Pearl Jam

On Wednesday night I got the train into New York to see Pearl Jam play at Madison Square Garden. I am a big fan of their music but for a variety of reasons, I had never seen them live before. From talking to my brother Mick who has seen them many times, they put on a good show so I was expecting big things from them.

I got to the show a few minutes before the support band was due to start and planned to get a t-shirt. There was one with a particularly good design, a not-too-subtle design showing their feelings about the war and the current administration, however they had NO XL shirts available. Apparently the delivery had not arrived for the New York shows. A little disappointing but I am sure I will get over it - it is not like I don't have other concert t-shirts to wear from time to time!

I decided to ignore the support band and save my ears a bit which was quite easy as they only played for 30 minutes. I was sitting in one of the upper sections - not all the way back but closer to the roof than to the floor. There was nobody in the 4 seats to my right until near the start of the show when two early-20ish girls walked up to take the two vacant seats furtherest away. It was clear that one of them had had WAY too much to drink as she was swaying all over the place and struggling to hold her head up. Next thing I knew, she was throwing up in front of the now two vacant seats to my right. Fortunately nobody came to sit in them though. After this she passed out for the first 1/2 of the show and then sprung to life and began dancing! I was impressed with her recovery.

Pearl Jam went on at 8:45 and the crowd went crazy. 20000+ people screaming like crazy and singing along with every song made for quite the atmosphere. The band was amazing. I was actually surprised with how much guitar Eddie Vedder played, I guess I had always thought of him more as a singer, not a singer/guitarist. They always mix up their sets, so you never know what you are going to get. This is good in one sense...but also could be frustrating if you did not get to see some of your favourite songs. However, the songs they picked were great and I was more than happy with the result. There were only a few songs I would have liked to have seen that they did not play but with their catalogue, you are always going to miss out on a few. They played for 90 minutes, had a 5 minute break, came back for another 30, one more break then a final set of 30 minutes. I think they had planned to end the show with a great version of Alive and were performing their final bows when Eddie said something to the rest of the band, prompting them to play one more song - Yellow Ledbetter, one of their frequent closing numbers. An instrumental of "Star Spangled Banner" wrapped it all up and I was able to get out of there in time to make my train home.

Highlights of the night - Do The Evolution; State of Love and Trust; Even Flow; Better Man; Rearviewmirror; Alive; Yellow Ledbetter. Sounds like a lot, but they played 29 songs in their set. Certainly good value for money and they will be a band I will make sure I catch whenever they are in the area.