Live Review: Eddie Vedder @ Warner Theatre, August 17

Since I gave you the full run-down already on Mr. Vedder's opening night performance, I figured I'd kind of compare the two for the second night recap. While the audience was much more amenable on the second night, there still were plenty of asshats that came close to ruining the vibe Eddie was trying so hard to establish. I mean, seriously, who screams out to "move things along" while the performer is explaining the socio-political importance of a civil rights song, for the love of Benjy? To paraphrase Eddie, though, "I can appreciate if you don't want to hear a lot of political discourse, but, seriously, who did you think you were coming to see?" Interestingly enough, the slightly more chill crowd allowed EV to play far more subdued, acoustic tracks than the night prior. Whether because or in spite of, however, even though the night before had the worse audience, it really was kind of a more raucous show as a result.


Where night one highlighted more of the Beatles, night two was given to Dylan, ranging from one of my personal faves, "Girl From the North Country", to one of the last two songs of the final encore, "All Along the Watchtower", replete with Fugazi's drummer, who was there filming the show on Vedder's behalf. With the exception of some of the Into the Wild tracks, I only noticed a couple of song repeats during the two evenings.



With those exceptions, the nights were reasonably similar, down to the fact that it looked like Vedder was wearing the same exact flannel (my seats were even better for night two). Backdrops were the same, timing of sets was near identical and both nights ended with the same rousing sing-along.



I wish I could say the experience firmly cemented me as a EV/PJ convert, but it might have had the opposite effect. While Eddie was a compelling and engaging performer, two nights in a row showed me that at least those fans in the area are a bunch of schmucks. It was two nights of sheer high times, let me tell you.



I also would like to give a special shout out to the staggeringly drunk blonde two seats to my left that would not shut the hell up during the duration of the concert, even after numerous people told you to zip it. You, dear lady, are one classy broad.

Live Review: Eddie Vedder @ Warner Theatre, August 16

As a Gen-X music junkie, I've been fortunate enough to see more than my fair share of concerts, and my regrets are few. One of my biggest, however, is never having seen Pearl Jam. I was in high school and college when Ten was blowing up, but I didn't think too much of them at the time. Of course, my college roommate and a different buddy on my floor were HUGE PJ addicts, so I was able to familiarize myself with a lot of their stuff at the time. It became quickly clear to me that their best stuff was to be found on demos, bootlegs and B-sides, so I didn't take up the aforementioned latter friend's offer to see the band in a tiny club in Detroit around '93. He had been in the Ten Fan Club since its inception, and these were choice seats. To this day, I kick myself for letting that opportunity pass me by, but I was broke and living in Chicago at the time, so what can you do?

I decided to rectify the situation this evening by catching Eddie Vedder at the Warner Theatre in DC. As I previously mentioned, I was never a huge PJ fan and knew next to nothing of Mr. Vedder's solo catalogue. I always dug the band for their non-musical forays, like telling Ticket Bastard to stick it and good things like that. As such, I'm not even going to bother trying to go over the set list. I'll be completely honest; I didn't even recognize half the tunes played tonight. I can say he touched on Ten and Vs., two Beatles tracks (a powerful "Blackbird" and a jammy "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"), the titular track from Dead Man Walking and damn near the entire Into the Wild soundtrack. The concert ran about two hours and change. Vedder played on a sparse stage, with a few guitars in the background, a stool, a box of some sort and what looked like a suitcase from the nosebleed seats I had. He went through about four painted backdrops, ranging from a giant tent to what looked like the backside of high school play scenery.

Eddie pretty much ran the gauntlet musically, at times playing with church-like reverence and at others strumming away like a man possessed. The first half of the show was not the best I've ever seen. The audience was damn near out of control, continually screaming (drunkenly) requests whenever Vedder tried to speak. Between songs, he'd try to punctuate the atmosphere with various political opinions, but the crowd was unreceptive at best, which I found particularly odd for DC, but who am I? At one point, someone threw a George Bush mask on-stage that made for a great deal of banter, but, again, folks didn't seem much interested in hearing that.

After the first intermission, however, it was like the house changed. I don't know if it was the fact that Vedder started playing crowd favorites or what, but the last hour or so made it clear to me what the allure of this man and assumedly his band have over their fans. He got into a groove and didn't let up. He closed his first encore chanting into a vocal loop machine which, for me, hands down was the musical high point of the evening. The final encore saw Vedder take the stage with someone on drums and someone else on a tambourine (again, I had clouds lower than I was sitting) truly rocking out, adorned in lab coats as the house damn near came down.

Suffice to say, I'm glad I got tickets for tomorrow night, too.

[Photo by Karen Loria, via the official Pearl Jam site]