PEARLS OF WISDOM: No, guitarist Stone Gossard...

PEARLS OF WISDOM: No, guitarist Stone Gossard isn’t leaving Pearl Jam. But he is recording with another band. The group is Shame, which Gossard was in before Pearl Jam formed in 1990. An album is due in early April, but there are no tour plans.

Meanwhile, Pearl Jam has a bizarre Christmas present for its fan club members--a vinyl 45 single, featuring a grisly cover showing a dead deer laying on a highway and a title reading “Who Killed Rudolph?” But there’s no song about the reindeer on the release. One side is the old Dead Boys song “Sonic Reducer” (a regular in Pearl Jam’s “Lollapalooza ‘92” sets) and the other is a rambling hodgepodge appropriately called “Ramblings.” Theoretically, this is available only through fan club channels, but these things have a way of showing up in record stores some times. With that in mind, the group put a warning on the cover: “Demonstration, don’t pay money.”