Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament was recently interviewed on Apple Music’s ALT CNTRL. Below is our transcription where Ament reveals rock’s saviors, and why the genre is not dead.
“I think the actual music is in a better place than its ever been. There’s so much fantastic music. It’s different than it was a couple years ago. It’s not like you’re going to the record store and talking to the record guy, but it’s going online, it’s talking to your friends. A year ago, I saw this band Idles, and that just sent me on this incredible journey into Murder Capital and Fontaines D.C. and Shame and all those bands.
I feel like that happens every three or four years for me where there’s a subculture happening somewhere that just gets you really excited about music again, and it honestly, it feels as exciting as when I first heard The Ramones or when I first heard Black Flag and Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat and all that East Coast hardcore, and even what was going on here in Seattle in the late ’80s, I mean, there’s incredible art being made all over the place. One of the great things about technology is you can usually find it really fast. You don’t have to order it.
Preoccupations, that’s another band that… They’re kind of one of the first ones where there was kind of this goth post-punk, super heavy. It’s like when people say, ‘Rock is dead.’ I’m like, ‘Man, go check this… because this is rock. This is as good rock music as has been on the planet in the last 20 years.’ There’s young people learning how to play their instruments in a different way than we learned how to play our instruments, and there’s a lot of pissed off people, and there’s a lot of anxious people, and that’s just all a perfect brew for great music and great art.
I mean the new Idles song, Grounds, it’s the best song of the last three years or however long. It’s just like I couldn’t take it off repeat.”
