I saw Pearl Jam last week. And it was amazing.
Thursday, December 12, 2013

That's right. I got to see Pearl Jam at the Key Arena last week for the last date of their tour, and it was one of the greatest shows of my life. I feel blessed to have been there, even though I wasn't the one shooting the concert for the blog I write for.
In case you didn't know, I write and shoot for a local music blog called Back Beat Seattle. I have been for about two years, and I absolutely love it.
To see the photos my colleague Kirk Stauffer got at the show, you can head over to the post on Back Beat, but I thought I would re-post my review here, just because it's something I'm incredibly proud of. I ripped my heart out and it turned into these words, so read on please.
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Sitting down to write this, coming up with how to begin was harder
than anything I’ve written in a long time. I’ve seen many musicians in
the last five years, but I haven’t seen many legendary bands. I’ve seen
one legendary band. And not just any legendary band, but our legendary
band. Pearl Jam.
Growing up, I had a lot of musical influences, but the strongest came
from my mom’s little brother. He is the musical encyclopedia to me, and
he was just around my age when grunge happened, so grunge is a part of
his soul, thus, part of my soul. So seeing Pearl Jam’s Seattle show –
the last date of their latest tour – was extra special for me. There in
section 114, three rows behind me was my uncle, taking all 3 hours of
music in with me.
Yes, you did read that right – three hours, give or take 15 minutes
or so. Eddie, Stone, Mike, Jeff, and Matt started the show just after
8:45 and finished just after midnight. And in those three phenomenal
hours, they played 37 songs, spanning from the beginning of their 20+
year career to their newest album Lightning Bolt. And sprinkled
among the night were covers of fellow Seattleites Mother Love Bone, as
well as a touching tribute to Lou Reed with Velvet Underground’s “After
Hours.”
For fear of getting too sappy, I’ll now tell you that Eddie Vedder
downed almost a dozen bottles of wine that night, even pouring some for
the crowd up against the barrier. He toasted the bottles to several
local establishments – including KEXP, Easy Street Records, The Stranger
– as well as the one-year anniversary of the legalization of gay
marriage and marijuana. So needless to say, Eddie got hammered. But I’m
sure he worked up enough of a sweat to burn off half the booze he
consumed, because I’m pretty positive that he didn’t sit still for the
first hour and a half. He still has all the energy and charisma of his
younger days, so it’s obvious what keeps him young. But Eddie wasn’t the
only one working up a sweat – Jeff Ament was jumping around almost just
as much as Eddie, and Mike McCready ran laps around the stage at one
point. I think I counted seven laps.
Speaking of Mike, I think he’s some sort of superhuman, because
during an epic extended version of “Even Flow,” he played the hell out
of his guitar behind his back. It was nothing short of magic.
One of my favorite moments of the night came during one of Eddie’s
stories (he’s a great storyteller, by the way). He spoke of a young girl
and her father going out on the water during a huge storm in Hawaii,
and the daughter hearing voices shouting out for help amongst the waves.
Eddie said that these people would have most likely drowned had it not
been for this girl insisting that her father take her out on the water.
Then my heart just about jumped when Eddie said, “I know all of this,
because I was one of those three people she heard.” I might have shed a
tear when he brought that girl out on stage, whom he hadn’t seen in the
11 years since she saved his life – she is now 18. How cool is that? She
gets to live her life as the girl who saved Eddie Vedder’s life.
Appropriately, Eddie dedicated “Future Days” to that lucky girl.
That was just one diamond out of a night of gems, and it was almost
like we all got to know Eddie from the way he spoke to the crowd.
There’s nothing greater than seeing a great band play to a hometown
crowd, especially when they sell out of the biggest arena in the city to
some of the most devoted fans in music history. At one point, Eddie
brought up the power of that fan base, igniting some friendly
competition with Macklemore’s fans for The Stranger’s Holiday Charity Challenge. “This Macklemore
kid, he sold out the KeyArena twice [someone shouts from the crowd three
times] Three times? Fuck him! He’s written some of the best lyrics I’ve
heard in a long time, fuck him! I met him once and he’s a really nice
guy. Fuck him!” All out of friendly competition for charity, though.
The main set was 21 songs, about an hour and a half. For me, that’s
already a good lengthy set. Nope, this was just the beginning. A short
intermission, and then came the first encore, chokc-full of the
heart-stoppers and covers. Probably the most pleasantly surprising was
the duo of Mother Love Bone’s “Chloe Dancer” and “Crown of Thorns” as
well as several more songs off 1992′s Singles soundtrack (a.k.a. the best film soundtrack ever composed).
At this point, it was a little after 11 p.m., and officially the
longest set of music from one band that I’d ever seen. However, it still
wasn’t over yet.
The second encore started with the most perfect song to be played in
the KeyArena – the quick and energetic “Supersonic.” Then Eddie downed
more wine, and swung around on some of the light fixtures hanging from
the ceiling during a rousing version of “Got Some.” Jeff and Stone even
had to dodge some of those light fixtures, and it was a miracle that
none of them collided during the giant glowing tether ball game.
They closed out the night with all the gusto they had left. Mark Arm
and Steve Turner of Mudhoney, who had opened the show three hours
before, joined them on stage, as well as Kim Thayil of Soundgarden for
Motor City 5′s “Kick Out the Jams,” a raucous punk song that turned into
an all-out jam session. Then after Mark Arm kept hinting and asking,
“Does anyone on stage know ‘Eruption?’” Mike McCready jumped right into
the Eddie Van Halen shredding solo he knows so well and it led right
into the B-side that turned into a hit, “Yellow Ledbetter.” It was a
perfect song to end the astronomical set. However, it surprisingly
didn’t include all the hits – “Jeremy” was noticeably absent. But the
night was so perfect and memorable that I didn’t care. Pearl Jam changes
up their set literally every show, so clearly there was going to be
some surprises, but all were welcome surprises that night.
I can’t think of anything that competes with the feeling I had that
night, seeing a band that means so much to my uncle and so much to this
city. It was culture shock, but the best kind of culture shock. I’d
never seen a band that has been together as long as I have been alive,
and now that I have, it’s obvious why Pearl Jam has been making music
together for so long. Eddie is all about the music, and always has been.
Stone, Jeff, and Matt ground the band, and not only rhythmically. Mike
is like a sorcerer behind the guitar, by far one of the most underrated
guitarists of our time.
While Pearl Jam is one of the most successful groups to come out of
Seattle, they’re still some of the biggest supporters of the scene,
donating to local foundations and playing benefits yearly. You can’t
help but be proud that we get to call Pearl Jam our own. That’s all I
could think about as I watched those five men on stage. They have so
much history together that it was as if we’d been given a little peek
into their world for one night. They were just playing music with each
other, and we happened to be there, and we were lucky to witness it.
---

I will forever cherish this ticket, just like my uncle cherished and kept his ticket to the last ever Seattle Nirvana show in 1994. He gave that ticket to me several years ago for Christmas, and it was one of the greatest gifts I've ever received.
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I like that Pearl Jam doesn't cater to just the "hits." When you see them in concert they're just as likely to play B-sides as songs from their latest album. They are amazing, and I wish they'd come out to Hawaii to play. Any island, I'm not picky. I'll find my way there if it's not mine. Excellent read by the way.
ReplyDeleteYour writing is beautiful - and I totally agree with what you've said here. I just saw Pearl Jam last month, and I was blown away! I've tried to write about it, but couldn't, so I'm glad someone else could get the words out.
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