TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Pearl Jam fights a constant battle with Live for my favorite band of all time. Sometimes, depending on my mood, one overtakes the other. When a new album comes out from Live, they usually conquer the top spot for some amount of time… but Ten always manages to find its way back into Favorite Album I Own. I once lent it to Ms. L when we were first dating and legitimately was concerned for its safety while it was out of my possession. It’s the one album I have that, regardless of the day, time, or mood I can always put in and listen to from cover to cover. Vs. is the same way. I can always listen to Vs.

Of my top ten Pearl Jam songs, Elderly Woman probably comes in someplace in the top five. If you forced me to name a top five in some random order it would be Elderly Woman, Rearviewmirror, Breath, Black, and Corduroy with State of Love and Trust, Jeremy, Yellow Ledbetter, and Once having an occasional cup of coffee in the top five. When I hear a cover of one of these songs (or a Guitar Hero 3 version) it can quickly rocket to the top spot. This happened recently with Elderly Woman. About a year ago, I discovered Charlotte Martin. She’s a Tori Amos-y kind of singer. I’d never heard her before, but I knew Ms. L was a big fan. I found out she was playing at a bookstore in New York City right around Ms. L’s birthday, so I bought a couple tickets and went with her more to see a concert at a bookstore than for the music.

As it turned out, I was a big fan. She released an iTunes only album of covers called Reproductions which includes a cover of Elderly Woman. Faced with a new version of a favorite song I found myself playing it a ton this weekend (at the expense of the rest of the album… purchased during a drunken buying spree on iTunes).

As I’ve listened to it over and over for a few days, I started to think of the different ways the song could be interpreted. It’s one of those cool songs that could very easily mean different things depending on the person who listens to it and drastically changes when the song’s voice changes. You could take it (as I did for years) about a guy coming back to a small town and finding he has moved into a new phase while the town has stayed exactly the same (think Garden State fifteen years before Garden State was made). You could use the Eddie Vedder is a Vampire explanation… which sees him watching lifetimes go on around him while he doesn’t change at all.

(Aside: I read the “Eddie Vedder is a Vampire” website back in college… it was a website which posited that Eddie Vedder was a Vampire and outlined hidden messages buried in Pearl Jam lyrics to prove this. I thought it was funny. I made reference to it here in hopes to link to the page and give people a giggle. I then Googled “Eddie Vedder is a Vampire”… which now links to a significant number of websites that sell ESSAYS AND TERM PAPERS!!! In the last ten years this has gone from a joke website to a legitimate theory people have written papers about… enough papers for there to be a market for them? Really? Even though you can see he’s gone from angsty twentysomething to soccer dad?)

Having listened to Charlotte Martin sing it over the last few days, from the female voice, it seems even more depressing… a woman that sees someone from her life come into her store/restaurant/diner/whatever who doesn’t even recognize her.

Oddly enough, having found this song at a time when I’m planning on being upstate for a week or so, I’ve found another meaning for it… looking into the mirror and saying it to yourself when you come home again and find that you’re going to be 30 in a few weeks. There’s a few pages in a Stephen King novel somewhere that talks about it a bit. That time you look in mirror and wonder just when the f*ck someone replaced you with a guy with gray hair, a bunch of extra pounds, and a retirement fund. The guy in the mirror has just found himself at the end of an X-year holding pattern, kinda recognizes himself, but not really. The last time he looked in the mirror… really looked… he was someone else entirely. He hasn’t changed at all.

Anyway, that revelation struck me as I was sitting in my car driving to nowhere. At some point on Wednesday afternoon I decided to turn the XM on and drive north until I felt like stopping. I think I stopped in Whitehall because I didn’t feel like going to Vermont… something about the Giants playing New England this weekend made me feel like a traitor.

Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town
Vedder, McCreader, Gossard, Ament, Abbruzzese - 1993

I seem to recognize your face
Haunting, familiar, yet I can’t seem to place it
Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name
Lifetimes are catching up with me

Hearts and thoughts they fade…away
Hearts and thoughts they fade…away