The White Whale - a catch Release tale
inMyTree51
Posts: 7
in The Porch
Call me Mark
Summer of 1996, I attended a summer music camp in Michigan and fell in love with two things:
Classical music and Pearl Jam
One of my cabin mates had the Vs. album and the music felt so... dangerous. I was raised in an extremely conservative home and music like this was strictly forbidden. Hearing the passion of this music ignited a fire in me that has never ceased.
I attended the camp as a tuba player, (still play to this day), and my love of classical music was also ignited there, ultimately leading to me majoring in music education - I've been a middle school band director for almost 2 decades now. I also took up playing the bass, (also still play to this day), because of my love for the way Jeff Ament's bass playing spoke to me.
Shortly after returning from camp, I saw my first bootleg video of a PJ concert and they opened with Release. Dark arena, red lights slowly coming up as the song went through its emotional waves. Magic.
New dream unlocked, catch a PJ show with Release as opener.
Since 2000, I’ve seen them close to a dozen times and never managed to catch Release - car broke down on the way to a Chicago show in 2000 and they opened with Release with me at a gas station in Michigan City, IN. They also played it as opener to a show I attended in Detroit a decade ago, but due to some logistical babysitting nightmares of being young parents at the time, we were late and missed it - the one and only time I’ve ever been late to any concert and the white whale was there.
Two nights ago, Wrigley Field, well, you’ll have to excuse my sentimentality here, but it finally happened. I was taking video of Pearl Jam taking the stage because I wanted to capture the opening minute or so of the first time my wife and I attended with our oldest child, (the same child whose babysitting fiasco led to us missing Release in 2014), however, the video stops mere seconds into the first song, because there was no way I was doing anything other than enjoying my catch and Release moment with with my family.
...thanks to Pearl Jam. Thanks to the Pearl Jam community sitting near us for helping to make this concert special for my daughter, . Thanks to the awesome people next to us in the merch line yesterday, especially Jeff from CA for the great couple hours of conversation. A lifetime of memories due to the power of this band's music.
0
Comments