timeless melody ↝ eddie vedder

𝐨𝐧𝐞

Seattle, WA
Oct. 1990

"Hello, common waitress, I demand to be served!"

I look up and I see that Stone and Jeff have burst through the cafe doors. "Obnoxious as always, Stone."

"You know it. Gotta stay consistent." They keep walking and end up sitting at two stools in front of me. Instead of leaving it at the door where you're supposed to, Jeff brought their dripping umbrella in with him, and is creating a nice little puddle on the marble floors.

I'm gonna have to mop that up later.

"So what do you guys want to eat?" I get out my notepad, ready to write down their order.

"Nothing, actually." Jeff responds, and I slightly raise an eyebrow.

He continued, "We came to tell you to free up your schedule on Monday night. There's a gig at the Off Ramp, and Mookie Blaylock are the offical opening band." He finished with a small smile, looking at me expectantly.

I stood for a moment, confused, still holding the notepad and pencil as if I was going to take their order. "Mookie Blaylock is playing a show at the Off Ramp? Really? The basketball player?" My voice got slightly higher with each question.

Stone was the one to respond this time, "Yeah, we thought it'd be cool to bring the Nets to Seattle and give them a chance be enriched by our all-inclusive music scene, maybe venture outside of sports. Yanno, stick them on a stage, hand them some instruments, see what they can do."

I made a face and Jeff smacked his arm. "Dude, shut up." Jeff looked from Stone back to me, "We named our band Mookie Blaylock. We're the opening band." I could tell that he was proud.

Immediately I smiled, but dropped it just as fast. "Wait, how?"

Stone blinked at me. "How what?"

"How are you playing a gig already? You don't even have a singer. Are you just gonna play instrumental shit?"

Straight away Stone looked over to Jeff, and frowned, obviously annoyed, "You didn't tell her?"

"Why would I have told her? You were going to."

"Dude, no I wasn't, you were supposed to tell her."

"Oh my god, I was not! It was totally your job to tell her, man!"

This conversation wouldn't go anywhere if I didn't interrupt them. "Oh my god!" I got their attention and they stopped bickering. "I don't care whose job it was, what was I supposed to be told?"

"Eddie's our singer. Officially. And he's in Seattle, he got here a little more than a week ago."

"Jacks friend, the one from San Diego?"

They nodded.

I let me hands fall and bang on the counter in front of me. "I can't believe you didn't tell me that he was officially in the band. Or that he's even in Seattle, that's totally major!" I was only halfway mad. Okay, maybe only a quarter mad. The other three-quarters were pure excitement and joy for them.

"So what's he like then?" I ask, suddenly curious.

"I mean, none of us really know him, or much about him yet. Other than the fact that he's got a great taste in music." Jeff chuckled.

"What do you mean you don't know him yet?"

"Well, he's really shy. He doesn't really say much. Kind of sticks to himself. I'm not sure if it's cause he's, like, the new kid or whatever, or if it's just the way he is." Stone explained.