Wendy Carlos's Twin wrote:For me, the end of the Avocado tour is the cutoff point. After that something seriously changed. What that change actually was, I'm not sure. Maybe they are not really into their new music? Maybe they hate each other's guts and don't like playing together anymore? Who knows. But something happened.
I think there's still a genuine mateship and enjoyment playing together, helped by the fact that they now set their own agenda and do shorter tours where they want (hence more frequent Europe and SA trips, usually with family in tow). What's changed is Ed's metamorphosis from introverted semi-reluctant frontman to extroverted ringmaster whose main job is to 'get the party started' and make sure that everyone from the casual fan to the diehard has a 'rockin' good time'. It's been discussed before that the seeds for this were sown on the 2003 tour, and the transformation was definitely complete by the 2008 tour.
Birds in Hell wrote:
The old shows sound as great as they ever did so it's not as though I'm sick of the songs, there's just something not quite right about the shows in the last few years for me.
I hear ya buddy, though for me I think it's just bootleg fatigue. I'm sure the 3-hour 'Evening with Pearl Jam' shows can be a blast in person, but they can be hard-going to listen to start-to-finish (especially with such predictable Encore 2's, at which point I usually lose interest anyway). But hey, no one's asking me to listen to them - it's easy to forget how spoit we are these days when thinking back to the 90's days of expensive crap-quality illegal boots.
That all said, there are some top notch performances from the last few years as Lowlight's upcoming mix will reveal, so I think compilations is how I'll probably get my PJ live fix in coming years.
At least with Brett Eliason at the helm we're no longer complaining about the mixing of the boots
