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October 1992

                    With a year of constant touring at an end, Stone Gossard still wanted to play. So, Gossard started attending rehearsals of Bliss, a band which included old friends Shawn Smith (ex-Luv Co), and former Malfunkshun drummer Regan Hagar. Out of these jams would grow 'Brad'.

                    [Following the collapse of Malfunkshun, Hagar had spent a year trying to put together a funk band, Molasses, with fellow musician John Smith. It took 12 months of auditions before he found people he wanted to work with. Unfortunately, he says, "They, weren't the same ones John had chosen". The two chose to go their separate ways, at which point Smith recorded a demo using the Molasses name. When it didn't pan out, he returned the band name to Hagar].

                    "We just hung out - casually, socially, then I went back to L.A. to resume my teaching job and I got a call two weeks later from Stone.I said, 'Stone, you haven't heard me play.' And he said, 'Aw, don't worry about it", Jeremy Toback.

                    So in October Toback caught a flight back to Seattle. Once there, he met Gossard, singer Shawn Smith and drummer Regan Hagar, the group, under the name Shame, booked into the Avast studio. They spent the next 17 days writing and recording an album.

                    "During the recording I kind of asked Stone, 'So, you paid for me to come up here, having never heard me?' And he said, 'Yeah, intuition is a good thing'. There was no guarantee that anything was going to happen, and the only way somethng would happen is if everyone could just get along and play music together, if someone had been sitting there kissing Stone's butt, or just being in awe of him, it wouldn't have worked out. I guess I came off as being really low-key because my aspirations aren't rock. I wasn't like, 'Pearl Jam! Can I meet Eddie Vedder?!'", Jeremy Toback.

                    "Prior to 1992, I was a solo artist and it wasn't going so well. I felt I needed to be in a band to learn what it was like. In December 1991, I started Satchel with Regan Hagar. I spent 5 months playing shows, but things weren't going so well. The opportunity to record a record with Steve Fisk came up and I chose to do it. Thus, Pigeonhed was created. That record took the summer to make. Then in October we made the Brad record. This brought some life back into Satchel, and in 1993 I made the first Satchel album. So, that's how it happened. There was no plan or problems with commitment. The opportunities arose in 1992 and I took them", Shawn Smith.

                    "This is not a solo project. It was made with some friends of mine by piecing together jams. You shouldn't limit yourself in life in any way - how many records you're 'supposed' to put out in a year, for instance. My theory is, you can make a record in two weeks, not do much to promote it, and chances are it's still going to do all right, that would be the greatest, if everybody started doing these projects, hanging out, working together, learning. It was like, 'Let's book some time, go in every day for two weeks, and see what happens, we had only five days of rehearsal before, and only one song written before those five days", Stone Gossard.

                    "It turned out pretty cool, very diverse. We screwed around with drum loops and lots of keyboards. The group compositions are jams we arranged as we went along", Stone Gossard.

                    The product of the mini-jam was "Shame," an album that Pearl Jam's label, Epic, agreed to release it, and in early March 1993, mailed out a handful of promotional cassettes. They completed their album  with the help of producer Brendan O'Brien. (Originally the band planned to call itself Shame, but a guy named Brad already owned the rights to the name. A financial settlement was proposed, but as soon as the original Shame discovered just who constituted their rivals, they started adding zeros. So, as a "tribute," the foursome called itself Brad). According to Stone, the album was not named after the guy who held the original Shame copyright (whose name is Brad). "Brad is a slice of Americana, really. It's sort of an American name. It's just... Brad", said Stone. Brad's first album "Shame" was recorded in only 17 days (Oct. 4 - 21, 1992). Almost the entire album was written while recording. They had barely ever practiced and walked in the studio with only one written song... then left with eleven. They began thinking they were just recording a demo, but then ended up making an entire album. The version of "Buttercup" on the album is their first take of the track. Shame was released when Loosegroove records was part of Sony. 

                    While Stone used his vacation to work on a side project with ex-Malfunkshun member Regan Hagar, Mike and Eddie decided to accept one of many of the countless invitations that were pouring in, traveling to New York to perform a version of 'Masters of War' at a Bob Dylan tribute concert at Madison Square Garden on October 16th. Eddie joke to reporters that he and Mike were only there because they'd "volunteered as roadies". A newsday reporter recounting the event the following day would opine that pearl jam was "as important to music today as Dylan was back in the sixties". The rehearsals took place at the Kaufman Astoria studios in Queens, where Pearl Jam a few months before played the MTV Unplugged. [Insiders insist that Mike McCready is a near-anonymous guest on Lazy Susan's Twang album, on one track, "Bored" (Silver Eye LS-001); he allegedly appears in the credits as "Mike the drunk guy"]. Jeff took off for Montana, and Dave was looking for a permanent residence in the Seattle area.

                    "I'm really excited just to practice again, to go back down to our practice place and go across the street and have a cup or coffee and go down to eat at Cyclops and just hang and be a band again and be buddies again. I know there's going to be a lot of material. We're probably going to spend three months or so rehearsing; that's a long time. Stone, in particular, has a lot of songs. He's pretty much been writing all year. The rest of us have a handful of ideas and songs. Once we actually get in a situation where we're playing together again, it's going to kind of explode", Jeff Ament.