It seems that Nick, through his own lucky chance, landed sixth-row field level tickets to the first stones concert of the current stadium run and he is now raving about it, thinking about seeing them again. He's working on a write-up of the show. We were talking about it today because I'll be sitting in roughly the same place for the final show of the run, on wednesday (it's supposed to rain, unfortunately). Nick mentioned pearl jam, the only opener, and i remembered seeing them at the bridge benefit last year and how they reminded me a lot of the counting crows, with their rootsy dirges swelling on the lead singers hurt voice. and vedder, i recalled, owed a lot to joe cocker, and this brought to mind the image i had jotted in my notebook at the bridge concert - i can probably dig up the exact words - to the effect that vedder plays his stomach like a set of bagpipes, coaxing or crushing the breath out of himself as his esophagus wheezes and sighs.

Nick grokked that image and started free-styling on the phone how I should use that, and he described vedder's gastric system as a horrible bellows and squozen bagpipe. I had called Nick from my office, where I was trying to do a little writing, make a complete backup of Enterzone (it's ridiculous that we don't have a definite copy anywhere, and now we're having to move and may need to harbor the data somewhere if there's any discontinuity between hosts), tie up some loose ends, and so on.

x

Nick and I plan to see Zero on Friday at Maritime Hall in S.F. and then drive down to Santa Cruz on Saturday and see them again, at the Catalyst. The better to catch of glimmer of the roll they were on in their fall northeast and southeast tours.