Red Mosquito

JudgeSmails wrote:Speaking of Boom messing up the bridge. Why is Boom part of the band? Did Ed make a deal with him to get free surfing lessons if he got to tour with them? I thought having Brendan O'Brien show up and play keys every now and then was good enough. Didn't think they needed a sixth member of the band. I don't think he adds a lot. But I'm just an old cynical fan who wishes for the angst filled tours of the mid 90s.

Best weed dealer ever.

I like the keyboard position, however, I wish he was more talented.

That was good guys

Mike is an all-star. He owned it tonight.

Sounds like a cool show. I'm really glad they've kept Low Light in rotation. I love that one.

Monkey_Driven wrote:Eating some dinner before the show. Nice to meet Bammer. Good luck to all you fantasy set list guys.

Nice meeting you, too.

Man, what a great night. No complaints whatsoever. Not even Last Kiss since they played it behind the stage and gave me a chance to sit down for 3 minutes.

I have really enjoyed STL. Great city. Only thing that would have made this trip better is a Cards home game.

PS - Next time you see Gary Pinkel, tell him Husky Nation says what's up and good luck.

Bammer wrote:

Monkey_Driven wrote:Eating some dinner before the show. Nice to meet Bammer. Good luck to all you fantasy set list guys.

Nice meeting you, too.

Man, what a great night. No complaints whatsoever. Not even Last Kiss since they played it behind the stage and gave me a chance to sit down for 3 minutes.

I have really enjoyed STL. Great city. Only thing that would have made this trip better is a Cards home game.

PS - Next time you see Gary Pinkel, tell him Husky Nation says what's up and good luck.

How was Pilate?

How was Thin Air?

CopperTom wrote:

JudgeSmails wrote:Speaking of Boom messing up the bridge. Why is Boom part of the band? Did Ed make a deal with him to get free surfing lessons if he got to tour with them? I thought having Brendan O'Brien show up and play keys every now and then was good enough. Didn't think they needed a sixth member of the band. I don't think he adds a lot. But I'm just an old cynical fan who wishes for the angst filled tours of the mid 90s.

Best weed dealer ever.

I like the keyboard position, however, I wish he was more talented.

Haha, fair enough, maybe it's the lack of talent that gets me.

Had a wonderful time at the show. Lots of thoughts bouncing around in my head, but I will wait until I am not on my phone to type them all out. On the whole I will just say that, taking for granted that Ed's vocal limitations are what they are, I felt like the show was relatively problem-free from a technical standpoint -- many of us have long said that we would rather have a tight set of well-rehearsed standbys than a set of sloppy one-offs, and in a general sense I feel like that's what this show was. A couple of rarities thrown in for flavor, but mainly it was a merciless pummeling of familiar material that they could play in their sleep. Especially after not having listened to virtually any PJ at all for about a year (or really kept up on them in any way), it was a very viscerally engaging show -- the old staples felt fresh, and compelling to hear simply as songs, without worrying about factoring in risk of burnout, etc., and as opposed to being scrutinized in the context of the rest of the tour, or their live show in general, or whatever. What people have previously described as the "party vibe" at their shows (and I have been an outspoken critic of this in the past) felt less significant to me after some time away from their music, from following live stuff, and probably from being on RM. I will write more about the individual songs later but overall I really enjoyed myself and am glad I didn't follow my gut and pass on getting tickets.

knee tunes wrote:

Bammer wrote:

Monkey_Driven wrote:Eating some dinner before the show. Nice to meet Bammer. Good luck to all you fantasy set list guys.

Nice meeting you, too.

Man, what a great night. No complaints whatsoever. Not even Last Kiss since they played it behind the stage and gave me a chance to sit down for 3 minutes.

I have really enjoyed STL. Great city. Only thing that would have made this trip better is a Cards home game.

PS - Next time you see Gary Pinkel, tell him Husky Nation says what's up and good luck.

How was Pilate?

How was Thin Air?

Both were solid. Ed lost himself on "Thin Air" for a split second but quickly righted himself. The bootleg may reveal Ed's voice to be weaker than it sounded in person, but from the stands both songs were great.

Kevin Davis wrote:

knee tunes wrote:

Bammer wrote:

Monkey_Driven wrote:Eating some dinner before the show. Nice to meet Bammer. Good luck to all you fantasy set list guys.

Nice meeting you, too.

Man, what a great night. No complaints whatsoever. Not even Last Kiss since they played it behind the stage and gave me a chance to sit down for 3 minutes.

I have really enjoyed STL. Great city. Only thing that would have made this trip better is a Cards home game.

PS - Next time you see Gary Pinkel, tell him Husky Nation says what's up and good luck.

How was Pilate?

How was Thin Air?

Both were solid. Ed lost himself on "Thin Air" for a split second but quickly righted himself. The bootleg may reveal Ed's voice to be weaker than it sounded in person, but from the stands both songs were great.

Pilate was alright. Thin Air was great.

I think the only other time I saw Thin Air was at Benaroya, where Mike (not Stone?) missed a note on his riff and Ed made a joke after. So it was good to see him get through it unscathed this time.

Both of these songs are pretty rare (I think) so I'm sure many people got to add to their personal list for the first time.

The big "white whale" song of the night was Footsteps. Crowd loved that. My white whale is Leash and I don't think I'll ever see it at this point.

I haven't seen the band since 2010 and haven't really listened to many bootlegs since then but I had a great time last night. It wasn't the most amazing set but the band played well and the crowd ate up almost every song.

Some other thoughts:
-Imagine was a nice surprise. The city has a long history of segregation, racial discrimination, and tension that has been around long before the events in Ferguson. The performance felt special and it looked like Ed was touched.
-The screens above the stage really add to the live show without being distracting. The editing and different camera angles were really cool and felt very PJ.
-Foosteps and Who Go were really good.
-Nice to hear Thin Air. Not the best performance ever but solid nonetheless.
-I thought every song with an extended jam was really tight. The band was locked in.
-I got shut out on fan club tickets so I was sitting with a lot of more casual fans. No one sat down during the whole show. People seemed to really enjoy themselves. My buddy who has never seen a show was impressed with the crowd's energy and the mix of the band.
-Everyone could see the WMA tag coming, but it was tastefully included without being too "over the top" or preachy.
-Pretty cool moment when the band tagged "Modern Girl" right as the Cards clinched the victory.
-I just couldn't help but smile during the whole show. I know a lot of you, myself included, have kind of burned out on PJ at times, but they are still a blast to see live.

Monkey_Driven wrote:I haven't seen the band since 2010 and haven't really listened to many bootlegs since then but I had a great time last night. It wasn't the most amazing set but the band played well and the crowd ate up almost every song.

Some other thoughts:
-Imagine was a nice surprise. The city has a long history of segregation, racial discrimination, and tension that has been around long before the events in Ferguson. The performance felt special and it looked like Ed was touched.
-The screens above the stage really add to the live show without being distracting. The editing and different camera angles were really cool and felt very PJ.
-Foosteps and Who Go were really good.
-Nice to hear Thin Air. Not the best performance ever but solid nonetheless.
-I thought every song with an extended jam was really tight. The band was locked in.
-I got shut out on fan club tickets so I was sitting with a lot of more casual fans. No one sat down during the whole show. People seemed to really enjoy themselves. My buddy who has never seen a show was impressed with the crowd's energy and the mix of the band.
-Everyone could see the WMA tag coming, but it was tastefully included without being too "over the top" or preachy.
-Pretty cool moment when the band tagged "Modern Girl" right as the Cards clinched the victory.
-I just couldn't help but smile during the whole show. I know a lot of you, myself included, have kind of burned out on PJ at times, but they are still a blast to see live.

but think of all the other things you could have done or others bands you could have seen during that time

seriously though, looks like a solid setlist. i love gtf starting the 2nd encore

Monkey_Driven wrote:I haven't seen the band since 2010 and haven't really listened to many bootlegs since then but I had a great time last night. It wasn't the most amazing set but the band played well and the crowd ate up almost every song.

Some other thoughts:
-Imagine was a nice surprise. The city has a long history of segregation, racial discrimination, and tension that has been around long before the events in Ferguson. The performance felt special and it looked like Ed was touched.
-The screens above the stage really add to the live show without being distracting. The editing and different camera angles were really cool and felt very PJ.
-Foosteps and Who Go were really good.
-Nice to hear Thin Air. Not the best performance ever but solid nonetheless.
-I thought every song with an extended jam was really tight. The band was locked in.
-I got shut out on fan club tickets so I was sitting with a lot of more casual fans. No one sat down during the whole show. People seemed to really enjoy themselves. My buddy who has never seen a show was impressed with the crowd's energy and the mix of the band.
-Everyone could see the WMA tag coming, but it was tastefully included without being too "over the top" or preachy.
-Pretty cool moment when the band tagged "Modern Girl" right as the Cards clinched the victory.
-I just couldn't help but smile during the whole show. I know a lot of you, myself included, have kind of burned out on PJ at times, but they are still a blast to see live.

thank you

Some more specific thoughts on the show:

It didn't make sense to me on paper, but the way the show is paced now, with the acoustic material lumped together at the beginning, keeps things breathlessly explosive -- I felt like this was probably the most relentlessly aggressive main set I have seen PJ perform, with "Go" and "Do the Evolution" really setting the tone. Having seen most of the traditional main set rockers by now, I am not sure there are any that spring load the set list like "Go" does, particularly since last night it came at a point when I was prepared to hear "MYM." It was an unexpected burst of fury that instantly put me in a great mood.

I lucked out with the new material -- no "Future Days," no "Let the Records Play," no "Sirens," a song I have come to enjoy but which would have stunk up that main set something foul. I couldn't pick up any major mistakes during "My Father's Son" or "Swallowed Whole," probably the two LB songs I would have been happiest to hear (and which, if memory serves, were screwed up pretty regularly last fall). I thought Mike's solo at the end of "Lightning Bolt" was a highlight of the show. "Imagine" was dreadful -- not a bad performance (actually Ed sounded pretty good singing it), but a cheap, mawkish moment and a hideously predictable cover choice. I was not optimistic when Ed and Boom came out just the two of them at the start of encore 1, but I will give them credit for actually coming up with something less appealing to me than "Future Days." That is no minor archaeological dig.

There were moments when Ed's voice sounded really strong, mainly on the quieter, more tuneful songs like "Thin Air," "Pendulum," "Footsteps," etc. His voice does thin out on the screamers -- on the boots it sounds worse than it does in person, where it just sort of gets swallowed by the enormity of the sound of the band. On a purely objective level I would probably grade Ed's voice a C plus, but factoring in the inevitable I don't know what better I would have expected. The only real head-shaker was "Chloe Dancer," a song that was beyond Ed's range even when he was at his peak -- it's simply not a vocal style he can pull off, least of all now. That said, hearing the "Chloe/Crown" sequence was a surprise and a delight -- though it has become less special on bootlegs over the years, there was a sweetness to hearing it in person that I was glad to experience. And after the mess of the intro, the "Crown" section was pretty much flawless.

The band's show is what it is now. My ideal version of Pearl Jam is from somewhere around 1998-2000, but I don't know that they could be that band again if they tried, and trying would almost certainly make it worse. Within the context of what they've grown into, I was very pleased with last night's show - there * was* an element of "crowd/band bonding" that wasn't there on the 2000 tour, but in my view it did not subsume the performance; instead, it felt like a byproduct of it. I don't know that, performance-wise, it is the sort of thing that merits or rewards the type of analytical listening that the middle-era tours did, but as I have learned with several of my other favorite artists, there is value in meeting the band halfway in person.

Jesus Christ you guys, just enjoy it.

These guys are 50 now. 25 years of touring will take a toll on your voice.

I had a great time! I felt like I was pretty clear on that. Is that sentiment somehow negated simply because I choose not to lie to myself about how the band sounds now?

Glad to hear you enjoyed it, Kevin!

Always happy to see you back around these parts.

Kevin Davis wrote:I had a great time! I felt like I was pretty clear on that. Is that sentiment somehow negated simply because I choose not to lie to myself about how the band sounds now?

We are just scared you going to class-up the place with thoughtful and well written posts.

broken iris wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:I had a great time! I felt like I was pretty clear on that. Is that sentiment somehow negated simply because I choose not to lie to myself about how the band sounds now?

We are just scared you going to class-up the place with thoughtful and well written posts.

Exactly. I'm not a big fan of logic or making sense here.

how was Jeff's diarrhea? Any issues?