Oct

6

So it's Friday afternoon about 3:30 and I'm wrapping up the day when I get a call from my stepmom Patti.

Apparently, my cousin Veleda who lives in KC has a friend that was coming to St. Louis to see Pearl Jam in concert that evening, but his fiancee' had injured her back and was unable to make the journey.

So he had a couple of tickets that he didn't want to see go to waste.

So I called Veleda and she gave me her friend Justin's phone number and 10 minutes later the tickets had been changed into my name for pick up at the "will-call" window at Scottrade Center in downtown St. Louis.

So, now thanks to the courtesy of Justin (Thank you, Justin), I am in possession of two tickets to Pearl Jam. So now I have to decide who to take.

My wife was sitting with me when all this happened, so the first offer has to go to her. Gwen declined……she is not a real fan of heavier rock….but she did suggest that I take my son, Hunter who is fan of classic rock. Hunter (aka "Boosh") had already seen the Def Leppard/KISS concert earlier that summer and loved it. So Gwen thought he should go.

I called Boosh who was out for a walk in our neighborhood and he was in!

Unfortunately, Boosh really didn't know very many Pearl Jam songs, and there really wasn't time to get him up to speed, so I had him YouTube a couple of songs……..Jeremy, Even Flow, Yellow Ledbetter (incidentally, YL is my favorite PJ song)…….which got him pretty psyched.

We left early since I wasn't sure where the will-call window was. Since we got there early, we found a good parking space just across the street from the Scottrade Center and walked right in. We found the will-call window and got our tickets.

So now, we had to wait to even get into the venue. We waited almost an hour before the gates even opened. But it was an interesting hour.

We people watched.

We saw an odd array of people ranging from middle aged professionals like myself down teenage burnouts dressed in goth gear to emo's, to families with their children.

I was able to sneak a few pictures of the some of the more "interesting" people/groups in attendance.

There was the obese women in a wheel chair sporting a mullet.

There was a guy dressed in green military gear that looked just like Fidel Castro including the beard.

There was the professional guy who looked like he came right from work wearing coat and tie.

There was the mother and son with each with multiple piercings (ears, mouth, tongue, nose, cheeks, eye brows) and their bodies were adorned with tattoos.

However, everyone was very respectful and courteous.

It was not at all like it was in the old days. No one was looking for a fight, no one was yelling or getting obnoxious or getting upset when someone jostled them.

A VERY large heavily tattooed man accidentally elbowed me pretty hard when the line started moving. When he turned to see who had he had bumped, he had a look of concern on his face and words of apology and kindness flowed forth. When I smiled at him and said, "Meh, accidents happen", he smiled back and patted me on the shoulder.

When we finally got to our seats, the Scotttrade Center was largely empty. Far more empty seats than full ones. It was now ~ 6:30 and the concert was scheduled to start at 7:30.

So Boosh and I waited patiently. As people started filling in the seats, we made conversation with the people the around us. Of course, most of the conversation revolved around music and concerts.

Although most of the people around us were in the 30's and 40's (a few in their 20's and a few kids), I was probably the oldest in our immediate area (although there were people nearby that were clearly older than I…..I think I even saw some people that may have been in their 70's). I was asked a lot of questions and told stories of concerts "back in the day".

I told the story about how I had 3rd row center seats for Led Zeppelin back in the 70's and how on the day of the concert my report card came and my parents saw that I got an "F" in math (my one and only F of my entire school career) and grounded me from the concert.

People around us were partying and having a good time.

But there were things that were conspicuously absent.

For one, there were no beach balls bouncing around the concert hall.

Secondly, the room was not filled with the "haze of sweet smelling smoke" that I remember from the old days.

Also absent was the guy next to me saying " 'ere" (I spelled that phoenetically……some of you will clearly understand what that means) as he passed something to me.

We did catch the occasional whiff of marijuana, but only a little bit.

Also, the biggest difference was the Jumbotrons. They were showing the Cardinals first playoff game on the big screens.

Of course, between 7:30 and 8 pm, the Cardinals were not doing to well as the Dodgers dominated them.

Then, at about 8 pm, the concert hall was full and (as we were told by the band), the band was ready to come out and start playing…….but there was a problem…….

At about 8 pm, the Cardinals started a rally. They were down 6 -2 when the 7th inning started…….and were up to 10 - 6 after the inning was over.

The crowd was going crazy watching the Cardinals on the Jumbotron…..and Pearl Jam was just standing by waiting for the inning to end, knowing that they couldn't go out on stage while the Cardinals were staging this major comeback. So they waited and waited and waited. The inning lasted almost 1/2 hour.

When the inning was over ~ 8:25 Pearl Jam came out and started the show.

The first thing I'd like to point out is that, although I am a PJ fan, I did not know as much about their music as the people sitting around me did.

They played 3 songs before I even heard one that I knew. Now, don't get me wrong, the songs I didn't know were still fantastic and I enjoyed them very much.

They hit on almost all of their standby classics. Even Flow, Daughter, Better Man, etc.

The band absolutely rocked the house for 90 minutes and then left the stage. I figured the concert was over except for the encores. I was wrong. They were just taking a short bathroom break (as guess even famous musicians are subjects to the foibles of age and need more bathroom breaks than they did when they were younger).

When the band came back out, it was just the lead singer Eddie Vedder (one heck of showman, BTW) who came out with his acoustic guitar and began the second half of the show.

He played a few songs, including the old John Lennon song, "Imagine". It was very very good!

When the band joined him, they played a few acoustic numbers and then got back to the business of damaging my already diminished hearing capacity with more their hard rock numbers.

They played for another hour and ended the show with a bang.

Then came the encores…….a full 30 minutes of encores.

Of course, they saved a few of their classics for encores. The best song of the night was "Alive". They rocked the house with that one.

And then finally, for the last encore, with the house lights fully up and the entire concert hall fully lighted, they played "Teenage Wasteland" by the Who. Here is my iPhone recording of the final song.

A few other notes about the concert:

The band was incredibly gracious. They took time to read off emails and stories of fans that were going through hard times and dedicated songs to them.

The read off a list of birthdays being celebrated and even pointed out a few people in the audience who were either celebrating something or had just gotten out of the hospital to be at the concert.

One lady held up a sign that said "My 100th Pearl Jam Concert" that made it on the Jumbotron. A few songs later, the Vedder said that he was told that someone in the audience was seeing their 100th PJ concert and wanted to know where she was.

Once she was located, he took about 60 seconds and personally thanked her for her support of the band. Vedder had a bottle of something that he was drinking on stage (wine maybe) and said that he wanted to give this her as a personal gift from him and the band for her support of them……but the women was really far away from the stage.

So Vedder asked the audience to pass the bottle to her. He handed it someone and later we got to see that bottle had made it's way to her.

The band made a point at several times during the show to express thanks to their fans for their loyal support.

And they demonstrated their gratitude by putting on one heck of a show. I can't imagine how redundant it gets playing the same songs over and over again each night. But the band clearly took a lot of pride in their show and overall performance.

At no time did I feel like they were just going thru the motions. Vedder did the job you would expect from a lead singer and showman. Mike McCready did everything and more that you would expect from a talented lead guitarist and the rhythm section didn't miss a beat.

There were only two negatives that I could see. One was expected, and the other was a bit of a surprise.

First, the expected: When a band has a playlist as long as Pearl Jam has, there are going to be a few popular songs omitted.

They didn't play "Black" which really surprised me as that is one of their most popular songs  and they didn't play Yellow Ledbetter.

As we were leaving the Scottrade Center the one recurring theme I heard from concert goers was the absence of the song Yellow Ledbetter. Apparently, I'm not the only one that loves that song.

The unexpected negative was the lighting. I've been a bunch of concerts in my life, but this one had a twist to it.

I recall that the lighting used to be "on the performers", but at the concert last night lighting was "behind the performers".

What this resulted in was the audience being blinded for much of the show. I would say for about 50% - 75% of the show I couldn't really see the stage or the performers. All I could see was blinding lights in my eyes. It was like driving down the highway with all oncoming traffic having their high beams on.

I spent most of the night watching one of the two jumbotrons off the side of the stage just to see what was happening.

Although I'm not sure why they did it that way, I have a feeling it was to discourage people from taking pictures and videos of the show…..but I could be wrong about that.

Regardless, it was a great concert from great showmen. I highly recommend to everyone that if you have a chance to see Pearl Jam in concert you should take it!

Boosh and I had a great time!

And thanks again to Justin Trent for gift of the tickets!


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4 Comments so far

  1. Jeff Watson on October 6, 2014 2:19 pm

    Not only does Eddy Vedder rule as a showman, he also surfs, quite well in fact, with folks like Kelly Slader, Rob Machado, et al.

  2. Spekulatn on October 6, 2014 6:57 pm

    Mr. Cameron Crowe made a movie about PJ marking their 20th anniversary as a band.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Jam_Twenty

    Well worth a watch for a fan of PJ and music.

  3. Paul Marino on October 7, 2014 12:35 am

    Great review! Pearl Jam has been my favorite band for two decades and have seen them 15+ times and they never mail in a performance. Always full sail. Any band that averages 25 plus songs per concert like PJ really has their fans in mind. More should follow their lead.
    Eddie Vedder is great on his solo tours too if you can catch one!

  4. Jacquelin Molfetta on March 25, 2015 5:38 am

    un beau site bonne continuation

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