Songoftheday 8/7/19 - Winded is the sailor drifting by the storm, wounded is the organ he left all bloodied on the shore...
from the album Vitalogy (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 2
Today's song(s) of the day come from post-grunge rock band Pearl Jam, who had made quite an imprint on American rock music with their first two albums, with "Jeremy" becoming a classic song of the genre, and with their second album Vs., which at the time at over 950,000 becoming the biggest selling initial week in their first week on the chart. One of the tracks on the set, "Daugther", got enough mainstream radio airplay to reach the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart. Even though their big "break" came from the reception of the music video for "Jeremy", the band stopped making them, and then got into a huge fight with concert titans Ticketmaster that ended up getting the government involved and eventually the loss of their drummer Dave Abbruzzese. But that would be in the summer of 1994, almost through the recording of their third effort Vitalogy, which started way back during the tour for Vs., which was already partially cancelled due to the Ticketmaster feud. (He would be replaced by Jack Irons from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.)
Vitalogy would be a dense and varied album, to the point of initially seeming disjointed in its reach of styles and performance. Also, to fit with the rebellious nature of lead singer Eddie Vedder and the band, the set was released first on vinyl for over a week before coming out on cassette and compact disc. That helped the first single released from the record, a two-song offering of the mid-tempo march of "Tremor Christ" and the even more maniacal ode to vinyl records "Spin The Black Circle". Released on CD single as well as on vinyl 45 (which fit the cover of the single), fans rushed to buy the two-fer allowing it to rush the chart to leap into the top-40 only to let it fall when the CD/cassette version of Vitalogy came out. At the time, both songs were getting airplay, mostly on rock stations, but "Tremor Christ" was winning out; Billboard listed the single on the charts with that one first in every week except its first...
"Tremor Christ" climbed to #16 on both the Mainstream and Alternative/Modern Rock radio charts in Billboard magazine, while being a minor hit in Canada at #67.
Meanwhile, "Spin The Black Circle" ended up being the song most remembered, most prominently for winning Pearl Jam their only Grammy Award for music to date (in 2015 they won for Best Recording Package for Lightning Bolt) for the Best Hard Rock Performance. The song also climbed to #11 on Billboard's Modern/Alternative Rock chart, and stopped at #16 on the Mainstream Rock list. Internationally, the single was (surprisingly) their highest-charting hit in the UK, and their sole top ten so far there at #10. It was also a top ten success in New Zealand (#2), Australia (#3), Norway (#5), Ireland (#6), and Finland (#9), and reached the top-40 in Sweden (#16), the Netherlands (#21), and Belgium (#22).
And the "Double-A-Sided" single raced into the top-20 on the American pop chart in November of 1994, only to drop out of the top-40 two weeks later and only spent a total of six weeks on the Hot 100.
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Here's the band in concert in 1994 with "Tremor Christ"...
and with "Spin The Black Circle" on tour in 1995...
And from their "Self Pollution Radio" stint that same year with "Tremor Christ"...
Fast forward to the band with "Spin" at Madison Square Garden in 2003...
and "Tremor Christ" at a rare showing in 2018...
Up tomorrow: Female rapper has something for everybody.
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