What I posted on my own message board (somewhat edited)
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I can't believe I saw Pearl Jam.

Seriously. I don't care what you have to say, Pearl Jam are one of the best and biggest bands of all time, and I finally got to see them. We're talking the last big Seattle band still playing, and I got to see them. Oh yeah, and my girlfriend saw them too

Man, it was a great show. The band played great, Mike McCready gets better on guitar every time (now it's all improv, none of the original solos, and they all kicked ass), and Matt Cameron is awesome.

That was the other thing: I got to see Matt Cameron live. He was as good as I thought he would be, although I get the feeling that Pearl Jam's music calls for less complicated drum beats than Soundgarden. Still, he was great, especially when he started messing around on the little break in the middle of Rearviewmirror.

And speaking of Rearviewmirror, that song is AMAZING played live. I'm telling you, after that little quiet break in the song, I was like "oh damn, this is going to be so good", and then they built back up, Eddie sang, and he belted out "REARVIEWMIRROORRRRR" and it was incredible. Oh...my...god.

There were a few downsides to the show.
1) Smoking. WOW! I had no idea there were this many smokers in the world. Adam, I have no problem with you smoking, because I can stand where the smoke doesn't go in my face or whatever. But at this place I estimate that 75% of the people there were smokers, and every single one of them smoked the entire show. Just in our little area (like a 10 foot radius) there had to have been 50 packs of cigarettes smoked. What's worse is only about two of them would blow the smoke upwards. The people behind us would blow it directly into the backs of out heads. It's pretty bad when you smell like smoke after seeing an outdoor concert.

2) There was a single lane of traffic to get in the show. For some reason they only had the road in front of the stadium open from one direction. Dumb.

3) water cost $4 a bottle

4) they took my ground tarp. at least the ground wasn't wet - that would have sucked.


But anyway, they played our favorite songs: "DTE" ("Do The Evolution") for my girlfriend, and "Given to Fly" for me.

So it was a great concert. We were pretty far away, but there were huge screens flanking the stage, so we were easily able to see the action.

It was just incredible. I'm so glad I got to see them.
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So that was my impression. I saw them last night a the Nissan Pavilion in "D.C.", which I put in quotes because it would take about 1.5 hours to drive there from DC. But it was cool because as Eddie said (paraphrased):
"Someone asked us to name our top 20 favorite bands of all time. One was Fugazi, the other is Minor Threat, and they're both from your hometown. The only man to be in two bands on our top 20 list, Ian MacKaye, is here tonight."

It would have been awesome if they could have done something together, but oh well.

Anyway, everyone should go see Pearl Jam if you get the chance (and like their music). The great thing is, they don't play the stuff that wasn't that great from some of their later albums (I don't think there was a single song fron "No Code"). That doesn't matter, though. They have so many songs that they could play all night an only hit the good ones.

This show was shorter than Tony's, but still about 2.5 hours long! That's impressive for any show. I was amazed at how Eddie's voice held up all the way through, though. He's fantastic.

Wonderful, just wonderful...