Ten Gets 20

Four Ten packages, set to drop in stores March 24, will kick off Pearl Jam’s two-year catalog re-release campaign. A super deluxe edition with enough extras to leave die-hard fans foaming at the mouths is currently available for pre-order through the band’s Web site.

All offerings build upon the legacy edition that features a remastered version of Ten with redesigned packaging, plus a remix by Pearl Jam producer Brendan O’Brien with six bonus tracks – “Brother,” “Just a Girl,” “State of Love and Trust,” “Breath and a Scream,” “2,000 Mile Blues” and “Evil Little Goat.”

O’Brien said he had some reservations.

“The band loved the original mix of Ten, but were also interested in what it would sound like if I were to deconstruct and remix it,” O’Brien said. “The original Ten sound is what millions of people bought, dug and loved, so I was initially hesitant to mess around with that. After years of persistent nudging from the band, I was able to wrap my head around the idea of offering it as a companion piece to the original – giving a fresh take on it, a more direct sound.”

The deluxe edition includes the contents of the legacy package plus a DVD of the band’s previously unreleased 1992 “MTV Unplugged” performance.

Another edition offers the legacy package in, you guessed it, vinyl LP form.

And then there’s the super deluxe edition. Besides the two CDs, DVD, LP versions and two more LPs of the band’s 1992 performance at Drop in the Park, the package offers up recreations of some memorabilia that, until this point, has only existed in stories.

Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament recently came upon a cassette marked “Momma-Son,” the fabled original Pearl Jam demo featuring instrumentals of “Alive,” “Once,” and “Footsteps,” that Ament and guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready had recorded in order to find a singer for the band. The story goes that the demo was sent to Eddie Vedder, who wrote vocals and met with the band. The rest is history.

“I think the first time that Ed or I had opened any of those boxes was a few weeks ago,” Ament said. “I knew that the original ‘Momma-Son’ cassette was somewhere, but I hadn’t listened to it in 17, 18, 19 years. It was cool to sit down and play it for the first time with Ed and see his reaction. And to find that 90 percent of it stayed exactly the same as what ended up on the record. A lot of elements were identical. There was some energy flying around at that point even from 1,300 miles away from Seattle to San Diego.”

Besides the replicated tape, the package includes a recreation of one of Vedder’s composition notebooks and various other images and mementos.