I never did the prodigy thing but the AOL group was probably just as super tight as you describe. Met a lot of good people there, and some crazzzzyyy MFers as well. One day is was cruising the messages and I saw one that caught my eye and it was in the style of how Ed speaks, and how he typed out lyrics (most like the in Vitalogy booklet). I took a chance and reached out, we exhanged a few IM's. I was skeptical of course, this was in 1996 afterall. He asked to get my number and call me and initially i said Nope I don;t know who you are for sure. Then I said for him to call my work and we can conference call and that was agreeable to him. Hurriedly I called my manager on duty and said to CLEAR THE LINES, Eddie Vedder might be calling for me and I got the Oh Sure response and then I heard the other line ring and told her to grab it before anyone else got it. She connected us on the conference call and all I needed to hear was the voice and sure enough it was him. I gave him my home number at that point and he called and we talked for a few minutes. My brother ran to an extension phone and recorded the call. I'll need to look that up and see if i still have it! we talked more over the course of the year. He sent me some incomplete lyrics about chopping wood and I said that was fuel to burn. Did that remain with him to become part of BreakerFall? I don't know.. but I like to think so.. Then we stopped chatting as he wasn't on AOL much and they were recording Yield at the time. Then in November, about the 5th i'd say as it was a week before the show n Santa Cruz and the opening slot for the 4 nights in Oakland for the Rolling Stones, my manager takes a phone call. We are both at the front counter and I am selling tickets on TicketMaster and she asks who is calling and then she tells me to take the call as it is Eddie Vedder! I tell her to put it on hold for a sec, collect my cool, and we talk some more and he says he has 13 tickets for me and 12 friends for Santa Cruz. I told he that we surmised it was either going to be in Sacramento or Santa Cruz due to the 75 mile blackout rule that I heard about. I quickly assign all but one of the tickets to friends and we are excited for the week coming up. We get to the show and there is a madhouse of people. I meet up with some early birds from my group and we just hang out. I run around back where i find Eric Johnson the tour manager and yell at him to confirm my guest list. My wife was VERY SKEPTICAL of this whole thing and I was going to be made a fool and be embarrassed. He asks my name and how many and I said, Dirty Frank (that was my AOL name :cringe: i actually gave my real name) and plus 12. he started laughing.. HARD and says nice try. Before he finished those words his face drops dead and says yea you are good. How did you get this? I told him to talk to his boy Ed. I ended up giving that extra ticket to a local SC college kid who missed out. he was stoked to say the least.
that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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