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