Pearl Jam at the Verdun Auditorium

Marc Daoust: So, a show that was significant to me, in fact, it’s a show on which I didn’t work. The luck we had, in fact, when… when we worked on events at the Auditorium, it was to be able to also see those events as a fan, or as a spectator, or as… So, the show that impressed me, it was the Pearl Jam show that took place in the ’90s, I think. Pearl Jam was a new group that was part of the grunge trend, who came came from the same background as Nirvana and then Sound Garden. They actually became big, big bands of the grunge era. So Pearl Jam performed here. And it’s a group that I liked a lot at the time.

So, we came along, friends here, to come and see the show which became, I think, one of the Auditorium’s mythical shows, because of how hot it was in the arena. In fact, I think, that, if it’s not a myth, that it was about 105 degrees in the arena. The… the firefighters had been mobilized to… to actually spray the spectators, because they were afraid that heatstrokes would happen, that there would really be a problem with the heat. I remember how much the beer they served was hot, that, it was… It was hot water, hot beer. The audience, in fact, it was full, full, full. The guys didn’t have t-shirts anymore, no one had a t-shirt or shirt on their back. Me, and we walked into the arena rather late to see the show, and there was no more place, it was completely occupied and full. So we placed ourselves on the balconies, in fact, “the balcony” we called it, where there was the figure skating office, all the way at the top of the arena. We placed ourselves there, a gang of friends and I, to see that show, which in fact has become an anthology show, because I remember, and in those days, Eddie Vedder, the singer, used to sit and chat a bit with the people after the show. He would exchange with the spectators about the show they just saw.

In fact, we were so much in a special place that the memories… that type of event, where you aren’t sure that the memories are real or not… You’re in a kind of phantasmagoric state, like, where you’re between reality and all the fantasy of a fan’s pleasure to see a rock show.