The Schoolyear of Scott

Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of the greatest concert I’ve ever been to, and perhaps the greatest concert I will ever attend.  My friend Mark and I traveled to Columbia, South Carolina to see my favorite band, Pearl Jam, and by the end of the night, the two of us had shared a bottle of wine with Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder.  How did this happen?  The story is one filled with awesomeness and should be used as Exhibit A in the argument of why Pearl Jam is the most fan-friendly band around.

When Pearl Jam announced in the Spring of 2008 that they would be going on a limited East Coast tour over the Summer, I was naturally excited.  I had saved up vacation days at my job for just this occasion and was planning on doing an extended road trip to follow the band, something that I hadn’t done since 2003.  Once the tour dates were announced, though, my excitement began to wain.  For the second tour in a row, Pearl Jam wasn’t coming anywhere near Atlanta and, perhaps most strangely, only one show on the tour fell on a weekend.  These developments made preparing an extended road trip difficult, but, with the use of seven vacations days spread out over a two week period, I made it happen.

Columbia, South Carolina is a little over four hours from Atlanta but was the closest show to my then home, so I purchased Fan Club tickets to the show, along with shows in Washington DC, Hartford and two shows in NYC.  Fan Club tickets, you see, are a limited number of “the best seats in the house” that are only available to those fans that pay the $20 annual fee.  Since the 2003 tour, if you were able to purchase Fan Club seats (basically a fiasco in its own right that in the past has included mailing note cards to a PO Box with money orders attached but now just involves an online purchasing system that cannot come close to handling the bandwidth of crazy Pearl Jam fans and crashes on a regular basis) you were assigned seating based on your seniority in the Fan Club.  If you joined the Fan Club in, say, 1991, and scored tickets, you were almost guaranteed front row seats.  If you joined the Fan Club in 2000, like me, and scored tickets, you were almost guaranteed row 21 seats.  Now those seats are nothing to complain about, but the whole system changed with the 2008 tour.

It was announced that while the seniority system would stay in place for the majority of the fan club seats, the 1st, 2nd, 9th and 10th rows would be decided entirely by random, giving me a chance to sit front row for the first time ever.  As had been a common Pearl Jam practice, fan club members wouldn’t find out exactly where their seats were until the afternoon of the show in order to prevent us from scalping the tickets beforehand (who would do such a thing?).  So, on June 14, I drove up from Atlanta and Mark drove down from Chapel Hill, NC to Columbia to have a weekend of fun before the concert on the 16th.

The weekend was filled with stories (Columbia is a surprisingly CRAZY city) but the anticipation of the concert was growing.  Sunday afternoon, I noticed two monster tour buses pulling into the Hilton Hotel and quickly assumed it was Pearl Jam.  It wasn’t until later that evening that my suspicions were confirmed (by the sign on the bus that I somehow missed that said “Pearl Jam”).

On the walk back to our hotel, The Clarion (classy), we saw the mobile recording studio bus that Pearl Jam uses to release the concert audio the very next day on their website.  This bus was much easier to spot and identify.

We even met two kids at a pool hall that evening who claimed to work at the Hilton and that Pearl Jam had indeed blocked off some floors at the hotel.  After not really believing them, we were proven wrong when we ran into them the next day and they showed us the tickets that were given to them by Eddie Vedder as a tip after delivering him room service.  All these events were building this concert up in our heads and it was almost fate as to what happened the next day.

The morning of the show was miserable.  The box office didn’t open until noon, so we couldn’t go find out where our seats were until then.  I couldn’t stop going to the bathroom I was so nervous.  I met my friend William for lunch but couldn’t stop looking at my watch the entire time, counting down the hours until the show.  After lunch, I went back to the hotel, picked up Mark, and we headed to the box office to pick up our tickets.

When we got to the arena, there was no parking so Mark kept the car running while I went in to do the pickup.  There was barely a line and I made it to the pickup window within minutes.  I gave the guy my ID and waited for him to find my envelope containing the tickets (a nerve racking experience in itself…in New York in 2003, they had my tickets listed under Elliott, Gold Scott.  Thankfully, this year I was listed correctly as Gold, Scott Elliott).  While waiting, I noticed a fairly large sign stating NO CAMERAS ALLOWED.  I’d never seen this sign before at a Pearl Jam show, and after asking around, we were told it was a new policy.  Thanks to this “new policy”, which we found out later was just BS, we have very few photos documenting the experience.

So anyway, the man returns with my envelope.  I open it up right then and there to make sure that there are two tickets in there before I sign the form that is required and I quickly noticed that they are row I.  But wait…I wasn’t wearing my glasses at the time and it quickly sinks in that it isn’t an I but actually a 1.  We scored front row tickets!  I put the tickets back in the envelope as fast as I can, sign the required form (barely…I mean I was really shaking at this point) and hurry back to the car not sure how to break the news to Mark.

I get back to the car and try my hardest to put on a poker face but truthfully I don’t even know how I got my words out.  “Mark, I have good news and I have bad news.  The bad news is that we aren’t going to be able to bring our cameras into the show.  The good news….WE HAVE FRONT ROW SEATS FOR PEARL JAM!”.  I don’t remember much, but the celebration included Mark getting out of the car (while the engine was running) and pacing.  After much celebration on the side of the road, we did what any normal group of people would do and went to the nearby Subway to regroup.

We had seats 23 and 24 and after some quick research on my blackberry, we learned that each row had 24 seats, so while we were front row, we would be at either the extreme left or right of the stage.  No big deal we though, because WE HAVE FRONT ROW SEATS FOR PEARL JAM!  After some more nervous pacing around the Subway, and then the hotel room, we decide to make the trek to the Wishlist Foundation Fundraiser (Pearl Jam pre-party) to have a couple beers (but only a couple…we didn’t want to have to pee during the show) and participate in the fun and games.  Sure enough, my luck hadn’t run out just yet as I won one of the raffles and got a free Pearl Jam T-Shirt.  Score!  I also bought a snazzy Pearl Jam Coozy documenting the 2008 tour.

We headed into the arena at the earliest we could and scored some necessary swag (posters and stickers) and then headed down to our FRONT ROW SEATS.  Now, I don’t want to sound too cocky here, but walking to FRONT ROW SEATS is a trip.  You have to go through like four ticket takers, each one having something congratulatory to say about your seats.  We also had to get two sets of wrist bands, one for being in the “pit” area and another for being front row.  Our joy grew exponentially, though, when we learned that the seats in each row were divided into even numbers and odd numbers (meaning they went 1,3,5,7…8,6,4,2 from left to right).  Again, our seats were 23 and 24 meaning WE HAD DEAD CENTER FRONT ROW SEATS FOR PEARL JAM!.

We spent the next hour talking to our neighbors, each of whom was as excited as us since they too had just won the lottery.  But they didn’t have as good of seats as us.  Out of the 18,000 people there that night, we had the two best seats.

The Kings of Leon opened, about three months before Top 40 radio had any idea who they were.  I only had one CD of theirs at the time but I rocked out as hard as I possibly could during their 45 minute set.  Eddie Vedder even came out and sang Slow Night, So Long with the band and we caught the Kings’ lead singer’s guitar pick.  It was amazing.  The closest I’d ever been to a real concert before this was when Howie Day played the Clairmont Campus at Emory and, when he asked the crowd if we wanted to do a sing along, I responded “NO YOU SUCK” from the front row (his reaction was awesome and can be heard on the bootleg from the show).

Pearl Jam came on at about 8:45pm and played for nearly 3 hours.  They played a set filled with rarities, allowing me to hear six songs I’d never heard before in concert.  The highlight, however, was during Even Flow (which, in the 13 shows I have seen so far, is the only Pearl Jam song that I have ever used as a bathroom break).  During the instrumental jam, Eddie went back stage and brought out a bottle of wine.  He took a chug from it and then, I guess from noticing how hard I was rocking out, points directly at me and motions that he is going to toss me his bottle of wine.  Now let it be said that while we were front row, there is still about a five foot space from where I was standing to where the stage was, and the stage was also probably four feet high.  Eddie is also about five and a half feet tall, so I’m not sure how far of a toss this was, but let me tell you, it was a far throw.  I am also sweating perfusly at this point and all I could think about in those split seconds was “he is going to throw me a bottle of wine and there is no way I’m going to be able to catch it”.  Somehow, though, I caught the bottle of wine (skip to about the 7:40 mark in the video below to see the toss…sadly, you do not see the catch).

I took a huge chug and then passed it to Mark to drink from as well.  We also shared the bottle with the guys sitting on my right (which in retrospect, I never should have done.  They promised to send me all these pictures they took with us and never did, despite constant emails from me) and, after nearly giving the cork away, I took it back and kept it as a souvenir.  Later on Eddie threw his guitar pick at us and Mark was able to grab it.  Too cool!

At the show in DC six days later, I actually won the lottery a second time, getting second row seats this time.  Eddie waved to me and gave me a look, and while he waves at a lot of people, I believe he actually remembered me.  Nothing will compare to that night in Columbia though.

To celebrate the one year anniversary of that night, tonight I’m headed to Baltimore with my brother to see Eddie Vedder solo.  I actually won a lottery of sorts to get these tickets as its in an Opera House that only seats 2,500.  there were very few seats of Fan Club seats available (rumors are there were only around 50), so there is a very good chance my seats will be great.  Here’s to hoping Eddie remembers me once again!

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