Pearl Jam Reveal Bootleg Plan, Hook Up with Verizon

Pearl Jam have rolled out their plan to distribute their live concert bootlegs from their U.S. tour, kicking off tonight in West Palm Beach, Florida. As in years past, Pearl Jam will sell MP3 and FLACs of the complete concert two weeks after the show on their website. This time around, though, the band will also allow fans to purchase physical CDs of the concerts which will ship within three weeks of the show date. And "by request from fans who are increasingly accessing their music via their mobile phones," Pearl Jam will also select three highlights from each concerts and make them available through Verizon's VCast system. One of the three songs from each concert will be a free download, with fans given the option to purchase the remaining tracks. The songs can then be used as ringtones, ringback songs or just for listening purposes.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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