“It’s my fourth Pearl Jam show: that time in the now condemned Maple Leaf Gardens, at Molson Park in Barrie out in the dust and gravel, and the first time in the long closed Exhibition Stadium with you, where the Blue Jays used to play before they built the Skydome, before the strike that obliterated our faith in baseball.
Ten was one of the first albums I had ever purchased. The first I will admit to at least, omitting Milli Vanilli and C+C Music Factory from any nostalgic list, re-imagining a past bereft of that music that made me. Omitting entire hair band episodes and the varied profile of Phil Collins staring back without a jacket, taking things at face value, wondering why I had forsaken him — screaming “it is finished; Sue, Sue, Sue-dee-oh.”
You were lucky to have older brothers who led you to Z eppelin, Sabbath, and the tortured screams of Rob Halford.
I had a cassette that I had dubbed over from the CD, eliminating Why Go and Porch (somewhere in these songs Eddie said fuck, and Phil hung his big round head, wondering where he had lost my number, why I wasn’t anywhere that he could find me). I had done this presumably so that I could play it for my parents, so that I would still get into heaven. They never really listened though, besides which he says “little fuck” in Jeremy, and there was no way I was dubbing that out of the mix, it being the single.
Blues Traveller was opening for Soundgarden, who was opening for Pearl Jam, who was opening for Neil Young. Exhibition stadium was huge, and we were seated an entire baseball field away from the stage, in our black rock t-shirts and our 8 hole doc’s. We walked in just as some fat guy armed to the teeth in harmonicas down either side of his cub scout vest like ribbons of ammunition, waved his chubby fingers goodbye and walked off the stage, just in time for Soundgarden, who at the time was touring with BadMotorFinger, an album that would become a favourite later, but was currently much too heavy for my recently Bon Jovi-loving ears. You liked it though.
We were painfully far away from their brief set, and decided to wander from our centre field position towards the foul line, the stage sitting squarely where home base would be. About a third of the way there, and at an angle providing a much better view than our originally purchased seats, we camped out on the stairs in the stands, surrounded by others with similar focal desires.
I can only describe it as a rustling from above us. The whispered then screamed order to charge down the gate. And suddenly we were moving down the stairs towards the infield, caught in a tide of bodies pressing forward whether we agreed or not, down section after section towards the fence then up and over into an open expanse of security guards, a moat of open land where the snipers could take aim, contain you in spotlights, protecting the general admission section from vagabond seat-ticket holders looking to gain entrance to this society of free movement and pressed, bouncing flesh to revel and support the occasional crowd surfer. The un-armed guards grabbed helplessly at bodies as they propelled themselves over the fence, launching over the guardrail like it was the hood of the General Lee to be found on the much greener grass of the other side, the general admission section, just as Pearl Jam took the stage.
We sang at the top of our lungs five shoulder-widths from the stage. We yelled “Eddie” with he rest of the masses. I yelled for Mike and Stone and Jeff, and the band’s second drummer Dave, (who was later fired from the band because no one could pronounce his last name) just so that they knew I respected them as a band, and not just for their singer. They covered Baba O’Riley and we had no idea it was a cover — wondered how so many others knew the words to this new Pearl Jam song. I met an old camp counsellor in the mosh pit. I got hit with a flying Birkenstock, almost died of thirst; we left exuberantly before Neil Young took to the stage.
And now three concerts and almost thirteen years later I am standing at the Molson Amphitheatre, we haven’t spoken in years, and I’m wondering if the crowd is going to stand throughout the show, even though there are perfectly good seats folded behind us, wishing I had remembered to bring my glasses so that I could see the fucking band, wondering if I should have brought ear plugs to cut down on the distorted high end screaming from the monitors, wondering if that makes me old and then denying it quickly, realizing the band will need to be louder to drown out the jack ass behind me who has decided to put on an out of tune Pearl Jam concert in my ear in tandem with the one being projected from the stage. There is a tall man standing directly in front of me, blocking my view. He looks like a high school science teacher, balding with his short, fat, little Mary-Lou Retten-looking wife smiling up at him as he pulls his recently purchased, overpriced Pearl Jam shirt over his head, over top of the collared polo shirt he decided to wear that day, looking more and more like the dad of someone who should be here in his place.
And then maybe I think that this is the audience now.
This is what thirteen years does to a band’s following.
Equally as annoying as the tone-deaf performance taking place behind me is the chubby white girl and here skinny trailer trash boyfriend dancing two rows below and over to the right just enough to become caught sporadically within peripheral range, distracting from the aural task at hand with a sashaying flourish of hands and lumbering buttocks squashed into too-tight pants large enough to successfully slow my fall if my emergency chute failed to open. He is drunk to the point of high-fiving everyone who walks within shouting distance, turning occasionally to serenade the audience and inform the poor couple directly behind him about how this will be “the best concert of [their] fucking lives” while the fat girlfriend nods agreement, still hoping to get the band’s attention from the 400 section of the theatre with a dance that is anything but seductive. By the look of the poor couple directly behind them, looking at the skinny little wife, you know he’s never seen that much ass in his life.
There are too many of them to take on, but I know I will be more satisfied in my defeat if I can take those two down with me before the idiot hoard realizes there is an outsider attacking from within the ranks.
“YOUGUYSARESOROCKANDROLL” comes screaming from the performer behind me about half a dozen times, mostly during slower songs. When the band sings the line “no L-O-I-T-E-R-I-N-G allowed” from Crazy Mary, he yells “LOUTERING” like it’s some kind of spelling exercise, before drunkenly tapping me on the shoulder, apologizing for his singing, and offering me a swig off of a 26er of Canadian Club Whiskey, explaining that he can’t speak good English, is from Quebec, and has tickets for tomorrow night’s show in Montreal if I’m interested. The rage that inspired me to turn and yell for him to keep it the fuck down, now festering for almost an hour, was quickly turning to resigned acknowledgement. I was out of my league and feeling more out of place than polo, rock-T, science teacher guy.
I took the bottle, drank it down, and passed it around.