Pearl Jam Concert in Wisconsin Sept 2011 Reviewed in Riveting Riffs Magazine

Pearl Jam / PJ20 / Wisconsin /September 3rd -4th, 2011

Reviewed by Chris McHale

Pearl Jam Photo 1 It is easy enough to skip over Pearl Jam and follow the restless tides of the music sea onward, these days off to the Williamsburg indie matrix or over to the back alleys of electronica Berlin, or just kick back and get assaulted by every possible variation of four on the floor known to man, accompanied by a headache inducing corral of identifying adjectives. And that’s not even including the layers of hip-hop that tend to fold back and give birth to new tribes every six months or so.

For the last twenty years there has been a consistent voice coming out of the northwest, flag firmly planted on Blistering Groove Hill, lyrics that tear right to the heart of the matter and I mean the heart, the emotion, no truth left unturned. Pearl Jam was birthed in Seattle, an on-growth from the band Mother Love Bone and it has endured for twenty years, a rare feat in A.D.D. World. September 3-4^th, 2011, was designated the time to celebrate this achievement. PJ20 it was called, and 40,000 of the faithful flocked to the woods of Wisconsin to let this band know just how they felt about it all.

How did they feel? One clue might have been the gigantic line stretching up the steep hill to get into the Pearl Jam museum that never seemed to get any shorter. Another might have been that no matter what tune the band chose to play, even cover tunes, every single person in that massive crowd seemed to know every lyric and sang it full-voiced right along with Pearl Jam lead singer, Eddie Vedder.

Like any good epic, the Pearl Jam story is filled with twists and an emerging cast of characters. Stone Gossard, on rhythm guitar was the band leader, Jeff Ament, plays bass and has been Stone’s band mate all the way back to the early 80’s. Mike McReady started jamming with Stone in Seattle and a friend, sent a demo tape to a guy he knew and who was living in San Diego at the time. That guy, Eddie Vedder, listened to the tape, went surfing and then wrote lyrics to three iconic Pearl Jam tunes, “Alive,” “Once,” and “Footsteps,” and so the story goes. The drummer, Matt Cameron, is the ‘man who saved the band’ according to Vedder and he joined in 2000.

Fans seem to endlessly debate the relationships between various members of the group and why not? It is as engaging as any story and all of it against the backdrop of a compelling set list that seems to just go on and on. Pearl Jam, of course, is not just a band. It is a culture, a commitment, a passion, a ritual, a shared community of vibe, emotion, excellence and experience. To these fans that traveled from all over the world to be there, it is an intimate part of their lives, something that they use to get through the days and nights and something none of them would want to miss. PJ20 was a singular and exceptional concert event, and even an uninitiated mop like me was swept up into the rocket-fueled wash of emotions that the band pounded into the Wisconsin night.

Other bands performed as well, including; The Strokes, Queens of The Stone Age, Mudhoney, John Doe, Liam Finn and Glen Hansard, and all of them have Pearl Jam connections one way or another. There were opportunities to see Pearl Jam members up close and personal at the small stages in the afternoon. Ament, McCready and Cameron performed with Joseph Arthur and Vedder was on stage with Liam Finn and John Doe, but the real deal feast of the weekend was when Pearl Jam took to the main stage to play sixty-one tunes over two nights, a mammoth six and half hour set list.

Throughout the years Pearl Jam has sometimes been downright militant about protecting their fans. They almost committed career hari-kari in their fight with the dark lord, Ticketmaster. They have always been adverse to the trappings of an industry that demands music videos and CD’s, sometimes insisting instead on vinyl only releases. Pearl Jam, it would seem, is a royal pain in the butt to corpieville on many levels and the result is a loyal and massive fan base.

Lights down, cue Phillip Glass recording, Metamorphis 2 and Pearl Jam enters. From the stage the view is awe-inspiring. There are 40,000 people stacked to the sky. Maybe this is why the band chose the venue. The energy flows down the steep valley and engulfs them. From the first chord, it is obvious this will be a Pearl Jam set like no other. The band has something to say here, something to share. This is not a night for set list geeks. This is not a concert with a promotional agenda or another tour stop in an SRO harvest. This is a one off, a custom paint job, the joker is wild and all bets are off. There is time here. Six hours of stage time over the next twenty-four hours and Pearl Jam wants to visit everything Pearl Jam is, ever was or will become.

There is looseness to the proceedings. Unexpected tunes show up. Some not played for years. For “Pull Me,” “Setting Forth,” and “Not For You,” the band is joined by Stokes lead singer Julian Casablancas, while for “In The Moonlight,” the band is joined by Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age.

Chris Cornell, the lead singer from Soundgarden, and the singer with the Temple of the Dog project, enters to a roar. It is time to roll back memories. Cornell sings “Stardog Champion,” “Reach Down,” and “Hunger Strike.” It’s an odd moment, to have Vedder yield the spotlight to Cornell, but it shows that this is a different kind of event for the band. It is a summation of the past twenty years of Pearl Jam and also of the collaborations that go back even farther and which form the DNA of this music.

The night concludes with “Kick Out The Jams.’ The crowd is sated, but there is more to come tomorrow. Eddie Vedder thanks everyone for ‘letting the band be something we never get to be – a party band.’

The next day the temperature has dropped and it feels like summer fled in the night. Still, the crowd is electrified. Looking back, Saturday and Sunday were one continuous thread of songs for Pearl Jam, one set list complimenting the other and Pearl Jam discovering something new for themselves in the process. “This feels more like a new beginning,” Eddie Vedder tells the crowd. The band is unleashed. On Saturday they tried material they had not been able to touch in years, as their tradition codified and hardened around them. Tonight, they take the stage prepared to follow the music wherever it leads. “It’s like 90’s Pearl Jam,” one fan says. Or maybe it’s just a band that rediscovered the joy of just blasting out music in all directions. It is an achievement to keep anything together for twenty years. It is time to rock.

“Habit,” with Liam Finn joining the band, blows the old wooden roof off of the place, then “Daughter,” and an intense and rarely heard “It’s OK,” a Dead Moon cover, brings tears to many eyes as an emotional coda. They played, “Red Mosquito,” and “Satan’s Bed,” and even “Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town,” a special request of Dhani Harrison, whose band, The New Number 2, played earlier on Stage 2. The first set ends with a rousing “Jeremy,” a 40,000 strong chorus of voices rising to a night sky filled with stars and a pale half-moon.

After a break, Eddie comes out with an acoustic guitar in hand. His response to the emotions clinging to the valley all weekend long, a lingering mist of shadows and memories, is to write a new song. “I’m so glad we made it until when it all got good,” he sings in a plaintive baritone. There was a sense years ago that Eddie Vedder’s voice was almost a parody of itself, but over the years he has steadily evolved into one of the premier voices of our time. Songs like this display the simple honesty of his delivery.

The band plays the Stone Gossard tune, “No Way,” after a back and forth, in which Stone wants to play what he deems to be a ‘better song’ from Public Image. “Let’s play both,” Eddie says, resolving the matter with an outburst of west coast punk, circa 1990. The second set ends with an intense “Spin The Black Circle,” while Mike McReady circled the stage a half dozen times during the final chorus. This writer is exhausted just watching him run.

Chris Cornell returns for a more polished reprise of the first night set. The band launches into a blistering “Sonic Reducer,” to wrap things up.

The band comes back for a third encore, opening with “Alive,” and the Wisconsin night is now completely electrified, the result of over three hours of an amazing set of Pearl Jam. Rock concerts can certainly rise in pitch as the set grows, but this rock concert is flirting with epic. All the performers who played this weekend pile on to the stage for a rollicking “Rocking In The Free World,” and Pearl Jam takes a final bow, the band members with their arms linked together. The house lights and work lights come on, but the band is still not done. They start to leave the stage, before returning for a fourth encore, “Yellow Ledbetter,” followed by McCready’s homage to Hendrix on the “Star Spangled Banner.”

Over the weekend I met a fan from London, a big guy, who has seen lots of shows over the years and he said, “The first band I followed was The Clash. I hitchhiked everywhere following that band, except to Aberdeen. Aberdeen was too far. Punk woke me up. Punk made me political. But out of all the bands, I follow Pearl Jam now. It is the community. There’s an amazing community following the band. There are times that I cry at the shows. I’m 6’2” and 15 stone and I cry like a baby.”