Hi Brad and Brad, Happy New Year to you both and I hope for a great 2019 for you guys!  In my last email I wrote about the song "Hard to Imagine" and discussed how I have been trying to find my own meaning for the song.  The chorus of the song constantly plays in the back of my mind.  I realize most of the lyrics to this song don't really apply to my life experiences, however the generality of the following words sum up what has happened within the last 12 months for me.  I apologize in advance, but I'll probably get pretty heavy in this message. Things were different then. All is different now. I tried to explain. Somehow. My life and everything around me was very different this time last year.  Morgan and I discussed it a little bit over brunch today.  Both of our lives have been turned upside down by what happened to her.  Now I see the same thing happening for my parents.  Both my dad and I are hoping our wives can pick up where they

Hi Brad and Brad, I can't thank you guys enough for putting me in touch with Bill Castrovince.  Bill and I got to talk on the phone a couple of times and it was really uplifting to hear his story in more detail.  Knowing there is hope that someone can persevere through something as scary as brain cancer, gives me optimism in a time where I've been searching for it.   I've come to realize through listening to your podcast and interacting with Bill, that there is so much about the band that I didn't know.  At some time in the future, I'll share a list of what I've come to appreciate and learn after finding you guys, but it's so exciting to know there's so much to learn about Pearl Jam.  I asked Bill about his motivation for requesting "Hard to Imagine" prior to the 2016 Tampa show.  He then enlightened me to the history of the song.  I can't remember if you guys ever discussed this on the podcast, but it originated

Hi Brad and Brad, I love this week's topic and look forward to the next installment of "The Riff Zone." It is difficult to hum the "riff" to the beginning of "You Are," but BradB attempting to sound out the beginning of the song will be burned into my memory.  I have to award an "A" for effort on that one. I made out an exhaustive list of riffs that I've always enjoyed, mainly off of the top of my head and then started going back and listening to the beginning of several songs.  Rather than throw out a few random favorites, I decided to focus in on my favorite Jeff riffs.  It's definitely something much more rare to notice and even define as a riff.       I did have fun in listening more attentively to the bass lines deciding on whether or not you would call something a riff.  I think the most obvious and recently discussed a couple of weeks ago is his riff on "Jeremy." That is a staple of the

Hi Brad and Brad and Kate! Great job by Kate Cotton subbing in for Lyons again!  She took on the task of trying to keep Blazek from drifting off-topic for most of the show (e.g. It's A Wonderful Life).  For that you should consider upping her salary! I'm pretty stoked you guys went over Live At The Garden.  I received this DVD as a Christmas gift from my wife 11 years ago and wore it out after receiving it.  Just like Kate, we don't own any blue-rays, however we ironically own a blue-ray player which we only play our DVD collection in.  However, since I'm too lazy to muster up the energy to find the DVD I want to watch, take it out of its case and place it into our blue-ray player I usually just end up watching things via the "streamings."  Before I forget, Kate mentioned the YouTube video she watched didn't have a great picture.  I did find this link if she's interested.  It actually comes in just about as clear as the DVD ( htt

Hi Brad and Brad, and Kate! I am stoked that we'll get to experience two straight weeks of Kate Cotton!  The second week at the expense of Lyons, but if that's what it takes to get an extra week of "Single Kate Theory" then it's a sacrifice worth making.  After listening to Episode 69, I watched the music video for Jeremy for the first time in a while.  It is frustrating to think something like this is still very much a threat in today's society, whether it's self inflicted, acted upon others or both.  I can only hope someday we'll live in a society where we won't have to live in fear of this. One thing that was brought up during Episode 69 (I am trying to get in the number 69 as many times, to make Blazek laugh on the inside), was that Lyons had made playlists specific to lyrics or music wrote by each of the band members.    This prompted me to do the same, because I hadn't really broken down contributions by each o