"Lives opened and trashed, look ma, watch me crash!.." howls the singer, “Grasp and hold on...we're dyin' fast...Soon be over...and I will relapse...Let the ocean swell, dissolve 'way my past. Three days, and not much longer, when I'm finally here!” I am finally here. Three days I am supposed to embark on this trip, which sole purpose is to see Pearl Jam twice, a band that has formed my world view for the past four years. I am eighteen and for the first time abroad on my own. “Let my spirit pass...This is, this is...This is, this is...This is, this is...My...last exit.”
Barely skipping a beat, the drummer Matt Cameron enters a third fast song in a row, Animal. The crowd around me times the first verse with the singer, snapping their fingers in a “1-2-3-4-5 Against One” gesture. The air is filled with excitement and I can already feel that this concert is different than any music show or production I have yet experienced. My pulse runs high, but my head clears out. I let myself be one with the crowd and the band. Three songs are over oh-so-fast, clearing out the way for Life Wasted, a song from the new record which I feel is just about me.
"I have faced it,... A life wasted,... I'm never going back again. Oh I escaped it,... A life wasted,...I'm never going back again. Having tasted,... A life wasted,...I'm never going back again. Oh I erased it,... A life wasted,...I'm never going back again." Shouting the lyrics from the top of my lungs with the whole arena I remember my insecure, angry days back at the high school. I feel anger and resentment that has driven me during those days again, but I also feel relieved it's over. While these emotions fill me, a r-o-a-r-i-n-g guitar solo takes hold of them. My favourite guitarist Mike McCready is fighting his own battle with the Crohn's disease. The last tones of the solo are drowned in a general discord.
Around me, a large group of Polish fans wearing matching t-shirts start chanting the slogan that is printed on them with the face of late American President, George W. Bush. "You forgot Poland, You forgot Poland, You forgot Poland..." I look around the arena and it is only now that I realize how many Polish flags and fans are in the audience tonight. From now on during the whole show I can spot an enormous red and white flag, several meters in diameter, with the same three words on it.
“You forgot Poland,” I join their merry banter, which only dies out when the singer makes a gesture suggesting he's about the speak. "Toto ja po cesky hrajeme v praze ..chtel bych vam povedet rad bych vam podekoval za to ze nas prijimate ve stoveja-zate praze..we try to make good show for you," he imitates with a bad eastern European accent. It will take me at least a month to decipher the original Czech words behind his hysterical mumbling. Anyway, it leaves me with a smile.
“1-2-3-4-2.. I seem to recognize your face..” The whole arena enters a more festive mood as we sing-a-long to an old classic, Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town. During the line "Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away..", we all wave our hands imitating Eddie's gesture of letting go. “I changed by not changing at all, small town predicts my fate. Perhaps that's what no one wants to see” I sing, thinking about my home town in Slovakia, where everyone knows each other. During the next line, everyone in sight joins in unison: “I just want to scream...Hello!”
Eddie picks an e-bow for a raunchy protest song from the new album. "I've felt the earth on Monday - it moved beneath my feet.." we sing together, as I literally feel the ground moving up and down, with the tones of Jeff Ament's bass guitar. “The whole world,... world over. It's a worldwide suicide.”
For the next song I let all my constraints away, placing every phrase with the singer on the top of my lungs. I am no longer the person I was stuttering the chords of this tune on my father's acoustic spaniard when a girl asked me to play something on the guitar I had in school. All I knew back then was to "play C3, let the song protest." The song, called Insignificance dissolutes in an instantaneous jam session.
1-2-3-4, the drummer Matt Cameron times the next song, Marker in the Sand. "God what do you say?!" I ask, while an uptempo beat leads me to a bridge, where the singer wails "I feel a sickness, a sickness coming over me - like watching freedom being sucked straight out to sea.." I remember about my first parliamentary election just a few months ago. It seems so ridiculous now, that my vote has fallen through the cracks, when here is a whole crowd of free people from many countries, having a similar mindset. After Unemployable, another uptight punk classic from the new album, I decide - that’s it, this is a great show! I should just enjoy myself, shouting the lyrics at the top of the lungs, dancing with the fellow fans around me.
Next is You Are, a song from Pearl Jam’s underrated Riot Act album, my first touch with the band. I vibrate together with the effect created on Stone’s guitar. “Sometimes I burn like a dot on the sun, with no one knowing” I feel as I digest the lyrics. The place turns into a huge dance floor, bodies move to the rhythm. Of “Love is a tower of strength to me. / If I am the shoreline, than you’re the sea..You are.”
Another dance song follows, but a sad one. Even called Sad. My friend Lucia Piussi from the band Zive Kvety has called such a song a “happy break up” song, the kind where you just need to shake it off. “A fate we may delay, we say holding on, live within our embrace” In three minutes when it's over, there is no time to swipe the sweat, and barely enough time to breath in for Whipping. Here the mass of people pogoing to the insane beat of Matt Cameron’s drumkit literally whips you up - “Don't mean to push, but I'm being shoved! Oh, I'm just like you, think we've had enough”
No, not enough. An hour into the first set, the band comes up with the one of their most classic jams, Even flow. And again, Mr. Mike McCready on the guitar. As if not playing the song for x-hundredth time, he delivers a soaring solo, riding shivers up and down my spine. About three and a half minutes into the solo, Matt Cameron takes reigns on the drumkit. and beats the crap out of me just in time for a precisely timed chorus, where the whole arena just goes wild with yeah yeah yeahs and ah ah ahs, and the song resolutes and brakes up in solo guitar and drums one more time.
“Gitara Mike McCready, Bubone Matt Cameron”, Eddie appreciates his fellow bandmates and breaths in while Stone Gossard speeds up an old classic, Daughter. When the singer proceeds to lyrics “She holds the hand that holds her down She will...rise above...”, everyone raise their hands up in the air, reaching for the imaginary top. Few lines later, the song slows down and dissolutes into a slow jam, while the fans start chanting “he-eo-eh-eo-ee-ooh”. Magic is in the air. “Hey ho Let’s Go” Eddie adapts Ramones' Blitzkrieg Bop banter and adds a little of his own improvised lyrics: ”Let go, I’m leaving home, mother let go.” The arena echoes his words and claps in unison. “Mother you had me, but I never had you. Father you left me, but I never left you.” Now it is John Lennon's Mother. His voice dies out and so does the song. ”Good vocal,” he complements the crowd.
The band tightens a bit and in Alone, Ed's gibberish “I can’t help my self...”emerges into a staggering guitar solo. Notes are fresh and high, as if it wasn’t a forgotten, old, weird stuff. “Wide awake and he shakes in a panic. Never woke up alone Ever before. Had his woman long as he can remember. Tries to forget, but he can't... he can't....” he sings alone to the crowd.
In Jeremy, the theme of previous two songs is still on, resonating within me: “Daddy didn't give affection And the boy was something mommy wouldn't wear. King Jeremy the wicked Ruled his world”. In the chorus Eddie is beautifully backed on the vocals by Matt. Now the whole arena bounces up and down, and up with the beat of Matt’s drumkit, imitating Eddie’s oh ohs and aaaaaaaahs, and yayayayayayayayeeeahs.
A beastly scream introduces the band’s most violent single up-to-date, Do The Evolution. The dawn of the first set nears - seventeen songs, 93 minutes into the set. The band shows no sign of slowing down. Stone Gossard takes up the horse for a solo, intertwining, mingling his raw tones with a more subtle energy of Mr. Mike McCready.
This is is. This is the place. This is the time. I feel that my life for the past four years has been leading up to this moment. This is where I belong. I don’t know where this road might take me, but there is certainly no turning back. I am relieved. The dose of adrenaline pumping through my head slows down a bit, as does my heart rate. I am here.
TO BE CONTINUED (ENCORES)
In the meantime you can recreate your own Prague experience here ;)
http://blinkeyeprojects.blogspot.com/2009/02/pearl-jam-prague-06.html
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