hmm. after a few hours of sleep, alternating left side, right side and on my back, i was awake at 3.30am, sitting up in bed with a tub of vanilla yoghurt, the “new yorker” summer fiction issue, and “rage” on in the background playing old silverchair videos, from back when they were a lowercase band.

i wasn’t lucky enough to have the first “tomorrow” video included in the programming, where the band were little puppy boys loping across the screen (or even the second “tomorrow” video where mark pellington did a convincing job imitating his own “jeremy” video), but it sure was educational to see the progression over the years… as daniel grew his cheekbones and chris grew his neck and ben — well, i guess ben just cut his hair — and more significantly, how the music evolved, because i stopped really listening to the band after the second album.

a random line over at gempires: “grunge on the jukebox. we reminisce about pearl jam.” made me think about how maybe i don’t even have to reminisce about pearl jam because i frequently have them on the CD player, even the newer albums, especially at deadline time. i’ve seen both bands a bunch of times, the most memorable of which were: silverchair at their first big day out, where they played a little stage and the crowd to see them was so inversely big that you didn’t have to stand up, you were just held up by everyone else; and being in the moshpit (twice!) at pearl jam, propped up against the security bar and looking up at eddie and feeling the voice just vibrate through me. how is it that i outgrew silverchair and not pearl jam?

watching the silverchair videos in the wee hours, it struck me that silverchair evolved in a way that pearl jam didn’t: good old dependable three-guitar + bass + drum sound (and dammit, pearl jam even did the rock cliche of revolving door drummers) versus fancy orchestration and operatic tendencies. and thus, really, it was silverchair that had outgrown me.

this drivel was brought to you by the 3.30am waking hour, the tub of vanilla yoghurt and, oh bloody hell, ok, half a bag of sweet chili pretzels.