{"id":28766,"date":"2017-05-29T13:01:26","date_gmt":"2017-05-29T20:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/?p=28766"},"modified":"2017-06-01T21:40:37","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T04:40:37","slug":"the-harder-they-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/archive\/2017\/05\/the-harder-they-fall","title":{"rendered":"The Harder They Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best thing about aging is that with each passing year, you are less vulnerable to what life throws your way. The things that affected you deeply as a teenager \u2014 both good and bad \u2014 are now just manageable parts of your life, to be dealt with as any adult would.<\/p>\n

For the most part, I\u2019ve enjoyed this transition, and you couldn\u2019t pay me enough to be a teenager again.<\/p>\n

Except…<\/p>\n

The music.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not a month goes by when I don\u2019t feel incredibly thankful to have grown up in the cradle of the early \u201890s Seattle music scene<\/a>, but Chris Cornell\u2019s passing this month really made me think extra hard about what music is and how it fits into the lives of those who perform it and those who enjoy it.<\/p>\n

The fact of the matter is, other than my wife and my health, there is nothing I value more in my life than having gone through my teenage years in a city as it gave birth to a musical movement. I imagine this is also how people felt in San Francisco or London in the late 1960s, but the examples are few and far between. Even when new genres appear, it is rare they are so concentrated in one region.<\/p>\n

I remember vividly the first time I saw grunge in person. On January 17th, 1992, a couple of my friends \u2014 Chris and Chuck \u2014 asked me if I wanted to go see this band called \u201cPearl Jam\u201d at the Moore Theatre that night. Since we usually just spent our weekends getting baked in parking lots and listening to reggae, this sounded like as good of an idea as any. I was into Zeppelin and a bunch of other bands at the time, but as far as I knew, no great music came out of Seattle.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We got lit before the show and then headed down to the floor where a bunch of our friends were. I was not prepared for what happened over the course of the next hour and a half.<\/p>\n

The band started playing and it was LOUD. People on the floor jumped up and down, and before I knew it, something struck my head from above. It was a person, Jesus-Christ-posed on their back, getting passed across top of the crowd like a beach ball. Then that person was thrown onto the stage where they stood up, pumped their fist in the air, and then dove head first back into the pit.<\/p>\n

Ten minutes later, that was me, and then each of my friends, over and over and over again.<\/p>\n

Here’s a shot of my friend Mike (now a cosmetic surgeon!), with a shirt on his head, from the footage referenced below:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Just as the euphoria of learning to stage dive was peaking, I noticed everyone around me was looking up at the balcony. What the hell was happening on the balcony?<\/p>\n

This was happening on the balcony:<\/p>\n

\"Eddie<\/p>\n

Eddie Vedder was threatening to jump from 15 feet up while the band played on in the background. It looked like suicide to me. Maybe not intentional suicide, but \u201cI\u2019m going to do this and if I die, so be it\u201d<\/em> suicide.<\/p>\n

He stood up there looking down at hundreds of people he’d never met for what seemed like five minutes… and then he jumped.<\/p>\n

He hit the crowd with enough force to break his neck if he landed wrong, but with the soft touch of an egg-crate mattress, the pit would not let that happen. WE would not let that happen.<\/p>\n

You can experience an abbreviated version of the night by watching the Even Flow video. This is the concert at which it was filmed. I can make out my friends Chuck and Mike (on stage, shirt over head) in the video but haven’t positively ID’d myself in the sea of bodies.<\/p>\n