On Pearl Jam, Pregnant Women, And Falling Drunk Guys

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Greg and I had the pleasure of seeing Pearl Jam Monday night at the new Boston Garden (so much better sounding than the TD Banknorth Garden). As usual, Eddie Vedder put on an awesome show where he managed to interact with a crowd of nearly 20,000.


On our way in, I was psyched to see not 1, but 2 pregnant women. I have a special spot in my heart for pregnant women at Pearl Jam concerts. This is because 4 years ago, the last time I saw Pearl Jam I was 6 months pregnant with Gregory. It explains a lot.



But seriously, 4 years ago when we ordered the tickets I thought 'hey, I'll only be 6 months, I won't be that big'. And I was right. I wasn't that big, I was humongous. For that show we had awesome seats. Behind the stage, but only a few rows out. Since there is no back to the stage, they were the best seats I've ever had at the Garden. And here's the best part. Close to the end of the show they did a cover of Neil Young's 'Rockin' In The Free World'. If you've ever seen Pearl Jam, you know Eddie sings to all sides of the stage. Well, when he came to the line

I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away, and she's gone to get a hit
She hates her life, and what she's done to it
There's one more kid that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.

He ran to the back of the stage and looked right at me. I was elbowing Greg, going "Honey, Eddie Vedder's singing to me!". Greg disagreed, and we've never reached a harmonious opinion on this event. So Eddie, if you're reading, can you please either confirm or deny that 4 years ago at the Boston Garden, you sang this verse to a hugely pregnant woman behind the stage? Leaving a comment would be fine. Thanks.


So back to Monday night. According to Conor Oberst, victory is sweet even deep in the cheap seats, and I agree with him. But here's something else that's sweet deep in the cheap seats, videotaping a huge stadium of people rocking out to Pearl Jam. Here's the best one I got (at least unless YouTube has shut me down due to copyright infringement). It's one of my favorite Pearl Jam songs and it's worth watching the whole thing so you can see 20,000 euphoric, singing, dancing people, even if you don't like the song.


He opened with another great song, 'Release'. I started to get some awesome video of that as well, but I was interrupted. By what? I'm glad you asked. I was interrupted by an extremely intoxicated three hundred pound guy who came rolling down the seats from somewhere above about 10 seconds into the song. He nicked Greg (luckily Greg managed to stay on his feet) and then landed on a poor girl in the row in front of us. He was a big pile of legs and feet, with the girl was pinned underneath. It took everyone about two minutes to get him off of her and this included me, who turned the camera off to help. The poor girl seemed okay, although her leg was bruised and sore. The large, intoxicated guy stood there for about two minutes and then insisted on climbing into our row, where he took up two empty seats.


Well, that was fine, until the owners of those seats showed up to claim them. In a row wide effort to remove him, he started shoving, and someone freaked out and a fist fight ensued. Finally, the brave soul next to us grabbed him by the back of the shoulders and briskly escorted him out of the row with a curse and an order to never come back. Yay!


After that drama, we settled in to watch an excellent show including a lesser played song in tribute to Howard Zinn.


Okay, that one's not uploading so well, I'll put it in another post.


Again, if you've ever seen Pearl Jam live, you know it's not a question of whether Eddie Vedder falls, but when. Despite a good effort, he managed to stay on his feet for the whole show. He did consume his token bottle of wine and by the end of the show he was jumping onto speakers, shirt hanging off. All in all a great show by a very cool band whose appreciation of their fans is evident in the quality of their performance.


We have several more shows booked for what I'm calling our mid-life crisis series, so stay tuned!

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6 comments:

grizaham said...

Great post!
Me and my pregnant wife went to Indy Pearl Jam show this year when she was 6 months! It was an experience to say the least! ;-)

www.igriza.com

lg2006 said...

and I am the pregnant wife from the comment above! I posted about the experience as it was pretty tough on us! Rain, nose bleeds, drunks etc! But Eddie is totally awesome! Glad they are touring the US again! We saw them in Philly 4 nights last fall and that was awesome!

Noelle said...

haha - all the cool Moms do it, right? Congrats to both of you on your pregnancy - hang in there! Eddie Vedder rocks!

Unknown said...

You are, indeed so cool. I don't think I could even name one of Pearl Jam's songs. And this definitely makes me UNCOOL!

Marie said...

I'm glad you got to go and had such a good time. :) I am a huge Bruce fan, but I don't think I ever saw him when I was pregnant.

When my first was a few months old (1977!!!), I went to a Grateful Dead concert. It was in the first fifteen minutes of the concert that it occurred to me I was someone's MOTHER!! Yikes!! I had to behave myself.

It was a long time before I went to another rock concert. lol

Noelle said...

The Grateful Dead in 1977 must have been awesome! I saw them 3 times, all in the year and a half before Jerry passed a way. What a sad day that was.