Pearl Jam Scores a Radio Hit, Against Its Wishes

Few high-profile bands have worked harder to steer clear of the conventional pop path than Pearl Jam.

Tough. Despite itself, the Seattle band has scored a novelty hit song.

KROQ-FM (106.7) did a little Pearl diving and came up with what for them is a gem--a version of “Last Kiss,” a 1964 teen tragedy ballad originally done by J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers. Pearl Jam recorded it, along with Arthur Alexander’s 1962 song “Soldier of Love,” for a vinyl single sent to the group’s fan club members late last year.

A few weeks ago the station toyed with the track on the air, got good response and then put it into regular rotation, where it instantly became the second-most-requested song on the air. And now it’s picking up play around the country, including at key outlets WBCN in Boston, the New York KROQ and WHFS in the Washington area.

“We haven’t seen passion like this for Pearl Jam in a long time,” says KROQ Music Director Lisa Worden. “We weren’t able to get that kind of response from the last album, and nothing for a while has been even close to the hits from [the band’s 1991 debut album] ‘Ten.’ ”

It doesn’t upset Worden that the song is not available anywhere but the radio--the single isn’t being sold and there’s no video. So someone wanting to hear it has to tune in.

The Pearl Jam camp has no intention of changing that, and not because they want to help KROQ out. Frankly, they’d rather the track were not being played.

“They must have joined the fan club,” Peal Jam’s manager Kelly Curtis says dryly of the station.

He adds that neither the band nor its label, Epic Records, did anything to encourage airplay. And there’s certainly no thought of capitalizing on the interest by releasing the song commercially.

“Everyone in the fan club, 48,000 people, has the single,” Curtis says. “That’s what we wanted.”

The band, though, has participated in a book about the group for the first time. “Pearl Jam: Place/Date,” the product of the full access to Eddie Vedder and his bandmates given to photographers Charles Peterson and Lance Mercer, is a visual chronicle of the group.

It’s currently available in hardback to fan club members and will be published in a trade paperback edition by Universe Publishing in May.

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LOLLA-GAGGING: The prospect of Lollapalooza ’99 still seems more a matter of “if” than “when,” with no progress apparently being made toward securing two solid acts to top the bill.

Bush and the reunited Stone Temple Pilots are in the mix at the moment. But Bush’s litigation against its label, Trauma Records, puts the band and its new album in limbo, while STP is just getting started on its next album and would prefer time for an effective launch before hitting the road. It’s currently projected for a July release, which would put it near the start of Lollapalooza, if the tour goes. And it can’t go at all without headliners.

A similar situation exists with H.O.R.D.E., which is also yet to line up a talent roster. Tour director Heidi Kelso says the show will only go on if organizers are confident the offering is strong enough to rebound from some so-so years.

H.O.R.D.E., though, would have its neo-hippie audience largely to itself this year, rather than sharing it with the Furthur Festival, which in the past three years siphoned off some Deadheads. Furthur will not be happening this summer, following Phil Lesh’s liver transplant last December. The guitarist, who joined several other ex-Grateful Dead members to headline Furthur last year as the Other Ones, actually has recovered enough to tour, but his status was still uncertain at a time when key plans would have to have been made.

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FUTURE.COM: Expect a lot of talk about the next phase of the future of music surrounding Microsoft’s MS Audio 4.0, a rival for such electronic download systems as MP3. It’s set for official introduction at Audiosee ‘99, an invitation-only event to be held April 13 at the House of Blues on the eve of the big Interworld convention in L.A.

The first versions will then be released, just as the tide in the music business is turning toward full embrace of downloaded music, despite huge concerns about the ease of unauthorized copying and redistribution of music files.

Talk around the new Microsoft product suggests that it deals with some of the security issues, and it’s reportedly twice as fast as MP3, which takes about 10 minutes to download a four-minute song through a 56K modem. And record executives, some of whom have been given previews by a Microsoft representative, know that when Bill Gates’ empire does something, it tends to get the public’s attention.

“We need to get on this train before it leaves the station,” says one executive of Internet music downloading, viewing the entry of Microsoft into the arena as a big push toward public demand.

But there remains a general note of caution. Many are wary of climbing aboard with a system that’s not yet proven, for a market that’s not yet established.

“This might raise the benchmark,” says another executive, who fears a rush into the market before the process is really ready for full public consumption. “And I’m anxious to move forward. We can deliver a better experience [than people are getting online now]. . . . But we want to do the right thing from a consumer angle.”