At the same time that Pearl Jam sang “Jeremy” and “Why Go”, songs about anger and shooters in Algés, Donald Trump was shot in Pennsylvania. We still knew nothing when Eddie Vedder asked the election stage to heal, heal, heal. But by then, it was already too late
We have elections coming up and I hope they are healing elections and we can get rid of cancer and heal ourselves. And I pray the same for all the countries that are going through problems right now. I hope we can find good leaders and heal. It is the people who find the leaders, not the ones who find themselves.” Eddie Vedder, around 1am on Sunday, at Nos Alive in Algés, just before singing “Imagine” by John Lennon. Trump had been shot about an hour earlier, but few of those present would have known about it. Including Eddie, who cries “pain” and Trump shouts “fight!”. Pain and struggle, pain and struggle.
Music concerts can be like capsules, supersonic ships in which we travel not in space or time, but towards the possibility of beauty. Big concerts are an escape from the outside and an invasion from the inside, we separate ourselves from the world while sharing a spontaneous and ephemeral communion. That’s how it was this Saturday in Algés, at Nos Alive: everyone had their mobile phones in their hands filming and lighting, but no one was there reading the news. No one said or heard that Mr. Trump was shot and Pearl Jam gave one of the great electric release concerts from our dynamism. And yet…
Algés was the place of the opposite, proof that we can still be happy and always return to the same places with the same people. Two hours of repertoire and still half a wish list left, and two songs, Imagine of John Lennon and Rockin’ in the free world, by Neil Young, nothing about revival and everything about hope.
Around 11:30pm – more or less at the time when a bullet blew the ear of the former President of the USA and maybe in the future – two songs were sung in a row, Why Go e Jeremy. They are both from the first album mythical, Ten (1991), both Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament, both about American children starved for love and fueled by anger.
Jeremy It is inspired by two stories, the story of Jeremy Wade Delle, who was a footnote in a newspaper for committing suicide in the classroom by shooting himself in the mouth as a form of revenge against the classmates who harassed him and the school that did not protect him. with him; and another child, Eddie’s high school classmate, who one day entered the school armed with gunfire.
There are so many mass shootings in the United States that they only make national news when they take the form of widespread carnage. This year, until July 14, they were counted in the USA 299 mass shooting – a shooting that injured or killed four or more people, not including the shooter.
299 mass shooting. In 195 days.
Em Why GoMike McCready gave the first standout solo of the night, he wouldn’t be the only one, a guitar on the back of his neck, a guitar on his knees, a glittering red guitar like Dorothy’s magic shoes on the yellow brick road to Oz, I have a feeling that we are noticed in Kansas morewe are already in Pennsylvania and we don’t know it yet, McCready practices the bigamy between the Gibson Les Paul and that Fender Stratoscaster with the fray wood that, on the ground of Porchwe are left open-mouthed and not just singing. Why Go about a girl left (or imprisoned) in a mental institution by her parents who didn’t know what to do with her. It is another story of violence.
Mike McCready (left) and Jeff Ament (right) in Algés this Saturday night. Photo by José Sena Goulão/ Lusa
The gun business, lobbying and culture in the US has been more than documented, but the danger of having a gun in hand is because anger explodes hot and cold. In the same 195 days of 2024 it was nine thousand more murders In the USA. 129 children up to 11 years old died there. 639 teenagers aged between 12 and 17 died. Zero US Presidents have died.
Also on Friday, an American family that visited the Oceanarium in Lisbon was surprised by the lack of security around President Marcelo and Princess Leonor of Spain: “Where are the shooters?”, they asked. We are a land of peace and tranquility – and we are a land of peace. At Nos Alive, several dismembered men were suspended from a type of crane in front of the stage. They were camera operators. In the United States of America they would be snipers.
Of all the remarkable things about the attack that made Trump sound like van Gogh – the failure of the secret service, the unlucky Trump to be slightly injured, the suddenness of the action, the death of the shooter in seconds, Thomas Matthew Crooks – , nothing is more impressive than the reaction of Trump, who shouted, with a complete sense of space, time and communication, the madness of his own survivor, creating an unforgettable image. The Democrats, who no longer knew what to do with Biden, are now frozen with the comparison made between Trump and John F. Kennedy.
It is very possible that the fate of the USA and the world was decided in those seconds, when Saturday to Sunday was already in the Algés and forty thousand souls were singing the pacifist “Imagine”. The Make America Great Again Republicans already had a candidate, now they have a hero. Violence became a trump card and an electoral victory, with who knows what the consequences. If Trump wins the election, Putin will laugh, the map of Europe could be revised and the USA elects a man accused and convicted in court already. Even the infamous invasion of the Capitol will be claimed by the victors as the popular battle of Liberty. This is the risk, the Democrats are not poison or antidote.
Pearl Jam will have returned to the United States, to Seattle, after giving us (another) one of the big concerts. Being an old band and staying in the middle plus, as the Smashing Pumpkins did on Thursday, Billy Corgan looking like a child dressed as Nosferatu; a band will perform again, like Arcade Fire on the same night, but doing the same concert that we have already seen three times with such professionalism that nothing fails and the audience jumps up and thanks you. But Pearl Jam, who also gave Destroços Recent, played songs from the past full of the future.
Eddie Vedder even had to read some of the new letters on the monitor, even repeated the shirt he gave five years ago, but he was wrong only about one thing: not always the people who find the leaders – in Trump’s case. he was the one who discovered himself. Furthermore, Eddie got everything right, including Algés’ ears and heart. The concert was a tearful flight towards the stars of the future, not to be met but to be chosen. In freedom. In a democracy. Now to the shots. As if it were communication. As if it were normal.