Half a lifetime ago when I was starting to figure out who I want to be I heard a song by a band called Pearl Jam. Soon it would become a huge hit to the point where it was played ad naseum on every radio station in the country. Eventually I would grow to tune the song out and no longer identify with the young man in the story and his screwed up relationship with his parents. In fact a few years back at a Pearl Jam show I took the song’s intro as my cue it was time for a bathroom break.
Tonight in the throws of insomnia I was channel surfing. Somewhere in the dark recess that is late night cable TV I found the show “Storytellers.” I did not even realize the show was still on the air. Had I not known better I would have guessed the show was at least a decade old. Then I started to notice the band was looking more like a group of dads that get together in someone’s garage to do Beach Boy covers and less like what was once the biggest rock band in the country.
The story Eddie Vedder told about “Alive” made the tune meaningful again for me. He said it was autobiographical (as you probably guessed). He also said that over the years as audiences have sang along they have “broken the curse.” What was once a young unknown musician exorcising his demons grew into a chart-topping hit. Somewhere in that process it became a song about hope and healing and no longer about teen angst.
Yeah maybe I over analyzed that moment. It is after all 1 A.M. It just seemed as I watched this group of people collectively pushing middle age sing along it occurred to me that there is some sort of cyclical beauty to the moment. We are ALL still alive. A band that survived grunge and its backlash coming from a city and scene that took a few lives over the years survived. Those of us who came of age with that tune in the background are still alive. For one brief moment I reclaimed that first time I heard a song that didn’t sound like everything else on the radio. Once again that song talked about a kid dealing with his f-ed up family. It was no longer background music but a message of hope. Time heals all.
Tonight in the throws of insomnia I was channel surfing. Somewhere in the dark recess that is late night cable TV I found the show “Storytellers.” I did not even realize the show was still on the air. Had I not known better I would have guessed the show was at least a decade old. Then I started to notice the band was looking more like a group of dads that get together in someone’s garage to do Beach Boy covers and less like what was once the biggest rock band in the country.
The story Eddie Vedder told about “Alive” made the tune meaningful again for me. He said it was autobiographical (as you probably guessed). He also said that over the years as audiences have sang along they have “broken the curse.” What was once a young unknown musician exorcising his demons grew into a chart-topping hit. Somewhere in that process it became a song about hope and healing and no longer about teen angst.
Yeah maybe I over analyzed that moment. It is after all 1 A.M. It just seemed as I watched this group of people collectively pushing middle age sing along it occurred to me that there is some sort of cyclical beauty to the moment. We are ALL still alive. A band that survived grunge and its backlash coming from a city and scene that took a few lives over the years survived. Those of us who came of age with that tune in the background are still alive. For one brief moment I reclaimed that first time I heard a song that didn’t sound like everything else on the radio. Once again that song talked about a kid dealing with his f-ed up family. It was no longer background music but a message of hope. Time heals all.
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