2016-08-20: Chicago, Illinois

[AndySlash]

[chuck taylor]

Looks like Crazy Mary was scratched. Interesting setlist, but too many covers (3 in the main set!)

[Kevin Davis]

There are a few songs in there that I'd have been excited to see for the first time and a few more I'd have been excited to see just because, but if during the ticket-buying process you'd have told me that I could either be guaranteed this set or take what's behind mystery door number two on Monday, I'd have chosen the latter. Hopefully they got all the covers out of their system -- good grief.

[Bi_3]

Good: Ed sounded good, I like the faster pace of Light Years how they play it now, Master of War sounded good, and Surrender was a huge crowd pleaser

Bad: Putting Release as song two was awkward and it made Lowlight (a live favorite of mine) seem like a typo, setlist was all over the place and had no flow to it more like a collection of random songs vs a thought out performance, Let Me Sleep is another song that Matt needs to either pick up a guitar or sit it out because part of the studio versions charm is its delicacy which is lost with the big drums, Masters of War and Patriot combo is cool but they just did that Fenway, they did the callbacks in both DTE and Corduroy

Ugly: My section was the worst PJ crowd I have ever seen. A rotating shitshow of obliterated Bros thinking they could upgrade their seats by sneaking down the aisles to find empties near the field. My ticket buddy was a decent guy from Memphis but he was tall and the bros around us kept looking like they wanted to take swing at him to see if they could take out the big dog. There was kid about 8 or 9 years old in front of us at his first concert and I can't imagine what he must have been thinking. Made a lot of the show very uncomfortable.

Edit: the video screens were a half to 3/4 of a second behind the audio for most of the show

[delanoche]

I disagree about the flow comments. Aside from Lowlight/Release being weird, and Daughter was kinda oddly placed. But otherwise I thought the main set had a good pace. But maybe I was just happy to hear things like Last Exit and Sad since its been a long time since I've seen them.

Between all of Ed's talking and the slowness of the songs, I thought the first encore started to drag a bit. But surprises like Bee Girl and Let Me Sleep were nice.

The third encore really surprised me. The house lights were up for the last couple minutes of Alive, and it was past 11:00 at that point, which I assumed was the curfew.

And yeah, that's a lot of covers, but at this show they worked. Masters of War and Patriot were so good that they didn't even feel like covers to me. And Surrender and Baba are just fun, especially in the big stadium setting.

I won't be there on Monday and I'm sure they'll play some things I want to see, but I'm definitely satisfied with what I got last night.

[Kevin Davis]

Good: Ed sounded good, I like the faster pace of Light Years how they play it now, Master of War sounded good, and Surrender was a huge crowd pleaser

Bad: Putting Release as song two was awkward and it made Lowlight (a live favorite of mine) seem like a typo, setlist was all over the place and had no flow to it more like a collection of random songs vs a thought out performance, Let Me Sleep is another song that Matt needs to either pick up a guitar or sit it out because part of the studio versions charm is its delicacy which is lost with the big drums, Masters of War and Patriot combo is cool but they just did that Fenway, they did the callbacks in both DTE and Corduroy

Ugly: My section was the worst PJ crowd I have ever seen. A rotating shitshow of obliterated Bros thinking they could upgrade their seats by sneaking down the aisles to find empties near the field. My ticket buddy was a decent guy from Memphis but he was tall and the bros around us kept looking like they wanted to take swing at him to see if they could take out the big dog. There was kid about 8 or 9 years old in front of us at his first concert and I can't imagine what he must have been thinking. Made a lot of the show very uncomfortable.

Edit: the video screens were a half to 3/4 of a second behind the audio for most of the show

God, that sounds terrible. I really hope that's not what it's like on Monday.

[BDB]

Over all disappointed. Agree on set list being disjointed. Rain 3rd song in ? The first encore was brutal.
The crowd sucked in my area - no energy.
My seats were prob the worst i have ever had, much worse than 2013

They did sound good though, and I have hope for tomorrow.

[VinylGuy]

Sounds like a very good show...i agree that it might be a little crowd pleaser but i guess its one of those shows that blows your mind if you are there.

[Simple Torture]

FWIW, I felt like the crowd around me at Fenway I was a little "meh" (during the first encore there was an audible hum as people just chatted during songs like Strangest Tribe and Society), and there were more cameras in the air than any public gathering I've ever been at. But for night two--in the same section--it was electric. So hopefully a similar pattern holds true for Wrigley.

[CopperTom]

Oh, and I hated the t-shirt conversation DURING Better Man. WTF

[daft twat]

It was a show with a lot of great songs, but it was not a great show. Ed talked way too much, and while his humor was nice, he was too "philosophical" most of the time. I liked every cover they did except Rain, but I didn't like getting 7 in one show. That said, Masters/Patriot was the best part of the show by far. Studio versions of those would be the best Xmas single ever. Masters has the menace of Rage's Tom Joad. Speaking of Xmas, Let Me Sleep. Really? It's like Ed knows these shows are supposed to be big and special, but he doesn't know how to write that setlist. Rain in the 3 spot was like Arms Aloft at PJ20.

This band needs to play rock songs on Monday. Hail, hail, STBC, Animal, Brain of J, etc. And in encore 1, they need to play Dirty Frank. The pit will go nuts.

[delanoche]

I do think it was a great show. But I also had a really good crowd around me and I think that makes a huge difference. Nothing worse than having a low-energy or bro-filled section.

[Bi_3]

I do think it was a great show. But I also had a really good crowd around me and I think that makes a huge difference. Nothing worse than having a low-energy or bro-filled section.

I can respect this, everyone takes a away something a little different and had I been in another section I might have felt differently about the show overall.

[twoheadedboy]

Wow. I'm glad I didn't push through exhaustion and move hell and high water to get a ticket to this. That set list is brutal. That is a "night 2 of 3, Wednesday, at some arena" setlist, not a "Pearl Jam, fulfilling Eddie's childhood dream, make up for the last attempt and its crazy rain delay with no 2nd date that time" set.

More specifically:

-If Lowlight was a seated acoustic pre-set, ok. As the true set opener, no.
-Rain? Cool. 3rd song? No.
-MoW AND Patriot, back-to-back, in the main set? And you already played a cover?
-Encore 1 is a brutal shitfest featuring 2 more covers, but the originals are not compelling either.
-DTE and Corduroy call-and-response.
-A cover each in 2nd and 3rd encore.
-12 repeats from the 1st Wrigley performance...you'd think they'd have played some different LB material, since they played mostly the same ones from the first time, when they were debuting the songs, and they have not since played in Chicago (!) (though have played in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and MOLINE).
-Then again, Pearl Jam has not played a Chicago arena since 2009. That's 7 years and they have toured every year since then (yes, PJ20 was Alpine, but even that was 5 years ago and still a pretty wide net to cast and still call "Chicago").

I would expect the Saturday night show, the 1st of 2 nights, to be a rawk hits fest like a festival set. It was not. If it's going to be the longest ever/the rarest ever/the most interesting ever, they failed at that too. Half of the main set and nearly the entire 1st encore was just poorly laid out. If Low Light and Patriot were a pre-set, Rain was moved to the 2nd encore, and you replace them in the main set with 3 more "rock" songs (say, Faithfull, In My Tree, and Save You), you've immediately improved the entire show by 10x. There's no accounting for that 1st encore though, which featured 5 songs in a row I don't want to hear, a superfluous cover, a great song marred by its current live structure, and finally a standard set closer which has good and bad days.

No wonder the crowd was shitty. I mean, you're already dealing with Wrigley Brofest as it is, and Pearl Jam is a bro-attracting band making it worse. At least they didn't play "Future Days" this time.

[Simple Torture]

Sick Moline burn in that post.

[wease]

Why are you guys so down on them doing covers? It's not like they've just started doing them. They've been part of their shows from damn near the beginning.

[tragabigzanda]

Why are you guys so down on them doing covers? It's not like they've just started doing them. They've been part of their shows from damn near the beginning.

I think a big part of the problem is the selection of covers, coupled with their placement in the set. A preshow opener of Throw Your Arms Around Me creates a very different vibe than Rain being the third song in the set. I'm fine with the encore covers -- that's been a strong part of their show for years. But mid-tempo covers in the middle of the set can be pretty big momentum-killers.

[Bi_3]

Why are you guys so down on them doing covers? It's not like they've just started doing them. They've been part of their shows from damn near the beginning.

I think a big part of the problem is the selection of covers, coupled with their placement in the set. A preshow opener of Throw Your Arms Around Me creates a very different vibe than Rain being the third song in the set. I'm fine with the encore covers -- that's been a strong part of their show for years. But mid-tempo covers in the middle of the set can be pretty big momentum-killers.

They have a wide and deep catalog, like Lexington Steele big, and everyone on the first 1/3 of the arena know every word. They don't need to play them at all.

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[smiler_12]

Who was the guest playing guitar on Baba?