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By Chris Moore:
You know what I wish? I wish that I would wake up tomorrow and there would no longer be anyone on the entire planet who smoked cigarettes. Never mind the health risk — which, by the way, there are few ingestible products that come with a “may cause cancer” label. The concept of breathing tar into your lungs aside, let’s consider the ramifications to non-smokers on the road. For instance, I sat in a McDonald’s drive-through tonight for ten minutes and was delighted by not only the automobile emissions but two smokers puffing away. The breeze was such that my car was filled with noxious fumes.
In a sense, this was great, because the fish filet and large fries actually seemed healthy by comparison! 🙂
Seriously, though, what really gets me is the disposal of the butts. It’s happened so many times recently that I’ll be driving down the road and someone in the car ahead of me will flick a lit cigarette out of their window. I don’t know if it’s due to me being older, a generally law-abiding dork, a teacher of transcendental texts like Emerson’s “Nature,” or a combination of the three, but this is enough to drive me crazy recently. To paraphrase our friend Matt Griffiths from the WCJM morning show, it’s just enough to tweak my hypothalamus and send me into an uncontrollable rage!
I suppose I simply can’t imagine driving in my car, holding a lit piece of paper in my hand, and saying to myself, “I’m done with this. Why not chuck it out the window?” Since when did that become the acceptable form of cigarette disposal?! Think twice ye smokers, lest you piss off the drivers behind you (such as myself tonight when a highly tossed butt bounced off my car, lit ashes flying everywhere)…
For those of you wondering what this has to do with my post tonight, prepare to be dazzled. Well, maybe not dazzled…
Just as I have ranted about something that has bothered me and later wondered if it was too negative, so did Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam decide that he should try writing something positive. Out of a lengthier “stream-of-consciousness exercise,” we have the “better wishes” presented in this little gem of a song. It was an instant favorite of mine upon first listening to Pearl Jam’s 1998 album Yield. As with Binaural, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this album, as it sold less and seemed generally regarded as at least somewhat inferior to previous releases such as Ten and Vitalogy. But I love this album, and I love this song. For once, the song I love most is actually in my vocal range!
Okay, so that’s not entirely true. My first pick for a song to learn and play would have been “Do The Evolution.” For any of you familiar with that song, you should be sitting at your computer laughing at simply the notion of my attempting to sing a song like that! I understand my own limitations! 🙂 That being said, you should take the time to search on YouTube for “Pearl Jam Evolution” and watch the official music video; it’s simply amazing — a very cool use of animation to visualize the lyrics to a song.
Along with my acoustic cover song music video tonight, I also send a shout out to my girlfriend Nicole who is a big fan of this song. (I hope you like it!) As she is currently in possession of my CD copy of the album and my iPod is tied up with my Bob Dylan playlist (518 out of 622 tracks!), I had to rely on my iPhone to listen to “Wishlist” tonight as I wrote out the lyrics and chords. What a Mac nerd I am… but I love it. Speaking of Macs, if I don’t end up writing a full review of U2’s No Line on the Horizon, please allow me to go on record saying that “Unknown Caller” has to be the worst track on the album for a number of reasons. It’s only redeeming quality is that Bono makes lyrical references (“force quit and move to trash”) that bely his computer loyalties…
Although I have so much more I could say — about Pearl Jam’s re-release of Ten tomorrow, this song, other music, the fact that my dad and I just bought tickets to see Bruce Hornsby at the MGM Grand on Friday(!), life in general — I think this is enough for one night! As a final note, please allow me to point out that this is officially the tenth post in the Pearl Jam category here at the Laptop Sessions, rounding us off to an even ten just in time for the re-release of Ten for tomorrow’s New Music Tuesday, March 24th, 2009!
For all you new music fans, don’t forget to stop by the blog tomorrow night for an all-new high-quality Jim Fusco Tuesday. I have it on good authority that he’ll be taking it to a WHOLE… NOTHA…. LEH-VAL….
See you next session!
I swear I’m not being critical just for the sake of it here, but this choice of song really shows how opposite our musical tastes are right now. I’ve realized truly that things won’t be the same again. Honestly, for many reasons, I would expect better from you.
Don’t get me wrong- I do enjoy a good Pearl Jam song. Matt and Jeff’s picks on past radio shows have all been entertaining.
But listening to you play this song last night, I honestly thought it was a cheesy old Woody Guthrie song.
An “I Wish” song? Honestly? A man who’s always been about the lyrics? How cliché can you get?
While you were playing it (it was a good performance on your end) I was shocked to hear how “forced” the song sounded. Mainly, there’s an F chord in there that doesn’t sit right and the tune just sounds so forced through the whole thing.
I should know- my first thought was that it sounded like a forced-written song if mine in, It Makes Life Interesting. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that you liked this one, too.
But really- the post irked me, too. Complaining about people smoking? You don’t like when people complain about you! You always ask people to just let you be. And a dedication? I’ve seen that from you once or twice before and I knew what it meant then- for your sake, I hope it doesn’t mean the same thing now.