No. 945 – Spin the Black Circle

Performer: Pearl Jam

Songwriters: Dave Abbuzzese, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Eddie Vedder

Original Release: Vitalogy

Year: 1994

Definitive Version: Any live version will suffice.

The first time I heard this song was when I saw Pearl Jam in Louisville in March 1994. That probably was true of just about everyone else there, too, because it was a brand-new song. It was the first song of the first encore, and it was one of several songs that night that would later appear on Vitalogy.

Pearl Jam in 1994 was the best concert I ever saw. I’m in the 90s in terms of shows seen, not counting cover bands, and I can’t imagine that that sentiment will ever change. It was a confluence of hard-to-repeat conditions. Pearl Jam at that point had yet to put out even a bad song in my humble opinion, let alone a mediocre album. They were already a not-to-be-missed live act. They were big enough that it was hard to get tickets, but they still were playing small venues. Finally, they still were young and new enough that they were in prove-it mode on stage each night. To me, seeing Pearl Jam in 1994 would have been like seeing The Who in 1967 or even the early stages of 1969: They were right on the cusp of a supernova.

And then there was the crowd. It was the most insane energy I’ve ever felt at a concert. It was as if the fans were playing for keeps as much as the band. The Louisville show used festival seating, and Scott, Shani and I picked a vantage point that gave us a great view of the mosh pit that more or less embroiled the whole floor. There was just as much to see watching the crowd as there was the band.

I was fascinated that I didn’t see a single fight the whole night, unlike several other concerts I had been to recently. (Who the freak gets into a fistfight at a Peter Gabriel show?) It was like everyone was getting it out in the pit, and once the show was over, there was no bad energy left. Heck, there was no energy left, period. The applause at the end of the show—the last song of the night was Indifference—was tepid at best. It was like we all agreed: “No mas. We’ve had enough.”

When I hear this song, I think of Eddie’s introduction that night in Louisville. He brought out this big appliance and says “this is a record player …” and after demonstrating how it worked for those who had forgotten, Pearl Jam lit up this song like a bonfire, and Eddie made as if he were singing to the record player. OK, I get it: I’ve spun many black circles in my day, too.

Vitalogy came out seven months later, and by then the mainstream press was in full grunge backlash mode. Everything was analyzed through the prism of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and when reviewing Vitalogy, the Time reviewer called particular attention to this song and its “gloomy message of heroin abuse.” (She noted soberly the song’s first lines: “See this needle, see my hand, drop, drop, droppin’ it down, oh, so gently.”)

No, that’s not what it’s about, and I know it’s not, because the guy who wrote the damn thing and played it two whole weeks before Kurt killed himself told me it wasn’t.

Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, and a song about playing records is just a song about playing records. Spin the Black Circle couldn’t be more exuberant, and the reviewer couldn’t have been more wrong.

Now Immortality, on the other hand …