All the Concerts Fit to Print

After many many years, I finally saw Pearl Jam. I missed them, back in 1992, when they played the Marquette University Union, due to my laziness. And I missed their 1995 Summerfest show at the amphitheater due to my stupidity. So now they're more expensive than they were back then, and it's about as hard to get tickets, but we did it. Our seats were in the back corner, upper level, row R. $66.50 for nosebleed seats. Could have been worse. Cyn and I took her daughter Heather, who had been waiting as long as I had been, and who is a bigger fan than I. And her husband Greg.

The tickets said showtime was 7:30, but I didn't really believe it. Everyone else seemed to know that wasn't true, because the place didn't really fill up until 8:00. And they didn't start until 8:15. But they played until 11:30, with only two five-minute breaks. That pretty much says it all about their show. They just played and played. Thirty-six songs, though many of them are rather short - shorter than most of Eddie Vedder's stories.

Vedder mentioned early on, that this was the second-to-the-last show of the tour, and that such a show is usually the highlight of a tour. I think few doubted him by the end of the show. The band obviously has energy, and stamina to pull off a three hour show, and they were just having a good time all the way to the end. Even after several (?) bottles of wine, Eddie was still out there running around, including in the audience.

The show started with a recorded "Red Bar," which is from Yield. Then the opener was a down-tempo Pendulum, from their latest, Lightning Bolt. From there it picked up. Mind Your Manners hit hard, showing that Pearl Jam is never very far from its punkish roots.

Shortly, they brought out localish surprise special guest, guitarist Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick. He was really excited. Probably more excited that most of the audients were. I don't think Cheap Trick has played a venue this size since the seventies. They played sort of an abbreviated low-rent version of "Baba O'Riley." Lots of fun, but no real substance. Just the riffs and the more memorable parts of the lyrics. They even kinda blew the solo. I couldn't hear it, anyway. It was a bit of a downer, if I thought about it too hard.

After that, they went into "Brain of J.," which was the beginning of Yield. They did the entire album straight through, with the exception of "Red Bar," which they had played at the start of the show. I must say I'm not what you'd call a die hard Pearl Jam fan. Great band, just never gotten deep into them. Listened to several of their albums a handful of times. Their latest album is still kinda new, and Yield, I have only on vinyl, so while I like it, I don't listen to it very often. So between the entire Yield, most of Lightning bolt, and some hits from Ten, I recognized most of the show. But other than Ten, I couldn't quite place most of it. There might have been five songs I'd never heard, but only a dozen that I really knew well.

This show marked only the third time they'd ever done an entire album in a show. Some bands have been touring albums, such as Rush, who took Moving Pictures out for an anniversary, but Pearl Jam just did it this one night. And three nights before, they did a different album. They didn't rehearse it for a tour, they tossed it off for just one night!

My favorite song of the night was "Given to Fly," which was right in the middle of the Yield set. Our section was mostly standing, below us. I could see from my seat, so I opted to stay seated through most of the show, so as not to annoy the sitters behind us. This was not a problem for me, except during "Given to Fly." The guy in front of me decided to video half that song, and had his arms up, holding his phone, and blocking my view. They had a really cool metal sculpture thing over the stage, that slowly "flapped." I wish I could have seen it from the floor.

Vedder told a lot of stories between songs. Some of them were charming. Some of them were drawn out like he was struggling to say the next words. He told of when he and a young friend stole a couple of cans of beer, to see what it was like. Eddie had Old Milwaukee. He didn't believe the audience who said they still made the stuff. Their slogan was Tastes as good as its name. "The thing is, it's not a good name." He talked about meeting Aaron Rodgers before the show, and more than once made football talk (he's a Bears fan). He couldn't put on the cheesehead that someone tossed onstage. He talked about some fundraisers and charity work just before doing "Crazy Mary." He tossed out tambourines to various audients at a couple of different times.

After over 90 minutes, the band took a short break. Vedder returned to do a solo acoustic tune. Part of the band joined him for the next one, then Vedder had the audience join him in singing Happy Birthday to Tom Petty. Then he played "I Won't Back Down." The energy built back up through "Jeremy" to "Lukin" and "Porch" before another break.

The encore was "Crazy Mary", "Black", "Alive","Fuckin' Up" (Neil Young cover) and "Yellow Ledbetter," which was followed by Mike McCready's cover of Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner."

"Crazy Mary" included an extended organ jam by Boom Gaspar. He had an authentic Hammond, complete with spinning leslie speaker. The review in the paper said, "Boom Gaspar, largely in the shadows most of the night, launched into an insane organ jam during "Crazy Mary" as guitarist Stone Gossard tried to keep up." Yep. McCready and Gossard both had some good solos. McReady had some bad ones too. A couple of times he was screechy and out of tune.

The house lights came up for "Alive." People had been filtering out for a while, possibly due to how late it was, but the ones that were left were really enjoying the show. But even with the house lights up, Pearl Jam were still the stars of the show.

( Set list )

Great show.

They've got so many albums now, that they can't just choose a bunch of great songs, they have to carefully pick one or two from each record. They played quite a few from their latest, though. A nice surprise was "Electric Co." Very cool. That was the fourth song, right after "Elevation." I was particularly looking forward to that one, and it was the one song that was disappointing. There was something about it that wasn't right. Didn't sound too good. I was a little disappointed that they usually chose the less heavy songs from the earlier records. "One" and "Who's going to Ride Your Wild Horses" from Achtung Baby - I would have preferred "The Fly" or "Even Better Than the Real Thing" (aw man, I just found out they did "The Fly" and "Zoo Station" in Toronto!) Zooropa gave us "The First Time." I don't think they did anything from Pop. "Miss Sarajevo" from their Passengers project - Bono did Pavorotti's part (it worked). "With or Without You," "Where the Streets Have No Name" from Joshua Tree. Getting the feeling that it was a mellow show? Okay, they had their share of rocking songs, like "Pride" and "Bullet the Blue Sky," but not much in the way of power.

It sounded like they hadn't rehearsed "Wild Horses." Bono started singing but didn't know the words. He had to confer with Edge for a minute.

The lighting was very cool. They had curtains that were lowered and raised, at the back of the stage, that were made of lights. They looked like four inch light bulbs, but each one was a pixel. It was like a transparent video screen, but it didn't have resolution to do much more than patterns. It looked very cool. And there were circular lines of colored lights in the floor. The spirals would chase each other around the stage. They had four smallish but high resolution video screens above the stage, where they would show the bandmembers.

The sound wasn't as good as it should have been. The bass (guitar and drums) was too low. It was mostly just rumbling. Edge's more unorthodox sounds didn't come over very well. Too soft or too piercing. Other than that, the sound was good.

Opening the show was Dashboard Confessional. I was impressed by the first song, but after that most everything sounded alike. The closed with a song I've heard on the radio, but forget the title.

It was raining, so I dropped Cyn off at the front doors while I found parking. I forgot that she had the cash, so I had to drive about six blocks away to find street parking. My jacket is still wet. And the water brought out the mothball smell (surplus). And it was freezing cold in the arena. Cindy held my wet jacket in her lap, along with the program I bought (because I was standing a lot, I guess). And she had to walk the six blocks back to the car, in the rain, on her bad feet (she had done a six mile AIDS-walk in the rain in the afternoon). So she gets the Trooper Award!

09/25/2005 Bradley Center - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Elevation
The Electric Co.
The Ocean
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / In A Little While (snippet)
Beautiful Day
Miracle Drug
Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
Love And Peace Or Else
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bullet The Blue Sky / The Hands That Built America (snippet) / When Johnny Comes Marching Home (snippet)
Miss Sarajevo
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Where The Streets Have No Name
One / Ol' Man River (snippet)
encores:
The First Time
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
With Or Without You
All Because Of You
Yahweh
40

Strange, I don't remember "40".

I saw this band? Seriously? Only ten years ago? Dammit!

Derek and I went to the Bradley Center to see The Smashing Pumpkins. Mike was also going, and I was surprised to see him further up the row, in the next section over.

My notes from several years ago say that Grant Lee Buffalo opened, and the internet supports that.

Smashing Pumpkins were decent. It was at this show that I first realized the Pumpkins were an art rock band. I wasn't familiar with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, released a year earlier, just with their many hit songs from it, and their previous album, Siamese Dream. Mellon Collie was a double album, that Corgan once referred to as The Wall of Generation X. That's just pretentious, but I could see that it was an art rock album, as much as The Wall was.

The band would invite fans onstage to dance, during "1979". At this show, The Frogs's Jimmy Flemion walked around the arena choosing the lucky fans. He took forever at it. It was kinda strange seeing them dance to that song - it's really the only danceable song they ever put out. The Frogs were this bizarre underground alternative band, that all the big grunge bands of the time were fans of. They had a bigger following with those kinds of people than they did with the public in Milwaukee.

I didn't know the history of the band, at the time. Now, I see that this tour was just after keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin died of a heroin overdose, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was kicked out of the band for the same incident. Dennis Flemion of The Frogs was the Pumpkins keyboardist for the tour, and Matt Walker on drums.

Bradley Center, $22.50. Section 5, row EEE, seat 14.

Phil was the huge Depeche Mode fan, but I enjoyed it. There was a lot of black, and a lot of synthesizer, though I think Phil said he was surprised at the amount of guitar.

DM has more female fans than male, I think. I wonder if Phil and I looked gay. Hmm... no.