Copious Notes

Skillet frontman John Cooper during the band's pyrotechnic-heavy show at the 2010 Ichthus Festival. © Herald-Leader staff photo by Rich Copley.

Central Kentucky Christian music fans, it seems, can pretty much lock the second Saturday of March onto their calendars for Winter Jam.

Skillet will lead the Winter Jam 2012 tour into the home of the Cats on March 10 with Sanctus Real, former Newsboys frontman Peter Furler, Kari Jobe, Building 429 and Group 1 Crew. This means that all that pyro we’re used to seeing out at the Icthus Festival will now be contained inside the arena.

I have this distinct memory of the last time Skillet was on the Winter Jam tour in 2008. It was the first time I took photos at Winter Jam, and no one warned me about those flame throwers at the front of the stage, so when the first ones went off I was feeling a bit … uh … toasty.

Anyway, Skillet in the arena. Should be a good time. As always, tickets are $10 and they are only available at the door. Earlier this year, Winter Jam 2011 attracted 16,431 people to Rupp.

Cameron Crowe and Eddie Vedder at Vedder's house during the filming of 'Pearl Jam Twenty.' Photo courtesy of Vinyl Films & Tremolo Productions.

Cameron Crowe is a terrific filmmaker and a great rock ‘n’ roll journalist.

Those skills come together in Pearl Jam Twenty, a flawed but enlightening chronicle of one of the 1990s most enduring bands. The film premiered Friday night on KET as part of PBS’ Fall Arts Festival and has another showing at 8 p.m. Weds., Oct. 26, on KET2 and then a couple late-night DVR-special showings in December.

This is by no means an objective view of the band.

The film opens with Crowe moving to Seattle and befriending guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament. That put him in a position to document the very early roots of the band in another act Ament and Gossard thought would be their ticket to success: Mother Love Bone. The minute we see charismatic frontman Andrew Wood, who seems to have a bit of an alt-David Lee Roth vibe, we know his story will not end well.

Soon after his death from a heroin overdose, Ament and Gossard meet singer Eddie Vedder, and the Pearl Jam success story quickly takes off, and then bumps along for nearly a decade.

Pearl Jam Twenty is at its best taking us back to the emergence of the 1990s grunge movement led by Pearl Jam and Nirvana and giving viewers insight into some of its music and formative moments, like the night Vedder witnessed concert security personnel’s rough handling of an audience member and how it brought him out of his shell. That sets the tone for the band’s enduring rebellious posture including its opposition to Ticketmaster and shunning of the media.

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