Thursday night turned out to be quite the eventful night. Not only did we head out to Aux Quatre Jeudis, a pub near my work, but my Pearl Jam Super Deluxe Edition of Ten arrived from UPS, only five days before it should have! Awesome!
I headed out to pick up this set. Why do parcel delivery services have to be out in the middle of nowhere? Both DHL and UPS are in far away areas of Ottawa. I ended up having to pay $16 extra to get the package (must have been some duty charges on it) but that’s not a problem. This thing was massive.
I went to Vero’s place for some good grub and then I finally managed to open up the set. The set is beautiful. It comes in a cloth bound box the size of vinyl records. You pull out the three vinyl records in the set – the remastered version of Ten, the REMIXED and remastered version of Ten (dubbed Ten Redux), and the double LP set of the Drop in the Park concert.
Then there is a box which has a ton of goodies inside…CDs of the two Ten versions, a DVD of the MTV Unplugged concert, a cassette tape of the original demo that Eddie Vedder sent to the band. It is quite hilarious to listen to as the lyrics are quite different on the song ‘Once’ whereas the other two songs (Alive, Footsteps) are surprisingly indifferent than what we’ve heard nowadays.
There is also a bunch of photographs, album liner notes, backstage passes, postcards, all sorts of memorabilia of the era. My favourite part is a composition book filled with notes, photos and oddities from the era. Like a diary of sorts. It has given me ideas of what I want to do for my EuroTrip 2005 album which I’ve pondered for many a year.
I popped in the Drop in the Park LP and took a listen with a beer while Vero dozed off next to me on the couch. It’s quite interesting to hear Pearl Jam when they first started out. They were some crazy guys back then…Eddie Vedder was known for climbing up on the lighting rigs and swinging down by his microphone cord. I saw a video of this on Youtube the other day and I thought he was quite insane. There’s also this amazing photo in the set of him jumping from a lighting/camera guy’s stand above the crowd. (edit: Hey, I found it!) The look on the cameraman’s face is amazing!
Later on in the night, we headed out to Aux Quatre Jeudis for a few pints with Julie and Luc from Vero’s work. On the way, we dropped off at the University so I could return some books. On the way back to the car I wanted to make Vero laugh so I ran and leaped into the air. Unfortunately for myself, I somehow tripped on the way down and I landed hard on my knee and my hands. Argh! I made it back to the car fast but Vero was there laughing because she thought it was part of the act! It most definitely was not and I was a hurting man! The worst was my left hand which I have confirmed still has a piece of glass inside it from running through the glass door at Uncle Greg’s place years ago (I was saving a baby, of course!). It is sensitive whenever I push on a certain spot and that spot was hit hard when falling down. I could see some blood appearing under the skin so I know that glass is definitely in there somewhere!
We then headed to Aux Quatre Jeudis for a few drinks with Luc and Julie, a couple of people that Vero works with. Julie was in town as an anchorwoman for the week. We ended up on the heated patio for the night and the night descended into madness with Vero and I returning home around 2:30. This did not bode well for yours truly the next morning when he headed for work in the morning!
The next morning was quite the ordeal while trying to maintain my composure. The light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a freight train coming to pummel me head over heels. Things started looking up by the time lunch came around as the team headed out to Molto for my going away lunch. I had an excellent pizza (way too big!) and the team provided me with some excellent reading…a book entitled “What’s your poo telling you?”. I thought this was hilarious and we found that it had some excellent medical points and drawings inside it.