Vedder Tuesday ⅩⅢ
I’d like to pretend that the first installment of Vedder Tuesday into … Advent? Are we in Advent? Pre-Christmas anyway … was chosen for the Christmas reference. But no, I just love these lyrics to an insane degree. While it sometimes drives me absolutely batty that he does not use the subjunctive (“I wish I were…” is the same number of syllables, Ed), I hope you will enjoy these.
Wishlist
I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off
I wish I was a sacrifice but somehow still lived on
I wish I was a sentimental ornament you hung on the Christmas tree
I wish I was the star that went on top
I wish I was the evidence, I wish I was the grounds
For fifty million hands upraised and opened toward the skyI wish I was a sailor with someone who waited for me
I wish I was as fortunate, as fortunate as me
I wish I was a messenger and all the news was good
I wish I was the full moon shining off a Camaro’s hoodI wish I was an alien at home behind the sun
I wish I was the souvenir you kept your house key on
I wish I was the pedal brake that you depended on
I wish I was the verb ‘to trust’ and never let you downI wish I was a radio song, the one that you turned up
I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish
Oh, wishes never stop
(Thirteen is the first number for which there is no single-character Unicode encoding. So, for the first time, the ⅩⅢ comprises two characters. Just thought you’d want to know that.)
Subscribe by email
December 2nd, 2009 at 11h32
Personally, I prefer Skee-Lo’s wish list. As Pearl Jam songs go, this isn’t one of the ones that ever particularly spoke to me. To each their own, I guess.
December 2nd, 2009 at 11h39
ever particularly spoke to me
Well — I’m not entirely sure that they “speak to me”, either, insofar as they would be what I would wish for. But hearing a list of what another human being most desires takes us a lot closer to understanding him. Maybe if I taught junior high English I would assign the students to set their own lyrics to this (this is a very good argument against my teaching junior high English, probably.)
My favorite line, taking it as a list of Ed’s wishes:
He is a messenger — and all the news is profoundly not good. Heartbreaking.
December 2nd, 2009 at 11h44
I prefer Skee-Lo’s wish list
Oh, meant to comment on that, too:
1) But … but … you are tall!
2) That jam has what has always struck me as the weirdest shout-out in light rap: Buffalo Springfield. Huh.
December 2nd, 2009 at 12h20
But … but … you are tall!
Yeah, and I’ve also got a girl who looks good, and I call her. Still, Skee-Lo wishes he was “like six foot nine”, and I’m only 6’6″. You can always wish for more.
That jam has what has always struck me as the weirdest shout-out in light rap: Buffalo Springfield.
Dude, Jay Z lifted Hard Knock Life from Annie. Annie! Buffalo Springfield can’t top that.
But hearing a list of what another human being most desires takes us a lot closer to understanding him.
See, to me this particular song always came across as a little too “let’s get high and have a jam session and make up the lyrics as we go along” for my tastes. It doesn’t tell me anything about Vedder, except that he knows that “good” rhymes with “hood”. It is, to me (and I’m certainly not saying that this is a universal thing), probably one of the least personal and revelatory songs in the main Pearl Jam body of work. Obviously, reactions vary.
December 2nd, 2009 at 12h31
In the 2003 tour he added a wonderful bit to the end:
That, of course, is my opinion. Except I’m right.
December 2nd, 2009 at 12h33
Dude, Jay Z lifted Hard Knock Life from Annie. Annie!
Yeah — but he’s fuckin’ Jay-Z. He gets a free pass on weird references. Not to mention that I don’t really class him as “light rap”.
December 2nd, 2009 at 20h25
The “why can’t I touch it?” tag is from The Buzzcocks’ song called, uh, “Why Can’t I Touch It?” When they opened for PJ on the 2003, Eddie came out to join them in this song. Which song then got way, way, way better.
December 2nd, 2009 at 20h28
Like for instance this one. Fuck.
Any chance of making the OpenID box unchecked as a default? I always forget to uncheck it and then have to retype comments. Argh.
Just did it TWICE because in the meantime I mistyped the CAPTCHA code, so when I came back it had RECHECKED the OpenID box. It’s killing me, man.
December 2nd, 2009 at 21h15
The “why can’t I touch it?” tag is from The Buzzcocks’ song called, uh, “Why Can’t I Touch It?”
Ah. Thank you, scholar!
Any chance of making the OpenID box unchecked as a default?
Yeah, probably, if it’s just done with HTML. But the plugin is OSS-OTS, it’s not mine. I’ll hack their code.
It’s killing me, man.
Even if I fix this — and it’s nontrivial — others won’t: CTRL-A, CTRL-C, then “Submit” is good Internet practice everywhere.
December 2nd, 2009 at 21h20
Wow, did that
<abbr>tag just royally fuck over WordPress. So OSS and OTS now have<span>tooltips — to save you the hover, though, they are “Open Source Software” and “Off-The-Shelf’.Not up to fixing WP tonight. So, no nifty dashed underlines.
December 4th, 2009 at 16h04
The lyrics are nice but don’t do much for me (surprisingly, the song does remind me of Christmas). Mike’s guitar solo, on the other hand, makes me swoon every fucking time I listen to the song…