enjoyment for fans both new and old.