Pearl Jam

The highlight of the summer, so far, was last week when Savi and I went to the Pearl Jam concert in Portland. I had done the design work and the printing for the event's program (through a sponsor) and was offered comp tickets and a quick backstage tour if I helped out with a little pre-concert organizational work.

We left for Portland at about 8am Thursday, as our first meeting was at noon. We got into downtown Portland at just about 1130, did a quick meeting and had just enough time to check into our hotel (the venerable Mark Spencer, just a couple blocks from Powell's bookstore), before another quick meeting at 200 at the Art Museum, which is just across the street from
Schnitzer Hall, the concert's venue. We then had a chance to go backstage, and into Pearl Jam's dressing room, where I took a picture of Savi standing in front of Eddie Vedder's wardrobe locker.

It was then a 15 minute walk back to the hotel, which in 100 degree afternoon heat, was not altogether comfortable. We hung out in air-conditioned room for an hour or so and then headed to Baja Fresh for an early dinner. At about 515 we started back to Schnicter Hall, where had worked for a couple hour distributing VIP will-call tickets. Finally at 730 we went into the hall and found our seats in the first row of a huge balcony, dead center and not more than 75 feet from the stage. There was a warm-up comedian and then Sleater Kinney played a quick 7-song set, which I enjoyed very much. Finally, at about 9pm, Pearl Jam came on stage and every seat in the ornate, 90-year old theatre was jumping.

They played for about 2.5 hours and the band seemed very tight, and Eddie Vedder, especially, seemed in good spirits and was very personable and was a huge crowd favorite. Their second encore, which they performed with Sleater Kinney was the old Neil Young song, Keep on Rockin in the Free World, which was one of the best live rock performances I had ever seen--it was absolutely stunning.

It had been a very long day, with all the heat and the walking etc, so we left after the third encore started and got back to our room at about midnite. Sav then watched a couple episodes of her favorite TV personal, Rachel Ray, and finally at about 1 am we called it a night.

Next day we had a nice little breakfast in the hotel lounge, went to the bookstore for about an hour or so and checked out at exactly noon. On the way home, we stopped by to see me Aunt Jean (my mother's only sibling) in Vancouver. It was extremely hot, but we had a good time and I was happy to see how well she is doing for an 82 year old woman. We finally got home at around 530 pm.