What's with you and Pearl Jam? V

PART FIVE: SOUTH AMERICAN TOUR 2015

PART FIVE: SOUTH AMERICAN TOUR 2015

Everyone eventually faces “Big Birthday” moments in their lives, God willing, and 2015 presented a particularly seminal one for me.

When the family discussion got around to “what do you want to do to celebrate?” it dawned on us that a party for, say, 80 people would invariably involve 40 folks who would want/need to leave the event at 11pm so as to get a good night sleep before taking their kids to swimming or hockey practice in the morning, hitting the gym themselves, etc. Which would leave a few hardcore (guilt-ridden?) friends behind to try to hold the party together until they, too, could depart at a more respectable hour…like midnight! ;-)

We agreed to take those funds and join Pearl Jam for the front portion of the South American tour that had been scheduled for that Fall.  We chose stops in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico (a separate trip later in November 2015), and had the experience of a lifetime.

The flight to Santiago from Toronto is long, and you wouldn’t want that to be your kid’s first extended experience on an airplane.  Pro Tip: have your children pull their own carry-on, make sure that they have their blankets to aid the sleeping phase(s) of the flight, and pack a change of clothes (because spills, lost checked luggage, etc.).

We couldn’t have felt more safe in Chile than we did back in 2015, and the locals took a great deal of pride in how well both their democracy and economy were performing at the time.  There wasn’t a lot to see on foot, however, unlike Buenos Aires. The show itself took place at the Estadio Nacional: an open 48,000 seat bowl, with room for thousands more on the large field. We were a bit surprised to come across a bunch of Americans outside the venue, including what appeared to be a several tipsy LA denizens on a “girl’s trip.” (We came to learn in Argentina that a group of guitarist Mike McCready’s U.S. friends made the trip to see the first two shows in South America, which was an excellent sign of what was to come.) 

The chants you hear on XM Sirius’ PJ Radio are legit, and seem spontaneous.  How the crowd decides between Chilean football chants, “Pearlllllll Jaaaaaam” or “Eddie Eddie Eddie” I cannot explain.  What I can assure you is that we got a taste of a true South American crowd experience out of the gate.

With three days until the Buenos Aires concert, Mommy wanted us all to experience the Andes Mountains — the highest range outside of Asia — while we were on its doorstep. She’s not one for lying around in the sun all-day.

If you ever have the chance to use Chile Wild Tours (@ChileWildTours), it’ll be a memorable experience.  The team has been putting together mountain and surfing trips for 25 years, and was fabulous in every respect.  We spent the day driving far above the tree line, kayaked in a glacier-fed lake, ate lunch over an open fire, spotted the local form of Elk, and even passed several abandoned, snow-covered military barracks that had been in use decades earlier when Argentina and Chile were at each other’s throats.  If you want to bathe in a volcanic hot spring, you can just ask your guide to pull the 4x4 over and hop out!  (Pro Tip: doing your research before setting out for a foreign land pays dividends as it gives you a fighting chance to hook up with best-in-class local folks.  A combination of TripAdvisor.com ratings / comments, local hotel recommendations, word-of-mouth and Instagram activity has served us very well in these situations.)

As much fun as these four stellar shows and their audiences might have been, I know that this particular excursion would have been the highlight of our entire 10-day trip…if we hadn’t formally (if that’s such a thing) met Eddie Vedder a few days later.

But, before we get to that, the Buenos Aires crowd was likely the best that we’ve ever had the good fortune to be part of.  The tickets were at a distance from the stage, but the mood in the stadium made up for it in spades.  The show hadn’t even started, and one fan was trying to convince my son to get a Stickman tattoo. Not happening!

This was one of those epic, 33-song nights that we yearn for.  Ed had read an article about domestic abuse, and dedicated “Leaving Here” to all of the women in the audience — only after a pointed lecture to the men, with an admonition: “to take care of the women.”  How many male musical artists are tackling that topic, I ask you?

The Argentinian chants somehow topped the Chilean ones, which was likely aided by the fact that Estadio Unico Cuidad has a partial roof.  Unlike many of the sites we’ve been to, this venue is more than an hour from the city — and that wasn’t due to so form of crazy traffic.  This is something to keep in mind when planning your day-of transits; Emerson used the time to make his sign, but it’s also a great chance for a catnap.  Although the time zone shift isn’t as painful as Europe, any opportunity where you can get your little one(s) to bank a bit of sleep is to be capitalized upon.

With a huge crowd of probably >60,000, and a long walk to find our ride, we made our way out of the stadium just as Alive (my fav) was ending; I’d determined on the way in that we’d have a better chance of finding our pre-booked ride if we weren’t in a massive crush of folks (Pro Tip: Uber isn’t everywhere, and you’ll have a tough time getting an app-driven ride in places like San Diego, post-show, in any event).  That said, we didn’t get very far before The Who’s legendary Baba O'Riley started blaring, and Emerson stopped for a few minutes and did a memorable air guitar outside the building.  The Kids Are Alright. 

Entrepreneurial street chefs had set up dozens of hibachi-like BBQs, grilling various unidentifiable items; I have to assume that Argentinians are very hungry after all of the chanting and bopping around. The neighbourhood around the stadium is partially-unoccupied, complete with derelict buildings and random piles of brick rubble. Whether the area is being re-developed or just a very tough part of suburban Buenos Aires, I can’t be sure.  Let’s just say we walked with purpose to meet our hotel-arranged car.  (Pro Tip: If you think you stand out as a basic tourist, imagine how noticeable you are if you’ve got someone with you who isn’t much over four feet, and it’s approaching midnight. Have a sure-fire plan to get home!) 

Not that I’d advise against the Argentinian beef. Back up the truck on that front, as we all did! Earlier that evening, Ed told the crowd that Mike McCready had treated the band and crew to a huge festival of amazing local beef at some point that week. (Speaking of Mike, we hadn’t been checked-in to the hotel for two hours before he joined the four of us in a very small elevator. The kids were wearing their PJ gear, and he — a relatively new Dad himself at that point — shared some welcoming words. Mommy wondered if he’d think we were “Stalkers,” and I assured her that an impromptu moment like that isn’t going to raise the hair on the back of his neck. After all, it was he who got on our elevator. Pro Tip: just smile and say “hello.”)

The following afternoon, the four of us were enjoying the hotel’s small outdoor pool area.  It was practically empty, which is likely why Eddie felt comfortable to find a chaise, alone, across the pool from us.

After a respectable 15 minutes had passed, I suggested to the kids that they go and introduce themselves.  I figured that he’d get a kick out of the fact that a couple of 8 and 10 year-old Canadians sporting PJ shirts were also enjoying the Argentinian sunshine — a very long way from home, and were clearly not going to be at school the next day (a Monday).

After 5 minutes had passed, the three of them were still yakking.  I figured that it was time to save Eddie, and went over to retrieve my offspring.  EV couldn’t have been warmer (“Hello Pops”), and continued to chat with the kids.  He asked Molly if she’d read Hunger Games, which his own daughter had recommended and was his poolside companion for the day. “Too scary” was her response.

More shocking was that Eddie had remembered Emerson’s face from the Moline, Illinois show, more than a year earlier.  “You were with your Mom.”

I’ve always been struck by what can only be called this little-known “gift.” How many thousands of people would Ed have interacted with over the course of the prior year?  Just think of all of the friends-of-friends, neighbours, random fans on the street, his kid’s school teachers, Hollywood stars, music industry titans, MLB professionals, aspiring musicians…it’s hard to even begin to tally just how many faces he would process in a given day. Let alone between October 17, 2014 and November 8, 2015, in aggregate.

And yet, this well-travelled man was able to place Emerson’s young face as though it was yesterday.  Not even in the same city or even the same country where he first saw it, where the familiar environment might contribute to the power of one’s memory recall.

I herded the kids back to their chaises, and had to break it to Mommy that, as she suspected, Ed had indeed assumed that the woman standing with Emerson in Moline had been his Mom (see prior post “What's with you and Pearl Jam? IV” Sept 6-23).  The kids, as you might imagine, took it all in stride.  How could they possibly know how unusual all of this was? Despite the fact that they had seen ~75 fans continuously lined up on the street outside of the hotel, just hoping to wave at one of the band members as they drove by over the course of their stay in Argentina.

Twenty minutes passed, and we were more than a bit surprised when Ed walked over to our corner of the pool area.  He presented the kids with a couple of personally-addressed Catch The Wave drawings, and continued the conversation.  And he met the Real Mom! On reflection, I shouldn’t be surprised that Ed appears to take those handy hotel note pads down to the pool in case a lyric pops into his head. The kids were the lucky beneficiaries of a songwriter’s habits.

The next morning, Emerson and Mommy were in the hotel lobby as we were getting ready to check-out and head to Porto Alegre, Brazil for our next show.  Eddie walked past them, said “hello,” and carried on to his black van.  Moments later, he returned with a handful of guitar picks, and and made it clear to Emerson to: “Make sure that you give some to your sister, Molly.” A man with his own two daughters, clearly.

As someone who occasionally has a tough time remembering names of people that I’ve met just 90 seconds earlier, I’ll never stop being amazed at his ability to retain all of us in his temporal lobe.

If you were to ask us what stood out about Porto Alegre, it’s that we all had to get Yellow Fever shots a month earlier to even be able to step foot in the city.  I’m all for travel vaccines, but I must admit that a full and frank family discussion was held regarding just how important it was to see this particular show (in what I’ll call the Detroit of Brazil), as it required injecting the kids with an active virus, versus heading straight to Sao Paulo and waiting for the band to catch up with us for the following concert. (Pro Tip: “The kids will then be safe from Yellow Fever for the next 10 years” isn’t as compelling an argument as you might think, unless you are planning an African safari in the near term.)

Although the culinary highlight of Porto Alegre seems to be Burger King, the concert itself was fantastic.  The crowd certainly knew what to do when Animal and Go were played, knew the English words to every song, but I was most struck by the group of a dozen young women sitting together, not too far from us.  I’ve been to more than 40 PJ shows over the last decade, and have never seen such a large group of women out-on-the-town together.  No guys in tow.  Just the joy of sharing music with your galpals.

Emerson didn’t get the requested Fortunate Son cover, but, as the years have passed, he’d tell you now (at age 16, with 19 PJ shows in 11 different countries) that he prefers the original version by CCR (Ed: We’ll still take it, however!).

As fate would have it, we bumped into some of the travelling PJ staff crew at the hotel bar, post-show, and they gave Emerson a copy of the set-list and a Mike McCready guitar pick. The largess just wouldn’t end on this birthday trip.

Sao Paulo is a banking centre, and it won’t make your bucket list of cities you just have to see before you die.  That said, we were able to visit with a fellow PJ fan and local resident that we’d met at the Eataly in Milan, Italy the prior year – one of the benefits of wearing your PJ gear when abroad is that Pearl Jammers are on the lookout for each other in such situations. (Pro Tip: an added benefit is that the Customs Guards will believe you when you say “We’re here for a concert.”) 

The other highlight was getting All Along The Watchtower, by Jimmy Hendrix, which is the one and only time I’ve heard the band play it across all of our shows.  (Pro Tip: As best you can, choose destinations that will resonate with your kids.  The Sao Paulo skyline reminds me of Boston, and while there’s lots about Brazil that’s worth enjoying, “another big city” isn’t a great draw if you already live in one back home.  We stayed clear of the Rio concert stop for safety reasons, although I’m sure the famous beaches would’ve been memorable. 😉)

If you feel so inclined, there will be an occasional opportunity to financially support a charity of interest to a member of the band: if you win the online auction, you would normally get decent “Artist Hold” Pearl Jam seats (they will not be front row on the rail, as you must line-up overnight for those), perhaps the promise of an “after-party” and - maybe - a chance to chat with a member of the band.  As part of my 50^th birthday splurge, we donated to one of these causes and found ourselves hanging out with Guitarist Stone Gossard and Drummer Matt Cameron for a few minutes in advance of the November 2015 concert at Mexico’s Foro Sol Stadium.  Although we had no reason to think we’d meet anyone other than Stone, nine year-old Emerson had the foresight to highlight on his sign for the evening that it was Matt’s birthday, along with “Show #11” and a Chicago Cubs logo (which was harmless for a Toronto Blue Jays fan given i) National League, and ii) they were still hapless at that juncture).

Eddie popped his head out of his dressing room and made a bee-line straight for Emerson. And, without a word, delivered a handful of EV Batgirl guitar picks.  We happened to be standing with a second pair of 30-something charity auction winners, who’d travelled all the way from Australia for the concert.  Perhaps embarrassed with his bounty, Emerson shared his pick haul with each of them.

A proud parent moment for sure. 

Some Pro Tips flow from the our South American tour:

i) Document everything that you’ll want to enjoy in the years that follow, when kids grow up and become a tad less free-wheeling: like this RITFW air guitar moment, a Neil Young staple of Pearl Jam shows for decades across the globe. Some folks (including many famous musicians) hate all of the smartphones at concerts, but feel free to be a parent, rather than a too-cool-for-school music fan; these parent/child moments are fleeting.

ii) Currencies are an interesting experiment in certain South American countries, so be prepared to carry both USD and the local banknotes if you can. In Argentina, for example, things are so crazy right now that there are four different exchange rates; and don’t rely on the hotel front desk to change USD to the local version of the dollar. The exchange rate might be so volatile that they just shrug, and send you down the street to knock on a certain door.

iii) If there’s an opportunity to “expose” your kids to the local art scene, do so. The Frida Khalo home/museum, for example, is as unique a spot as you’ll find in the creative world. There aren’t nearly enough female artists with global reach, and this was a chance to open Emerson’s eyes to a truly unique genre. The added benefit is that you’re likely to bump into some locals who are headed off to PJ that night — as we did. When the museum ticket-taker spots the hat/shirt combo and shouted: “Hey, Pearl Jam!” to Emerson, you have to assume that your excellent parenting choices are being confirmed at that moment in the eyes of your kid(s), right?!?!

iv) Between the time you leave for a show, and the time you get back to the hotel, be prepared for the temperature to drop by 20F degrees in certain parts of the world. If you are at an outdoor venue, the perfect short-sleeved concert shirt will be insufficient by the time the encore rolls around. Plan ahead; we were fortunate to have the right gear as it got late in Mexico:

Likewise in Sao Paulo, when the Heavens opened-up just as Lightning Bolt started. We were fortunate that Mommy anticipated the need for simple rain ponchos:

v) if you plan on making hand-lettered concert signs while abroad, take whatever markers and posterboard with you; Staples / Office Depot locations aren’t ubiquitous.

The Charity’s promised “after-party” didn’t happen, and it’s probably for the better.  While I suspect things are far tamer than they were in the 1990s, how much of the world of rock-n-roll should one expose to a pre-teen, in any event? Besides, Emerson was too busy posing for selfies with our fellow fans to hang out backstage. ;-)

MRM ©

(this post, like all blogs, is an Opinion Piece)