The City Veins

A mere 17 years into their storied career, I finally saw my first Pearl Jam show last Friday in Philadelphia. They’ve been one of my favorite bands since elementary school, and not having seen them before now was admittedly a little embarrassing.

So, Aaron and I took off Friday and headed for the Susquehanna Bank Center on the banks of the beautiful city of Camden, NJ (well, beautiful as long as you’re facing the Philadelphia skyline and away from Camden).

Here’s some random thoughts:

• Pearl Jam is pretty f-in awesome, and seeing Eddie Vedder in person was kind of surreal. Definitely more awe inspiring than seeing Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama together in person.
• When I type “Barack Obama,” I get the little red squiggly lines telling me I’ve spelled something wrong. He’s most likely the next president of America, and I wonder how long it will be until his name gets added as a real word in spell check. Is there any other presidents whose names aren’t considered words by spell check? Someone with more time to kill get back to me on that.
• It took us FOUR AND A HALF HOURS to get from DC to Philly and we left at 3 pm. Goddamn DC/Baltimore traffic - it took 2.5 hours just to get to freaking Baltimore.
• I didn’t recognize about a quarter of their set. To be fair, I don’t own Riot Act or Binaural, because they are not very good albums, especially not for Pearl Jam. I own Lost Dogs, but there’s only a few real good songs on that too. I feel like they went heavy on the song selection from these albums, which was a bit disappointing.
• On the upside, three of the last songs were Alive and Rearviewmirror, the latter of which is my all time favorite Pearl Jam song and I never expected to hear live. They also ended with a killer rendition of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” Even though it was a bit hippiesh, Eddie dancing around with 2 tambourines which he threw into the crowd was pretty cool.
• If you’re ever in a bar in downtown Philly and you bump into Eddie Vedder, he’s buying drinks for everyone. He said so himself. I wonder if he’s ever drank with Philadelphians… (Side note: if he wanted to pander, he could have just started an E-A-G-L-E-S chant or name dropped Chase Utley).
• I LOVE seeing concerts in Philly. The tailgating and people watching are reason enough to make the drive. I’ve never seen more nitrous balloons or cheap beer being consumed, and I loved it. DC’s great, but concert-going around here is hardly ever a full event like that. You can’t get that at the Verizon Center. Also, people don’t pee in sinks in the Verizon Center. DC natives just wait in lines for bathrooms, whereas Philadelphians are much more resourceful.
• Also another great reason to see a concert in Philly: spontaneous sports cheers. They might be annoying to everyone else, but as a native Pennsylvanian they warm my heart.
• Our deepest apologies to Ted Leo - we missed your set. We love you, we really do. I’ve seen you twice in the last year. I’ll see you every time you’re anywhere near DC. But after 4.5 hours in the car, sometimes you just want to drink beer with your friends in the parking lot.

Pearl Jam photo by Karen Loria, PearlJam.com

This photo of Charles was taken a few weeks ago while on vacation.  What I love about it is how natural he looks with that hat and bottle of Jack - this was not posed, he was in the background of this pic and I cropped everyone else out.

This is my only real problem with recurring content: that I forget what day it is.  Furthermore, I have no innate sense of responsibilty towards anything but myself, so I don’t internalize my obligations.  Yes, I forgot to post new lyrics on wednesday.  If this was of extreme import I would likely be in some sort of trouble.  Thankfully, few people care.

The lyrics posted this week are for Boy Makes Good.  I think these lyrics represent some of the better lyrical work that Charles and I have accomplished as a collaborative effort, and the song is pretty damn good as well.  I said it:  I like one of our songs, nay-sayers be damned. 

The Boy Makes Good is an endictment of the cycle of wealth; the fact that there are some people born into a situation in which it is impossible for them to fail.  Furthermore, for many of these people, all of their actions–no matter how abhorrent or ill-conceived–are either glorified or excused because of the promise of their adult lives.  Charles and I (and likely Spencer) experienced this social phenomenon in college.  Our peers would produce flights of immorality, ranging from the mild to the extreme, only to have their actions swept aside because they had a “future”–AKA–their parents were loaded.  Thus, loaded parents = future = justified/excused immorality.  While the last few lines appear to be reassuring, the point is that there’s never really any doubt; the world will just make way for the boys success.    

Boy Makes Good

New creation, got your arms out straight

Laid in your gown, while you wait

By the well for the blood that would

Cleanse the poor until the boy’s made good

On the train, nobody ever says hello.  They’ll be here to ride again tomorrow.  Until those boys stand up to condemn those same tracks, before they ride them again.

He liked to squash the little bugs outside

Like to smile while he watched them die

Said he did it because he could

They just said that the boy did good

Floating skulls on the river bank….oh my boy you’ll do fine someday…lit cigars burn in private rooms…oh my boy you’ll do fine someday.

You will make your mark

There are two things that I really like about these lyrics.  The first is the variety of ways that we use good, as a statement of something coming to fruition or being completed, but also as a moral value.  The second is the fact that Charles and I chose to stick to the story of the boy as first an infant, then a toddler.  I think we could have ended up sounding very preachy if we had been more direct, and working from a vantage point that gives the presumption of innocence, as well as the whole birth-right imagery, was the right way to go.  Good thing it took Charles and I roughly 7 hours and something like 7,000 words of conversatioin through google docs to come up with this stuff.