Pearl Jam!

“I got a ticket to (a) Pearl Jam (concert) and it’s yours if you can get out here,” my good friend Robert messages me. I hesitated slightly before answering. On one hand, it’s Pearl Jam, a group that’s famous enough that most people would have heard of them even if they never heard a song by them. It’s also a group I enjoyed a ton in college. And after college. Which is becoming a lot of days. On the other hand, Robert lives in Seattle. I live in Charlotte, which is on the other side of the United States if you’re somehow even more geographically challenged than I am. After a chat with the Mrs, who never once has told me that I can’t or shouldn’t hang with my friends, I went ahead and booked the ticket. Robert was stoked and so was I!

One of the things I’m enjoying about writing this blog is that I get to talk about my friends and in this case I get to talk to you about my buddy Robert, who I met in college. I was a sophomore, he was a freshman. Let’s back up. I was one of those dudes who lived in the dorms for three years. Which means when most normal people leave the dorms after the first year I was that dude who stayed. I’m not a spaz, I swear. I came into that second year with the mindset that I didn’t really need to make any more friends because I’d already made plenty as a freshman; I just had to travel to an apartment complex or two and I could still see them. I didn’t have any interest in making new friends. Me now is laughing my head off at me then. Oh, me then. You dumb bastard. It’s also worth noting I became a desk assistant. It was a super hard job where you took people’s IDs and stayed in place at the front desk, sometimes stopping people from bringing in beer or a member of the opposite sex after hours, preserving the chastity of the dorm that all the parents actually think their kids still have. Oh, parents back then. Those dumb bastards.

Winter quarter comes and as people are wont to do, I’m hanging around the dorms more because it’s colder. At some point I wind up downstairs in the dorm’s basement having one of those college conversations that you have about music or life or whatever with a guy named Derek. We’re enjoying the conversation and he asked if I wanted to hang out in his room. Yeah, sure! 

We go upstairs and open the door and I meet Robert, who has a beer in his hand and all he knows of me at the time is that I was a narc desk assistant so he just FREEZES in place. I ask him if he has another beer. And now I’ve met Robert. Between Derek and Robert I met a whole new group of friends who are very near and dear to my heart for so many reasons that would take up many other paragraphs. 

Back to Seattle, Robert picks me up from the airport and (hits fast forward) we are on the bus to downtown Seattle and (hits fast forward again) we are on the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island. The fires occurring in California are so bad that the smoke from those fires are obscuring what would be a beautiful view of Mt Ranier. That is beyond sobering. Along the way, Robert tells me about various aspects of Seattle and the area in general. He completely falls in love with wherever he is, he tells me. It shows. Between any numbers of discussions we had about life or politics or nature I definitely learned a ton and enjoyed every minute of it.

This would include Robert mistiming how long it would take for us to walk back to the ferry from the island bar we were eating at. A fast walk turned into a full-fledged run (yeah ok, a spirited half trot…that’s a run for me) as we barely made it back in time and if that’s not what I remember from Robert and the crew we ran with from college! I mean that in the best way, those guys got me to loosen up and laugh and be stupid and still get it together…I don’t even know if I’m conveying this well but I think of that crew of guys and I love them immeasurably for that.

Concert time. I am particularly a fan of Pearl Jam’s album “Ten”. I can sing that entire album (and have) (happily) (a lot). I know several other songs by them and there are many songs I don’t know. It’s telling that a group can play for THREE HOURS like they did and there was still hours of material left they could have played. Usually a band, even a big band, starts off by playing a fast tempo track that gets the crowd hot immediately. Pearl Jam played a hit song I’m blanking on and then immediately launched into the last track off of “Ten” called “Release” which the ENTIRE CROWD SANG. Two songs in and the crowd was firecracker hot.

The purpose of the concert was to raise funds for the homeless community of Seattle. As an outsider to the community, it’s cool that the group raised $11 Million for this cause. That’s freakin’ great. But even more so was Eddie Vedder taking time to mention that it’s not just up to them, or the government. It’s going to be the community who helps solve this problem. He used a phrase that was something to the effect of “turning empathy into action” and yeah. He seems to get it. Eddie comes across as a regular dude who just happens to have an extraordinary voice. In just talking he has one of those unique voices that you would never forget if you were just sitting around a campfire and happened to randomly hear it. Singing? Man. If he’s lost a step then I would have been in tears seeing him in full stride back in whatever day that was. Eddie Vedder has an incredible voice. 

I’m more of a front man guy. Robert is into guitars and so he had us stand on the side where the lead guitarist, Mike McCready, would be. Mike didn’t disappoint and Robert wasn’t disappointed. Neither was I. I was amazed to see some of the tricks he pulled off and how he made the very difficult look completely mundane. A group doesn’t go too far without some phenomenal talent; Mike McCready is phenomenal. 

The show didn’t end quickly but my stay in Seattle seemed to end way too quickly. The memory of the trip isn’t going to go away any time soon, even though hearts and thoughts they fade. Fade away.