tickledpink

i came across this article that came out back in 2001. it’s one of my all-time favorites because it’s the band members themselves doing the talking (with additional comments by notable personalities involved with the band) about significant moments in the band’s history.

Have you ever wondered what PJ thought about playing in Manila? Jeff Ament has the answer!

AMENT:

  Manila was such a wild experience. The place held 8,000 people, and there were
  10,000 other people outside. It was a covered open air venue so people were
  creating these human ladders, trying to climb up and see. The police showed
  up with water cannons, sprayed everybody off the wall. And inside, too, to be
  in a completely different part of the world, have indigenous people all singing
  along, so cranked, those are the shows where I have to play with my head up
  the whole time. There’s a whole different force motivating you to play.

Do you have any idea who PJ’s weirdest fan is (aside from me :P):

SILVER:

  In Texas, a very, very drunk Dennis Rodman refused to leave the stage no matter
  what they did or how firmly they asked. He would go behind Stone and start strumming
  on the guitar while Stone was playing or just walk in front of Stone and talk
  about how incredible each guy was. They finally got him a stool and sat him
  in front of the drum kit, and he sat there for a song looking like the kid in
  the corner pouting; then he looked back and realized he didn’t know the drummer.
  He spent what looked like eternity to me leering at Matt like, "Who are
  you? Show me what you got."

And more interesting reads…

Dave Grohl talks about seeing PJ for the first time:

GROHL:

  I didn’t sit and watch them play until the show in San Diego, where Eddie climbed
  the fuckin’ lighting rig. I swear to God he was like 250 feet up in the air.
  It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen live in my entire life. I’ve
  seen people cut themselves, I’ve seen people shit, I’ve seen people get beat
  up onstage, and I’ve seen people break bones, break their backs, and get concussions.
  Honestly, I was horrified. I was really scared that he was gonna die.

Ed and Mike talk about the Nirvana rivalry:

VEDDER:

  In San Diego we were playing with Nirvana and the Chili Peppers. I had climbed
  an I-beam that you could kind of wrap your hand around. So I got to the top,
  and I thought, "Well, how do I get down?" I either just give it up
  and look like an idiot, or I go for it. So I decided to try it, and it was really
  ridiculously high, like 100 feet, something mortal. I was thinking that my mother
  was there, and I didn’t want her to see me die. So somehow I finally got back
  onstage, finished the song, and went to the side and threw up. I knew that was
  really stupid, beyond ridiculous. But to be honest, we were playing before Nirvana.
  You had to do something. Our first record was good, but their first record was
  better.

McCREADY:

  I remember after the New Year’s Eve 1991 show, somebody running onto the bus
  and saying Nirvana had just hit No. 1. I remember thinking, "Wow; it’s
  on now." It changed something. We had something to prove—that our band
  was as good as I thought it was.

Ed talks about Cobain’s death:

VEDDER:

  I remember tearing up my hotel room in a complete rage when I found out [that
  Cobain had died]. We played that night [near Washington, D.C.], and I still
  question that. [Fugazi's] Ian MacKaye was there, and he offered to take me in
  that night. So I went to get my suitcase from the hotel, but I didn’t have a
  key, so I had to go up with the maintenance guy to let me in the room. When
  he opened the door, I just looked at him and said, "You have to understand
  what happened today."

On Ed seeking Bono’s advice:

WILSON:

  Eddie was seeking the advice of Bono a lot. After the shows you’d see Bono and
  Eddie over in a corner in deep discussion. And they would go off together and
  stay at Bono’s place, and they would have stayed up and had some wine and really
  talked about the business and sort of argued about it.

Bono on Pearl Jam:

BONO: I’m a fan of the Pearl Jam organization, of what you might call
    the culture around the group. It’s like the Grateful Dead. We’ve been thinking
    a lot about that West Coast way of doing business. I must say, I’m not sure
    how long U2’s going to have the energy to take on the mainstream. And the
    Pearl Jam/Grateful Dead model is something to be really proud of. They exist
    entirely unto themselves. They don’t depend on the media, don’t depend on
    the radio.

Chris Cornell on Pearl Jam:

CORNELL:

  Better than any other band almost in history to have had that kind of enormous
  success, they dealt with it really eloquently. I think that set a great example
  to other musicians that, you know what, you can actually control the media spotlight.
  I think they stayed vital. The records they made didn’t necessarily appeal to
  the same number of fans who were into Ten, but they appealed to a lot
  of people. They sold millions of records without having to make videos and without
  having to do an overhyped press campaign for each record.

Ed’s little secret:

CROWE:

  Eddie used to have a secret DAT tape recorder. Elvis Costello came backstage
  to kind of hail Pearl Jam and meet Eddie and he had the DAT running the whole
  time, secretly under his jacket, because he wanted to save these experiences.
  That’s how much of a fan he was.

For the full article, see:
http://www.fivehorizons.com/archive/articles/spin801.shtml

yes, charmaine, i know this is overdue… hehe…

it was raining monkeys in makati and charmaine and i were taking a detour from our usual post-training glorietta fix. she was literally aching to get back to the inn because she had some serious crappy "business" to attend to. while for me, the thought of lugging two audit binders all the way to the mall was as appealing as a roasted frog.

so there we were in front of philam tower waiting for a cab. after what seemed like three busy seasons, we had come to discover that there were only three kinds of taxis in makati: (1) those that did not stop because they were occupied (2) those that did not stop because they had better things to do than pick up passengers (duh!), and (3) those that did stop, but never for US.

after an hour of standing in the rain, we were resigned to the fact that no taxi was going to save our sorry asses in the next few minutes. and rather than walk all the way to st. illian’s where god only knows what streets are flooded, we decided to grab a bite… okay, now this is where i tell you how amazed i am with charmaine’s self-control. an hour back, she was dying to attend to that "business" i was telling you about. but my, oh my! here she is eating a sundae on top of her mcdonald’s value meal. talk about will power!

just as we stepped out of mcdonald’s, a taxi stops to pick up a girl that hadn’t even been there for 5 minutes! the powers that be must be punishing charmaine and me for being tax collectors in our past lives…

a half hour later, we were still soaked and grumpy. i was whining about how badly i wanted to go back to cebu where the taxis actually stop for passengers, where the jeepneys won’t ever let you down, and where there is SOS!  [SOS, aside from being the most recognizable acronym in the world (i think), is a crime my officemates often charge me with.]  it was at this point that our predicament was simply too depressing that our fragile psyches decided to deal with it the best way we knew how - to laugh like crazy!!! we didn’t give a damn if, to the rest of the world, we looked like demented yuppies that had one beer too many.

then all of a sudden, a cwwaazzyy idea hit me. i sent an SOS: "it’s raining hard. i’ve been waiting for over an hour for a taxi. i need a ride home…" and then sinus, who had no idea i was in makati, called me and said that, yeah, he’d come pick me up. then i ask him if it was pouring in cebu city and he says…. NO. haha… that just made charmaine and me roll on the floor with laughter.

but what was creepy about it was that the second i hung up on sinus, a taxi magically appears out of nowhere and stops for us! now, i’ve been known to exaggerate things. but this isn’t one of them… 1 1/2 hours of no taxi and the second i end my SOS call, here comes a taxi to our rescue! if that’s not creepy, then tell me pigs do fly.

but our crazy night did not stop there.. i told the cab driver to go to paseong tamo and he says, "okay. just show me the way there." uh-oh. i mean, seriously, i’m kpmg’s biggest airhead when it comes to directions… charmaine and i looked at each other like what he really said was, "i had dog food and cat piss for dinner"… of course we had to pretend like we knew exactly where we were going or the driver would have given us a tour of makati…. to prove my point about having zero sense of direction, i was just about to tell the driver to turn right but fortunately, charmaine beat me to it. fortunately for us, because the right way was left.. haha…

for all of my so-called adult life, i have been, to put it mildly, attached. so, i’m just realizing now that it is of utmost importance that our honorable lawmakers stop whining about moral revolution and start passing a bill declaring matchmaking an act punishable by death through a firing squad (archers, please step up to the plate; should serve them right for playing cupid!).

it was my first day back in smpsi and i hadn’t so much as gotten one client schedule and already, they’ve found me a possible match! our university professors warned us that audit life would be no walk in the park. but what i’ve discovered is that it’s way easier to resolve internal control issues with management than to (politely) field romantic suggestions. and as if that wasn’t bad enough, i come home to a beaming uncle, who wanted me to hook up with his (seaman) apprentice, whom he had brought along with him.

now at the risk of being labeled as overreacting (which i actually am known for at times haha), i had to check myself if i had painted a "wanted: male gigolo" sign in bold red letters on my forehead and had somehow forgotten to scrub it off in the shower. hmm…

after seeing that my forehead was just its usual shiny self, i had to finally (helplessly) admit that well, other people just can’t stand single people; that their altruistic tendencies automatically kick in and rob them of all reason. i say unreasonable, for surely if reason prevailed, they’d be off my case. for pete’s sake, my status is complicated enough as it is. i’m single but i’m… oh, nevermind. some things are best kept off the blogsphere

my nephew franz has been an animal lover since he was old enough to pet things.. er, no double meaning there.. this post is rated G at one time, taray needed two frogs for a lab experiment. franz gladly caught them with his bare hands… so for his 5th birthday, i decided to get him a tiny green turtle. it’ll probably die before long; i’m sure franz won’t be content with just looking at it..

the other day, taray threatened franz that we wouldn’t buy him "something" if he kept throwing tantrums… his reply was: "i already know what that something is. it’s a u-v-s-t .. turtle!" kids spell the darndest way! haha!

i brought home the turtle today. it’s sitting as dead as the pebbles in the plastic crib TY put him in.. but just as i proudly showed the turtle to sinus (he’s paying for it; franz is his godson"), he tells me that it’s not even a turtle but a terrapin! don’t make a face just yet - he was just being his usual geeky self. remember the first scene from the movie apocalypto? i swore it was a wild pig those diaper-clad men were chasing after. but no, sinus corrects me with a smirk, it’s a tapir…!

now, if u don’t know what those animals are, i implore you to let me know. it can be comforting to know that i am not alone in my stupidity … hehe..