TOP FIVE MOST UNINTELLIGIBLE ROCK SONGS AND MY INTERPRETATION OF THEM

5. Pearl Jam, “Worldwide Suicide”

Featuring some of Eddie Vedder’s more articulate moments, this track cleanly comes in at number five for intelligibility. There’s an earthquake, and it makes Eddie want to kill himself, because apparently there are earthquakes everyday where he lives. Sucks to be him. So much so that he wants everyone else to die with him. Yeah, right Vedder. No one wants to join your cult of nasty facial hair and scraggly manes. Get some Nikes and sweet jumpsuits for us and maybe we’ll talk.

4. Pearl Jam, “Even Flow”

Of Eddie’s oeuvre, “Even Flow” is one of the most visionary and artistic. It opens with a radish head on a concrete pillow. That’s fucking poetry man. Then there’s something about chasing butterflies and a cavalcade of something or other that ultimately leads to rebirth. Can you feel it man? The beauty, the glow, the fucking badassery. Alright, in truth, the chorus is the only part I can even understand a little bit.

3. Pearl Jam, “Yellow Ledbetter”

Okay, here’s what I’m thinking: a big old beached whale wants to leave the beach again. A wizard comes to help. A coal miner empathizes. A local marine biologist, perhaps George Costanza, wants to take the whale home, but doesn’t know how to do it, as he isn’t interested in taking it in a box or a bag. Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. Check the YouTube “misheard” lyrics for a pretty astute play by play.

2. Pearl Jam, “Lukin”

WTF?????? I’m really winging this one, but Eddie Vedder holds up local farmer’s market “Lukin’s” while wearing a yarmulke in hopes of disguising himself. He suceeds?

1. Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Down on the Corner”

This song is certainly more intelligible than one or two of its forerunners, but I find it unconscionable to ever put Pearl Jam in the number one slot of a superlative list, unless it’s a list about bands have sucked the hardest for the longest. That said, I think CCR are talking about tricking or something. The title of the song is the tip off. They also talk about laying your money down on the corner, and how people come from all around to watch the magic whore. At least I think that’s what they say. All I can say for sure is that there is a dude named Happy Feet down there, and if that’s not a pimp’s name, I don’t know what is.

—Joshua J. Kearney is the outgoing Arts Chair. The first time he listened to Pearl Jam was after he read about them in Dennis Rodman’s “Bad As I Wanna Be,” so you can imagine how fraught his relationship with the band has been.

TOP FIVE SMASHING PUMPKINS MOMENTS OF 2009

It’s been almost a decade since the first Pumpkins break-up, and even longer since most fans gave up on them, yet somehow the original Pumpkins keep showing up in the news. Here are Corgan and Co.’s five shining moments of 2009.

5. James Iha joins supergroup Tinted Windows.