Pearl Jam

I worked another shift at the Local Gigantic Sports Venue this week. This time we were covering a Pearl Jam concert. I was pretty stoked - I've never seen them in concert, and they'd just done a marathon 3 hour set at Bonnaroo that weekend, so I was expecting great things.


What I got was a reminder that I'm old, not very cool, and was never very cool to begin with. Oh, and the knowledge that Eddie Vedder is really short.

We were posted at stage left, right behind the mix. Totally cool. We were surrounded by a weird mix of grown-up grunge kids, hippie kids, and what my friend Laurie used to call the "Thrombus contingent". Picture a drunken frat boy with more muscle than any one person should have and you've got it. Not so cool.

The thing that struck me right off is that I didn't know any of the songs in the first half of the show. None of them. Not one. Okay, maybe one, but I couldn't tell you what it was called, and in fact I didn't even know it was a Pearl Jam song. So the take-home lesson from that is that I stopped listening to Pearl Jam in approximately 1994. In the end they played four songs I knew, and knew well enough to be singing along whilst wrestling a drunken asshole in an attempt to check his blood sugar. I think it bears mentioning that all four songs were from Ten, which was released in 1991. Sigh. Refer to earlier "old" and "uncool" comments.


The best part of working at these shows is that you're close enough to the band to notice things you might not otherwise see. For example, did you know Sam Elliott plays keyboards for Pearl Jam? Well, it's actually a guy named Boom Gaspar (Coolest. Name. Ever.), but he *REALLY* looks like Roadhouse-Era Sam Elliott. Also, Eddie Vedder smoked throughout the entire show, drank what seemed to be an entire 40-ounce beer, and half-finished a bottle of wine which he then tossed (corked) into the crowd. Nice.

I was impressed with the fact that the band did two encores, and that Eddie Vedder was so interactive with the fans. He didn't run into the crowd or anything, but he tossed a lot of stuff (guitar picks, bottle of wine, etc.), and just generally played to all sides, including all the hippies in the behind-the-stage nosebleed section.

I was unimpressed that the Thrombus Contingent felt the need to climb around on the folded-up bleachers (while monumentally drunk), then fight with security when they pointed out what a dork move that was. I was unimpressed that the abovementioned drunken asshole with whom I wrestled got in the way of me being able to enjoy one of the four songs I knew.

I had a good time, got a nice contact buzz, and was happy I didn't pay 100$ for a ticket to the show. I think that (along with a complete ignorance of any music past 1994) might be what makes me old. Oh, that and the fact that I didn't find the bleacher-monkeying funny. God forbid anyone make me work while I'm at a free concert.


Sadly, I never found out what was packed in this box. I'm assuming it wasn't actually full of giant rats, but you never know.

Unfortunately I couldn't get close enough to catch any actual sweat/beer/beersweat spatter.