12 years old again!

I made a New Year's resolution to write on here every day. Hey look! It's the end of March. Well done. Anyway, I'm writing on here now, so back off.

This week Pearl Jam released a remastered copy of Ten, their first album. I have been down a bit lately due to a slew of unfortunate circumstances, but this news made me inexplicably happy. When I popped that CD into my car stereo I was instantly transported back in time.

It was the end of summer, 1991. My brother Dan had his learners permit and light blue 1971 VW bug. How he convinced my parents to let him take it on his own, and take me with him, I'll never know. Perhaps it was because we were running an errand for them. We were on our way to pick up another brother, Tim, from football practice at the middle school. 

It was late in the afternoon and hot as hell, as August in Utah tends to be. The bug had no air conditioner so were forced to drive with the windows down. This made the radio almost impossible to hear, but Dan was excited about whatever it was he was listening to, a new tape of some or other group. I recall hearing just bits and pieces of the first few songs, but when it got to the third Dan cranked the volume (using a small linchpin that had been clamped around the end of a stem that had long since parted ways with the actual volume knob). 

For as long as I live I will not forget how I felt in that moment. With the volume turned up to what a teenager considers the appropriate volume, and a reasonable person considers permanently damaging, the opening riff to Alive rang out through those tiny German windows. I couldn't recall a time in my short life to that point when a piece of music made me feel exhilarated the way this did. For the rest of the drive I was held captive by every note of that cassette tape. My entire system was lifted and dropped by the rise and fall of melodies and moods imprinted on that magnetic tape. In the weeks and months that followed I would sneak that tape from my brother's stereo and listen to it on a Walkman so he wouldn't know I had it. I memorized every second of that album. Every tune, every word as best I could (though I admit there were some words I couldn't understand and to this day I sing the words I know are wrong). 

A few years later I got my first CD player. Ten was one of the first CDs I bought (it may have been the very first as I was given The John Lennon Collection by Chris, The Eagles Greatest Hits Volume I by Alicia, my girlfriend at the time, and Radiohead's Pablo Honey by Mark, which I still believe is their best album). My fist copy of the CD was stolen at school. The culprit is still at large. The second copy I had was borrowed by a friend, Jake, then was subsequently smashed in a car accident. My third copy was one of many casualties of an ex-girlfriend and the fourth, a used copy bought at a local record store, also met its end in a car crash. By this point I had a digital copy of the album and felt it would be acceptable for me not to purchase a replacement.

This brings us to last Tuesday. I had to decide between buying the new version of the album that formed the foundation of my musical taste for the rest of my life and the season 3 DVD of Venture Brothers as I was short on cash and had only the remains of a Best Buy gift card I was given this past Christmas. It was a tough choice, but the moment I got in the car and undressed that factory packaged masterpiece I knew I made the right decision. 

A wise man once said that old friendships fade away, and love falls apart, but I want Ten to know that it has not spent a day outside my heart. A lot of people liked that album, but moved on in Pearl Jam's later years. I have never faltered in my love for that band and I look forward to each opportunity I get to slip in that disk and feel like I'm 12 years old again.