In the summer of 1992, I spent a few days at the beach with one of my good friends. We weren't yet 21, but Kurt and I knew that a week with a bunch of Ocean City lifeguards was probably going to be a pretty good time. At that point, neither of us had a serious girlfriend. We hadn't graduated from college nor had embarked on important careers either. Five days at the beach most likely meant a lot of drinking, hopefully a lot of girls, a lot of visits to Tommy's Sub Shop, and a lot of good times. It ended up being a great trip.One thing I'll always remember from that week is that when we first got there, Kurt's buddies were all out guarding and left their house to us. All we had was a case of Milwaukee's Best Light and the Temple of the Dog cd. We plopped down on some couches, put the cd on, put the case in the middle of the floor, and Kurt promptly announced, "We're not leaving this room until we drink that case of beer!" Though I was probably 230 pounds at the time and well-versed in mass alcohol-consumption, twelve beers was no mean feat. I got comfortable and got ready to get bombed. It was great.
Kurt and I always had ridiculous conversations about nothing. We'd known one another since elementary school, played on soccer teams together, and knew all the same people. We just had a lot of material to laugh about from over the years. I can remember fishing with him one time and spending what seemed like an hour talking about all the different sandwiches we'd eaten from Subway... what we put on them, what kind of bread we preferred, etc. Pretty deep stuff. We used to sit at his house playing video games and talking about girls... girls we hooked up with, girls we wanted to hook up with, girls we needed to hook up with. Typical guy nonsense, but it was always a good time.
I can't recall exactly what we talked about that first afternoon in OC, but I do remember that Temple of the Dog cd playing on repeat for a few hours. Whenever it got to Hunger Strike, Kurt and I would trade parts. I'd be Chris Cornell to his Eddie Vedder, or vice versa. We were belting it out too, so I'm sure that any passerby's must've gotten quite a feast for the ears... two drunken fools singing off-key to what would become a grunge classic. At one point I think we put the song on repeat for about ten or fifteen times and just blasted it over and over again. It's funny what we DON'T remember, and yet for some silly reason I can't get that afternoon out of my head. The rest of the week included run-ins with a handicapped guy whose piss-bag kept leaking, another guy whose nickname was "Pep" because his gigantic nipples were easily the size of sliced pepperoni, numerous sloppy trips down the boardwalk, the public drunk-bus stopping right at Tommy's Sub-Shop... our Shangri-La, and nights I don't even remember because the days were so much fun. It wasn't too long after that week that I met my wife and embarked on that part of my life. Looking back on it now, that time in OC was my last crazy stand as a single guy.
On a related note... when Lollapallooza came around Northern Virginia later that year, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were both on the bill and for one rare performance, the parts of those bands that formed Temple of the Dog got together and played Hunger Strike live. Some research told me that this was only one of three times that they ever did that. My buddy Kurt was in the audience that day and that was claim-to-fame for a long time.
"Hunger Strike" is from the album "Temple of the Dog." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.
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