the breath robbing lightning, was making diamonds of rain

Moments in Time

I've decided to relive old memories on my blog. I was reminded of a very specific memory this morning and I thought that it would be nice to transcribe it. Just in case one day I go senile and cant remember it, I can read it maybe. I was sitting at the bus stop listening to my ipod at 730 am. The song was on shuffle and switched to Dissident by Pearl Jam. I was sent back to 1993. 8th grade. My mom used to work at this crappy home for mentally handicapped kids. Alot of the time I would go to work with her, mainly out of utter boredom. She worked the overnight shift. I had just gotten versus. I bought it from cd warehouse the day it came out. I listened to it constantly for almost a week. I also bought a shirt with the album cover on it. One night I went to work with mom. There was this guy that worked there sometimes that went to UNT. I dont remember his name. He was pretty a cute guy, early twenties. He looked at my shirt and then said 'You know Pearl Jam is playing here really soon'. I said yeah in dallas im sure, wish I had a way out there. Mom worked alot and I didnt know anyone with a car that would be willing to take me out there. 'No' he said. 'In Denton'. When he said those words I swear to god my heart stopped beating. I could barely get out a 'what?' He said yeah they're playing at the UNT coliseum. Tickets go on sale next week. Im going to wait in line for them. You wanna come with and wait with me to get some tickets. You have to be a student at UNT but I can buy one for you. Im just guessing this is what he said. At that moment the only thing I could hear was a little voice in my head saying 'holycrapholycrapholycrapholycrapholycrapholycrap' He asked mom if it was ok and she said sure. She even payed for my ticket. I couldnt believe it. Not only were they playing in Denton, but they were playing within walking distance of my place. Like less than a mile.
The next day I was sitting outside at 8am in the morning in thirty degree weather with no coat waiting in line with a bunch of college students for pearl jam tickets. There were a lot of people there who felt real bad for me cause i was shivering the whole time. I got a lot of free food and hot chocolate. I got to hang out with some really cool college kids. Most of them were freshman I think. I felt really cool though
Eventually it warmed up a bit and the line started to shorten. They told me I could wait at a bench while they bought my ticket. An hour later they came back with a ticket to see pearl jam. Two weeks later I saw them. The coliseum is a pretty cool place to see a concert. BTW this is the very first concert I ever went to. The buttholes surfers opened up for them. They were weird, but really cool. I remember on their last song Gibby Haynes unscrewed the top of the hi hat off and poured lighter fluid in it, lit it, and started hitting it. Everytime he hit it, the flames went higher and higher. It was pretty sweet. Right as they were leaving the stage, Gibby said 'ok stick around, up next is stone temple pilots'. At the time they were very closely compared to each other. Stp was often accused of ripping off PJ's sound.
After about 40 minutes they came on. The opened with Go of course really awesome song. They played everything from versus and alot from ten. I remember them playing black. That was really cool. What stood out the most was Dissident though. This was and still is my fav Pearl Jam song of all time. When they played it, I was...im not sure I can even describe it. I was in tears im pretty sure. I was probably making a fool of myself, singing along at the top of my lungs. I could have died right then completely happy. I was elevated. All this sounds completely corny, but its true. That night when I went home I didnt sleep, I just listened to more pearl jam for quite some time. That was one of the greatest moments of my life.

ps. this is the longest post I have ever written. If you didnt read it all i wont hold it against you

Posted by cainnum at 11:58 AM