Songfacts®:

• This song is about vinyl records, which Pearl Jam felt they were a great way to listen to music. They are imperfect, but the cracks and sizzles on the records give the songs character not found on CDs, which play the same way every time. A decade or so later, vinyl became cool again, but it definitely wasn't in 1994, when it was seen as an outdated technology headed to the format graveyard along with cassette.
• "Spin The Black Circle" is a raging rocker put together from various musical fragments the band came up with. Eddie Vedder got the idea to speed it up after guitarist Stone Gossard gave him some demos to check out and Eddie played them at the wrong speed. He liked what he heard and convinced his bandmates to record the song at a frantic pitch.
• The band played this song live several times in March and April 1994, months before it was released. Pearl Jam had two very popular albums out by this point (Ten and Vs.), but fans were always thrilled when they unleashed something new. This doesn't happen with most big bands, whose fans use unfamiliar tunes to grab a beverage.
• The song was first released, appropriately, on vinyl as part of the Vitalogy album. The band issued the album only on vinyl on November 22, 1994, then put it out on CD December 6. The vinyl release charted at #55 - very impressive considering most people had long since abandoned their record players. The CD release, of course, charted at #1.
• "Spin The Black Circle" was released as the first single from Vitalogy on December 7, 1994. This was a sort of in-joke, as the song is not at all radio friendly. Pearl Jam wanted fans to buy the albums, so they usually released singles only promotionally (not sold in stores). These singles weren't eligible for the Hot 100, but "Spin The Black Circle" was, and it charted at #58. You can imaging folks buying the new Pearl Jam single expecting a catchy tune and finding this sonic assault.
• Pearl Jam won their first Grammy for this song, taking the trophy for Best Hard Rock Performance. Accepting the award, Eddie Vedder expressed profound indifference. "I don't know what this means," he said. "I don't think it means anything. That's just how I feel."
  
  The Grammy people learned their lesson: Pearl Jam didn't win again until 2015 when their Lightning Bolt album won for Best Recording Package.
• Dave Abbruzzese, Pearl Jam's drummer at the time, feels the stickmen in grunge bands were the "unsung heroes of that genre," distinguishing it from the slick, guitar-driven sounds of hair metal. "When grunge came around, it went back to good old rock n' roll where the drums drove the band," he told Songfacts. "Bands like The Guess Who and Zeppelin who were just considered rock, to me the drums drove those bands. The push and the pull and the tension that was created by the drum parts is what defined the music, what supported all the riffs."
  
  Abbruzzese is proud of his drumming on "Spin The Black Circle," which he came up with quickly - "one and done." He was ejected from the band before the Vitalogy album was released, but he played on all the tracks except "Stupid Mop," which has drumming by his replacement, Jack Irons.