It's all good, you're working with limited information. I grew up in Pittsburgh but have no family there any longer, so my kid has never seen my hometown, my old house, etc. So this is a good excuse to make that trip, if nothing else.daft twat wrote:Get him some oversized hearing protection and hold him on your shoulders, obstructing the view of everyone behind you. Ed will point him out. He’ll maybe get to sit on stage for a song while Ed sings and you’ll for sure get a tambourine. That is the only reason to bring a 6 year old to the show.Jaeti wrote:Got GA for both Pittsburgh shows. Now it's on to strategizing the best way to do that with my six-and-a-half-year old.
I can see where I sound like an asshole, and I am one, but your kid isn’t going to have a great time, and it’s going to affect your time as well. You should bring a friend and hope the band is still around in 4 or 5 years when it can be the experience you’re wanting to make happen now.
Regarding the band, I've been to three dozen shows. My best friend and I were just eight "rows" deep in the pit in Boston in September. After I went to four shows in a month last summer, my kid started saying he wanted to go to one with me. And when this tour announcement came out I realized I was officially past the point of needing to treat these things as sacred. Me and my aforementioned friend have been to 30 shows together (he and his daughter will join us at these shows). We've been front-front row, we were at State College '03, Halloween at the Spectrum, yadda yadda. I've got several of those types of feathers in my cap. It's a solid resume.
I love this band, but their live peak is obviously behind them. They're going to play their 25 songs, and it'll be great, but there's zero risk of my kid getting tired and whiny and distracting me from being fully absorbed in "the last legendary Pearl Jam show." That show is already in the past. If it's a rough go, so be it. I'm not worried about my experience, just his, and we'll manage it. If he wants to leave, we'll leave.
I actually felt a bit of sadness after my shows this summer because, honestly, I couldn't be certain that I'd ever have a chance to try and take my kid to one. We all assume there will be more shows, and now we have a few, but that's not actually ever certain. So, yeah, hard to argue that waiting until he's 10 or 11 would be a better bet for it all going swimmingly, but I think I'll roll the low-stakes dice here and see how it goes.
