OK Eddie, we get it. You hate the Bush Administration, war, religion and I bet if you listen to him long enough, he would probably tell you that you shouldn't eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Let me start this by saying I am a huge fan. I was there at the beginning. Grunge was my shit back in the early 90's when flannel was flowing freely and my barber filed for unemployment. Pearl Jam was my #1 with Nirvana and Alice In Chains close behind. I have seen PJ three times, twice in NJ and once at Hersheypark during the tour where they made all those cool concert CDs. I have all of their CDs including the B sides and Best Of double CDs.

VH1 Storytellers: Pearl Jam was going to be, at least in my mind, a chance to hear one of my favorite bands of all time, talk about the meanings and inspirations for some of theirrock gems in legendary catalog. I could not have been more wrong. I should have known that Eddie Vedder, who obviously has lost all respect for his fans at this point, would use this venue and exposure to push his beliefs onto an unsuspecting crowd. And that's the sad point. 95% of the viewers of this show were die hard PJammers who were excited, the way I was. But no, we didn't hear the story of the obscure B side Yellow Ledbetter, instead we heard the story of "Alive" which we all know and which origins are common knowledge to PJ fans.

'Alive' is based on the fact that Eddie found out that the man he believed to be his father was not. And that his real father had passed away a couple years earlier. "In the original story, a teenager is being made aware of a shocking truth that leaves him plenty confused", he explained, "It was a curse -- 'I'm still alive.'" Eddie then says that the meaning of the song changed when, as he played the song thousands of times, the fans sang it a different way, they sang it with their arms in the air, expressing the fact that they are happy to be alive. How touching. And so all of us who have seen Pearl Jam in concert and sang that song back to him, good job because we have lifted the great curse haunting him!!!!

And throughout the whole show, it was evident that Eddie was receiving some sick joy from not playing the good shit. At one point he explained that a lot of their songs are 'car songs'. "Bruce Springsteen is still the boss of car songs but we're working our way up to assistant manager." He mentioned that 'rearviewmirror' was one of these songs, fans went fucking nuts in anticipation, but he quickly replied with a smirk, 'which we won't be playing tonight'. What a dick!

I admit though that I did expect some Bush bashing. Eddie really slammed the Prez during his solo acoustic version of Phil Ochs' "Here's to the State of Mississippi". His new venom laced lyrics that lacked creativity, aimed at the usual suspects which included the VP of the United States Dick Cheney, the harmless Jerry Falwell, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (misdirected anger?) and, of course, our leader in the war on terror, a man who has kept America free of attacks on our soil for almost 6 years after 9-11, President Bush. So we have sank to a new low on VH1: Storytellers. An artist played a song he didn't write, one that his fans have probably never heard of and couldn't sing along with. This performance meant nothing to a PJ fan. Actually it was much better than maybe an acoustic version of 'Immortality' or ' Nothing As It Seems'. NOT! Instead we got an old song with its lyrics changed. I know someone else who can do that really well: Weird Al Yankovic!!

So once again instead of pleasing fans, Eddie Vedder opted to push his crazy left-wing agenda. The craziest example of this was during a rare chance for fans to interact. One fan asked if Eddie cares about fans who who do not agree with their idealologies. "Fuck em", Eddie barked (you know that's what he really felt), but then explained in a condesending manner that that respects everyone's opinions but he advises that they should "do some reasearch" and not go through life "with blinders on". He added, "When you take a stand you have to be very committed to ideals. I respect everyone's opinion. At least we've taken part in creating some discussion." Yeah right Eddie.

On a good note, Eddie's voice sounded as powerful as ever and Jeff, Stone, Matt & Mike all sounded great. I loved their performances of 'Betterman', 'World Wide Suicide', 'Sleight Of Hand', ' Insignificance' and 'Alive'. See, I'm not hard to please, I was happy when they played their music. And if you haven't seen them, there is truly nothing like Pearl Jam live. When Eddie sings its as if you are listening to rock royalty. And when you think about it, minus the old guys (Stones, Clapton, remaining Beatles), we don't really have much of that left.

So as for this episode of VH1 Storytellers: Pearl Jam, I like how one fan summed it up on an Internet message board:

The show was:
95% political commentary = 95% bullshit.
5% interesting stories regarding their art and their craft.