Worshipping at the Altar of Pearl Jam

                I have been going to concerts for a loooooong time.  We are talking a nearly twenty year obsession with live music, and yet I have never, in all my life, witnessed a concert that doubled as a religious experience.  That is the only thing that I can call seeing Pearl Jam in concert.  It was not a concert, or at least it was not just a concert.  While I have seen large crowds at concerts before, I have never seen this many fans that were all laser focused on the show at hand.  I would assume a lot of it has to do with the infrequent touring schedule of the band (they have not been to Buffalo in three years) but regardless, for two and a half hours, Pearl Jam captivated nearly a full stadium of 18,000-plus people with their performance.

                This was the second stop on Pearl Jam’s North American tour, and you could tell in some spots, especially with their new music (from Lightning Bolt - in stores today) as it wasn’t as crisp as you would expect seasoned veterans to perform.  There was even a point where they stopped the show (shortly into “My Father’s Son” because vocalist Eddie Vedder was not in synch with the rest of the band.  They restarted and had no more issues, but throughout the performance Eddie was having trouble with his ear-bud.  It didn’t affect his enthusiasm or his performance, but you could see him getting frustrated as the night wore on.  There were even instances throughout the night where he brought the band together and had a pow-wow on stage and it was strange to see.  From checking message boards and conversations about the concert Vedder was apparently changing the setlist around a little, at first to save his voice, and then for reasons unknown to me.  At times it looked like he was yelling at the other members of the band, but it was hard to determine from where I was sitting, and what looks like yelling to me could have been simply because he was trying to communicate over 18,000 rabid fans. 

                Even with everything not going exactly as planned for the band, they didn’t let that stop them from putting on one of the best concerts I have ever seen.  From new songs (of which they played nine of the twelve new songs from Lightning Bolt – an ambitious setlist considering the album had yet to be released), to the old staples that everyone came to see, they had the crowd enthralled.  Many people, like the know-it-all guy behind my girlfriend and I, had seen the band before and were already indoctrinated into the universal church of Pearl Jam.  We, on the other hand, had waited a good twenty years to see Eddie and the boys take the stage and were not disappointed.  Did we wish they had played more of their older stuff?  Sure.  But that’s the price you pay when the first three albums in a band’s catalog are three of the best albums of all time.  Every fan of the band has their favorite album or song, and the band did a great job of trying to accommodate those people by playing at least one song from nearly every album in their catalog (including a lot from No Code, much more than I anticipated).  This is the best thing about Pearl Jam.  Sure, they’ll play their staples, and on a tour like this they’ll probably play much of their new album, but they will vary the setlist from show to show, so even if you follow them from city to city, you will never hear the same concert twice.

 

                Grunge music kind of gets a bad rap for being all angsty with heavy, chunky guitars.  What many people don’t always see is the incredible guitar players that came out of that generation.  It’s often hard to believe compared to the hair metal generation that preceded it which spawned the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhodes and Zakk Wylde, but grunge guitarists like Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam’s own Mike McCready can still pull off some amazing guitar work amongst the heavy grunge sound (and at this point, it would be hard to even classify Pearl Jam as Grunge, or really any label aside from "rock band").  Even though I know Pearl Jam's music and I’ve been a fan since I was young, I never really realized how exceptional of a guitar player Mike McCready really is.  Not just in a technical precision kind of way (which, believe me, he excels at) but in a pure energy kind of way.  McCready kept the concert moving at times when a lesser guitar player left to their own devices may falter.  He stood at the front of the stage and gave everything he had on every song, and showed just how adept he is at his chosen instrument.  This is not to take anything away from the rest of the band as this is one of the best bands in history.  They are all on the same page musically and they all approach shows the same way, to give it everything they have from start to finish and leave the audience satisfied.  

               There were a few reasons to not be too happy with the performance on Saturday night, from the new-music heavy setlist to the oddity that was the interaction between Eddie and the band, to the fact that the concert started an hour later than its posted time, yet, when all was said and done, and the band took the stage, my girlfriend and I were able to look at each other and see in each other’s eyes the joy of seeing one of our favorite bands after so long (not to mention when they turned to the back of the stage and played "Elderly Woman...", I've never seen her eyes light up that much).

 

                If you have even a passing interest in Pearl Jam, a “hey, I liked Ten back in the early nineties” kind of appreciation for the band, you owe it to yourself to go.  Don’t think twice about ticket prices (which, I know, is hard to do in this day and age) as this is the best show you will ever see, regardless of how much you had to pay for tickets, or parking (screw you $20 parking garage).  If you’ve never been, go, if you have, go again…I know I will.