Featured Essay: Everything in its Right Place

by Greg Gaines

I was thirteen when I watched Neil Young and Pearl Jam perform ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards. I didn’t know it at the time, but the collaboration would eventually inform how I organized my record collection and how I thought about my favorite artists.

It was a big night. It may be shameful to admit now, but in 1993 the VMAs were the center of my calendar year. The annual awards show marked the end of summer, the start of the school year, and brought with it the promise of unpredictability and spectacle. 

Pearl Jam was “the” band for me at the time. Their debut record had ignited my love of music a few years prior, and I was excited to watch them perform a new song from their forthcoming second record. When the band finally took the stage, they ripped through ‘Animal’ in what felt like seconds. It was angrier than the anthemic sing-alongs I’d fallen in love with. Eddie Vedder sang through his teeth and spit, his arms crossed defiantly over a shaggy army surplus jacket. It was a stark contrast to the images in the ‘Jeremy’ music video, for which they would win a handful of awards throughout the evening. In that video, Vedder sat on a stool and mugged charismatically, thoughtfully pushing his long curly locks back from the 90’s most iconic cheekbones. Now, his hair was chopped and frayed. He seemed like he wanted to hide on the world’s biggest stage. When the song ended, the band stayed in place. An older guy walked out stage left and strapped on a black Les Paul. Vedder mumbled to the crowd “You know who this is”. But I didn’t.

Neil Young was 48 years old at the time, but he might as well have been 98 to the predominantly teen-and-preteen television audience. He stood in stark contrast to the twenty-something rockstars with whom he shared the stage. I was instantly transfixed. He exuded a kind of effortless, unbothered coolness with his grey-speckled mutton chops and wispy hair. He seemed to wince with the delivery of every lyric, like the act of singing hurt him a bit, as I felt it should. The audience bounced and hopped and the members of Pearl Jam seemed in awe, gazing lovingly at Neil and taking turns huddling with him mid-stage during the instrumental breaks.

I’d recorded the performance on my parent’s silver top-loading VCR and subsequently wore the tape out. It felt exciting discovering a “new” artist. One that my seventh grade classmates didn’t think was cool, that wasn’t in heavy rotation on MTV or modern rock radio, that was my parents’ age but kinda rocked actually. I’d assumed, as young people do, that music began when I became interested in it (1992) and this was the first evidence to the contrary. I’d eventually grow to adore Neil Young and his massive discography, but he would always be inextricably linked to Pearl Jam in my heart because of that performance.

*****

When I bought my first Neil Young record, a heavily-used but playable copy of After the Goldrush plucked from a thrift shop bin, I slid it into my milk crate full of records right in front of Pearl Jam’s Vs. It just made sense to me, I didn’t even give it a thought. It seemed the reverent  and respectful thing to do. Neil and Pearl Jam were linked, as far as I was concerned, and Neil came first. 

As time went on I continued filing my new records in spots where they seemed to belong. At first it was easy and obvious. Of course you’re going to keep your 90’s Seattle acts together. Of course Temple of the Dog will go between Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. The Pixies go before Nirvana because, while they’re not from Seattle, they were a primary influence. Rubber Soul inspired Brian Wilson so it sits immediately before Pet Sounds. Minor Threat before Fugazi, next to Black Flag and Rollins Band (the D.C. Häagen-Dazs contingent).

Eventually things got complicated. As my collection grew I ditched the milk crates and graduated to the iconic IKEA ‘EXPEDIT’ cube storage unit, and maintaining order became a challenge. The gray areas widened. What had started as a sort of family-tree blueprint of my personal relationship with music sprouted into a twisted thicket.

Here Come the Warm Jets bridges the gap between Bowie and Talking Heads, with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and David Byrne’s The Catherine Wheel slotted between. But then Iggy Pop’s The Idiot and Lou Reed’s Transformer really need to be Bowie-adjacent as well. But Iggy obviously needs to be with The Stooges debut, and that record is the start of your “punk” section. But technically he’s credited as “Iggy Stooge” on the sleeve so maybe it’s OK to separate them?

T.Rex should be together with Lou Reed for the vibes; but Lou Reed makes you think of New York so he should be over there ahead of The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol. But then you find that first-US-pressing of Unknown Pleasures and you kind of have to slide that in front of Turn on the Bright Lights. But now your New York section is broken up and did LCD Soundsystem really belong in there? And anyway it wasn’t much of a ‘New York’ section because the New York Dolls weren’t there because they belong in front of The Smiths, and the Ramones are with the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks so maybe it’s time to switch to a straight “Genre” sorting method? But isn’t that boring?

After collecting records for thirty years, I’ve settled into a sort of uneasy hybrid model. I still retain some of what I consider the most natural artist pairings; but I’ve mostly moved on to a sort of loose genre/vibe system. It took some time and some hand-wringing; but I eventually had to acknowledge the reality that all of these disparate artists are weaved together in some loose way in my mind. It’s impossible to neatly organize a strict phylogeny of bands on an IKEA bookshelf when music plays such a significant role in your life.

Eventually I did separate my Neil Young and Pearl Jam records. Neil is among his peers (insomuch as he has any) in “70’s rock”, the section my eyes dart to when the windows are open for the first time in Spring. Pearl Jam is in “90’s rock”, my largest block of records, where I go when I feel the years are passing too fast. I understand now that it’s OK for artists that are bound together in your heart to live a few feet away from one another on the shelf. But I still have fond memories of that little crate of vinyl, where everything made sense.

Greg Gaines writes ticket-stub-inspired memoir at  Stub Love and can be found posting about music and misery (Philly sports) on Bluesky @bolognasalad.bsky.social. Greg lives in New Jersey with his wife, son, little dog Leo, and his records.