Last night, a little bit of TV history was made when Conan O'Brien made his debut as the 5th host of television staple, The Tonight Show. (Side trivia - can you name the other 4? Jeopardy waiting music.......Jay Leno, Johnny Carson, Jack Parr, and Steve Allen).
Conan had a hilarious debut. He is very funny, and a great Tonight Show host for the Obama generation. He's funny without being caustic, witty, self depreciating, and great with an audience. In short the perfect TV host for my generation. Personally, I don't think Jay Leno is funny. I get that he is funny, but not my kind of funny. And Johnny Carson was the host for my grandparents generation. Every generation has their Tonight Show host, and I definitely relate to Conan.
As I was watching The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien's very first musical guest, another thought crossed my mind. The musical guest was Pearl Jam. In the "Feeling Completely Old" category (I'm in that category alot these days) next year is the 20th anniversary of Pearl Jam.
In the Fall of 1991, an actor at UMass who was a friend of mine came to rehearsal about 10 or 15 minutes late. When we asked why he was late, his explanation was that he was listening to this amazing album called Ten and he kept playing it over and over again and that it was one of the greatest album's he's ever heard. I, for one, though that was a bad excuse, but interesting that he felt that way about Pearl Jam and Ten. Of course, I had never heard of them. I was a tour guide at the University of Massachusetts and one of the highlights of the tour was the "sell" to the potential college students about all the cool bands that have played at UMass. I remember seeing all the 8 1/2" X 11" multicolored posters for Pearl Jam playing in the Student Union Ballroom (and not the larger FAC Concert Hall) all over campus. Tickets were sold out to Pearl Jam. One day, I listened to some of the songs from my friend Tom Berry (who had every cool album out every week) and was blown away by the album even though I was definitely not into grunge. The actor was Rob Corddry, now a recognized and very funny film actor in his own right. Rob was right, Pearl Jam was great. And now here they are 20 years later, outlasting all of their contemporaries. Scarily enough, Eddie Vedder is turning into the new Bob Dylan.
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