The late nineties and early aughts ushered in another Golden Age of Television, changing the way we talk about small-screen storytelling with the likes of serious, dramatic fare like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The Wire. 

While those more elevated series scooped awards and critical acclaim, at the same time that era gifted us arguably the last great sitcom: Friends. Its ongoing popularity since being added to the best streaming services is only more testament to that.    

Why is Friends still such a go-to for many of us?

At the time of its release in 1994, I was a mere 12 years old, not exactly the target demographic, and yet I was hooked from the moment of its UK television premiere on Channel. I rushed home from band practice every Friday to catch the latest episode even though its premise wasn’t designed to lure me in. 

On the road with Pearl Jam, lead singer Eddie Vedder’s dressing room contains all the comforts of home: a dartboard (“Gives me a little focus before we run out,” he said); a Chicago Bears football jersey (No. 34, Walter Payton); and a picture of the great Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku, which always travels with him.

Vedder, who loves to paddle out, likens songwriting to surfing: “You put these building blocks together, so you can kind of, let’s say shape the perfect wave, you know, that has a couple turns, and then a barrel, and then the lyrics come – the lyrics come from surfing that wave.”

Pearl Jam’s latest wave, “Dark Matter,” is the 12th studio album from a band that’s been playing together for nearly 35 years. Vedder said, “Pretty much everything I’ve ever written, it’s always started as a paper napkin. Now cloth napkins, ’cause we’re staying in better hotels!” he laughed.

Vedder was 12 when his mother gave him his first guitar. “My birthday is December 23,” he said. “So, I begged to have the two gifts put together to afford something as extravagant as an electric guitar, which I think was $115.

“I walked in Christmas morning. And I could see the silhouette of it. [!!!]  And then the lights came on and it was a vacuum!  And then everybody finished opening their presents. [I’m getting a little chills!]  And they said, ‘Oh, one more…’ And they pulled out a guitar case. So, that was nice!” Vedder laughed.

That sounds kind of cruel! “Well, I don’t think they meant to,” said Vedder. “How ’bout my mom getting lucky and getting a vacuum for Christmas?”

Vedder’s record collection included The Jackson 5, James Brown, and The Who. “We had a babysitter bring over ‘Who’s Next,’ and left it there. I didn’t see the sun for about two weeks!” he laughed.

He called The Who’s music a lifeline: “Records like ‘Quadrophenia’ gave me the knowledge and hope and antidote to despair, knowing that somebody else was going through what I was going through.”

Vedder was living in San Diego in 1990, when he heard a group of Seattle musicians was looking for a singer. They sent a cassette of instrumental songs. He wrote lyrics to them, while surfing: “I was doing those midnight shifts security. So, when I went for a surf in the morning, I remember it being super foggy and one of those days where you think, ‘Maybe I won’t go out.’ But I had the music in my head, the instrumental, and just kind of wrote it. And then, I was still wet when I hit ‘record.’”

Bassist Jeff Ament listened to Vedder’s tape, went out for coffee, then returned to listen to it again. “And then, I remember calling Stone and I said, ‘You need to come over here right now,’” he said. 

Ament, and guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, flew Vedder up to Seattle to audition.

“You felt it,” Vedder said. “You were like, ‘Oh, this is what it is. This is heaven.’”

Pearl Jam’s debut album, “Ten,” would be one of the biggest-selling rock records ever, staying on the Billboard charts for nearly five years.

The sudden success was overwhelming: “It was an avalanche that hit us at the front end of all of that,” Ament said. “So, we were just digging out, trying to survive, and you sort of regain control, sort of feel like we were in control of our destiny.”

They fought with their label, refused to make videos, and sued Ticketmaster. Ament said, “I remember those tickets came out, and the tickets would say, $28 Pearl Jam. But then we’d be like, ‘Wait a minute, we’re charging $16.’”

“You just felt this corporate, you know, fingerprints on you,” Vedder said. “And you wanted to break free, and rebel, and claim your music for yourself and your crowd.”

Pearl Jam and its “crowd” have long been deeply loyal to each other.

In Missoula, Montana, where Ament has lived since he went to the University of Montana, he hosts a fan fair with local non-profits before the gig: “You just want to help people, you just want to do more for the community.” He thinks of this tour stop as a hometown show. “Yeah. It’s like a lot of history, family, and old, old friends,” he said.

On tour, Vedder labors over every set list, selecting from a voluminous list, which also contains “a lot of covers, things we played once.”

How long does that process take? “Sometimes a ridiculously long amount of time!” he laughed.

He writes up his set lists in calligraphy, which he learned to pass the time on the road. “It keeps me focused and entertained,” he said.

Does he still enjoy being on the road? “Wrong question!” Vedder laughed.

When several band members got seriously ill this summer, Pearl Jam had to cancel three dates. “This was like a Euro bronchial with pneumonia on top of it,” Vedder said. He described it on stage as almost like a near-death experience. “A near-awful-death experience. I don’t necessarily mind dying!” he laughed.

WEB EXTRA VIDEO: Pearl Jam performs “Even Flow”: 

Vedder turns 60 this December. Ament is 61. Mason asked, “You obviously must have a lot of trust that if you all get together, something’s gonna happen?”

“Well, it does,” Vedder replied.

Asked why they think the band is still working after all this time, Ament replied, “It’s miraculous in some ways that we made it through. And then also it’s just a testament to our friendship.”

“I was gonna say, good, clean living!” Vedder laughed.

You can stream Pearl Jam’s latest album, “Dark Matter,” by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full):

      
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Story produced by Jon Carras. Editor: Mike Levine. 

Anthony Mason

Anthony Mason is a senior culture and senior national correspondent for CBS News. He has been a frequent contributor to “CBS Sunday Morning.”

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I was once like you. I thought EmuDeck was just a quick and easy way to set up emulators on my Steam Deck, and despite using it for years, I never thought more of it than that. But slowly over the past few months, EmuDeck has become one of the most essential apps I have installed on my gaming PC.

EmuDeck showed up on the scene in 2022, originally built as a “collection of scripts that allows you to autoconfigure your Steam Deck” for emulation. It will install your emulators, configure them, create directories for your games, and hook into apps like Steam ROM Manager so you can see all of your emulated games in your Steam Deck library. It’s been an essential tool for retro and emulation enthusiasts since release, but EmuDeck has grown into something much more powerful — and it’s not slowing down.

Always humble beginnings

Although most of the documentation for EmuDeck is signed by the “EmuDeck team,” a sole developer remains the main producer of the project — DragoonDorise on GitHub. Speaking with the developer, he told me that the Steam Deck actually wasn’t the inspiration behind the project. “The very first code I built was because when I bought my Odin,” he told me. The Odin is a handheld emulator built on Android. “I didn’t want to do all the setup manually again.”

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EmuDeck was originally built for Android, and it was under the name Pegasus Installer. “Everything started with the RetroidPocket 2 and the Pegasus frontend. Setting that up was a chore, so I tried to automate it,” the developer told me. Eventually, the Steam Deck was revealed, and DragoonDorise said it was “a huge deal” for him. “I was lucky enough to get [a Steam Deck] on the first wave and that’s how EmuDeck was born. It took me a weekend to release the first version, and boy, it was rough… but it worked.”

Pegasus Installer became EmuDeck, and at first, it was just for the Steam Deck. Given the handheld form factor and problems getting around desktop mode without a keyboard and mouse, EmuDeck made perfect sense. If nothing else, it minimized the amount of time you’d need to spend on the desktop, all while installing and configuring everything you need through a single, easy-to-use package. But it didn’t stop there.

Eventually, the ROG Ally came out, following on the Steam Deck’s success. And EmuDeck responded in kind by developing a Windows version of the utility. Now, you’ll find installers for SteamOS, Windows, ChimeraOS, Android, and general Linux distros. You can get EmuDeck on just about any platform now as a quick and easy way to set up your emulators, but I’ve been so drawn to the utility for everything it does beyond its core function.

More than emulation

EmuDeck could’ve stopped at just being a utility that automatically configures a bunch of emulators, but it’s grown to encompass a ton of additional features. Here’s a sampling:

• Compressor — Compresses your ROM library to reduce its size.
• Auto save — Automatically saves your progress in emulated games when closing them so you don’t need to manually create a save state.
• Cloud sync — Uses an online storage service like Box or Google Drive to store and sync your save files for emulated games.
• EmuDecky — A plug-in specifically for the Steam Deck that allows you to access emulator hotkeys from the Steam Deck’s game mode.
• Local multiplayer — Allows you to start local multiplayer games for emulated titles.
• Rom Library — A dedicated second Steam Library for the Steam Deck filled only with emulated games.
• Game mode — A tool that bypasses Windows processes to launch directly into Steam Big Picture mode.

That is just a sampling, too. EmuDeck has a slew of smaller features, from a BIOS checker to Retro Achievements support to migration utilities that allow you to carry your entire library to other systems. All of these features were developed on top of the “gazillion of hours invested in testing” of the core of EmuDeck, too, according to DragoonDorise.

Although I’ve used most of EmuDeck’s features on various machines, game mode has really made the difference in the way I play PC games. As anyone who’s tried to set up a console-like PC knows all too well, you need a keyboard and mouse on hand to at least get into whatever controller-support interface you’re using (usually Steam), and even then, notifications, start-up apps, and other pesky windows can get in the way. With game mode, I’m finally able to have the console-like PC experience I’ve dreamt about for years.

Rebirth of the Steam Machine

Ever since Valve tried (and failed) to get the Steam Machine to catch on, there’s been countless attempts to make a small form factor PC behave like a console. You start it, grab a controller, and plop down on the couch to start playing games. Although there are ways to get close to that experience — specifically with Linux distros like ChimeraOS or HoloISO — you’ve always needed to settle either for a portable keyboard or spotty compatibility due to Linux. Game mode gets around that entire issue.

DragoonDorise describes it like this: “What it does is replace your Windows desktop with Steam, so it boots faster into Big Picture mode — it’s kind of like a Steam Deck.” You can already have Steam immediately launch into Big Picture mode — the controller-friendly interface that mirrors the Steam Deck — and you can set Steam as a startup app. But game mode is doing more than that in EmuDeck.

From what I can tell, it’s doing two main things. First and most important is that it never starts (or at least significantly limits) Windows File Explorer. You might think of File Explorer as just a way to browse your files, but the process in Windows actually does a lot more. It commands the taskbar, your desktop wallpaper, the Start menu, and even your desktop icons. EmuDeck runs a PowerShell script to bypass all of the junk you don’t need for a living room setup and goes directly into Big Picture mode. It takes only a few seconds — if I don’t turn on my TV fast enough, I’ll completely miss the script running.

The other thing it does is suppress notifications and other windows that try to go on top of the Big Picture interface. In my case, I have a VPN installed on my living room PC, along with an outdated AMD driver that I don’t use. I may get everything in order for the PCs I use for work, but when I’m sitting down to relax and game, I’m lazy. They aren’t causing problems, and I couldn’t care less. Both want to command the screen when I sit down and power on my PC and EmuDeck’s game mode stands in the way to block them.

As impressive as game mode is, it can’t actually log you into Windows. Thankfully, I’ve found a simple way around that if you aren’t concerned about security. Go to the Registry Editor and head to the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionPasswordLessDevice. Then, set the value of DevicePasswordLessBuildVersion to 0. Restart your PC, press Windows + R and enter netplwiz. Uncheck the box that requires a password, click Apply, enter your current password, and you’re done.

With this setup, I’m able to press the power button on my PC, turn on a controller, and start playing. Since I started using EmuDeck in this way, I haven’t had to break out a Bluetooth keyboard. It feels like I’m properly playing on a console — just with much better performance.

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An essential app

EmuDeck started as a way to set up emulators on the Steam Deck, but it’s become a critical part of my PC setup since then. Never since I installed Special K — make sure to read my column on that app — have I found something that will go on any new PC I build. Game mode is the main draw for me, but I’ve engaged with EmuDeck’s other features, too. I have a treasure trove of ROMs on an external hard drive, and EmuDeck allows me to sync my saves between my PC and Steam Deck, as well as keep my configuration consistent between devices.

Even better, most of what EmuDeck offers is free. New features, particularly those developed by EmuDeck alone, first show up for members of its Patreon, but you can get a lot of functionality out of EmuDeck — including its core function of setting up emulators — free of charge. And if you want to sign up and get the latest features, it’ll run you about $35 per year.

Since installing EmuDeck, I’ve played retro classics I would’ve never touched, modded modern games in ways I never thought was possible, and let my consoles gather dust as I transition all of my gaming to PC. If you’re even remotely interested in emulation, give EmuDeck a shot — you’ll be impressed by how powerful it really is.