Some Pearl Jam fans will have trouble with this Eddie Vedder solo gig. They shouldn’t.
For the first decade of Pearl Jam’s life, the group was powered by idealism. Fight Ticketmaster! We won’t do music videos! Save the oceans! We’re pro-choice!
The group is still all those things, but age, pragmatism, and certain fiscal realities have crept in. The Ticketmaster fight was a good one but ultimately unwinnable. The band came back to music videos for a while, but they’re not the big-budget MTV-is-God productions. Standing up for women’s rights and environmental causes will forever be part of Pearl Jam’s DNA.
While we haven’t seen the group license any song for a TV commercial (at least I haven’t heard of one), Eddie Vedder is willing to take the odd corporate gig.
These are private shows where an entertainer is hired for a company event, or in some cases, a wedding or bar/bat mitzvah. The money is usually, really, really good, filling a gap created by cratering record sales. No wonder everyone from Bob Dylan to the Rolling Stones to the Foo Fighters to Metallica has accepted the odd corporate booking.
Usually, it’s just another concert in the working life of a music. There may be conditions set down and the artist often vets the company to make sure they share certain values, but a payday is a payday.
Eddie recently performed from the employees of NetJets, a company that makes private jet travel available. Chances are none of us will ever be Netjet customers, but that’s beside the point. Eddie obviously has no trouble with the way NetJets does business. Why not take the gig?
Tell me that if your company booked Eddie for your next Christmas party that you wouldn’t lose your mind.
I was there. It was incredible. Intimate, killer set list.
Yeah, umm…no. All kinds of Eddie hypocrisy here. I don’t think private jets are very eco-enviro-friendly, and while playing charity gigs for cleaner oceans, acknowledging climate change, and helping the homeless in corporate homeless capital Seattle… I don’t think jets or over indulgent, wasteful, big $$, anything is very PJ—PC. At least, none of it used to be.