Set List: Do The Evolution, Animal, Last Exit, Brain of J., Given To Fly, In Hiding, Corduroy, Wishlist, Lukin, Even Flow, Daughter/(Stuff & Nonsense), Dissident, MFC, Better Man, Red Mosquito, Black; 1st encore: Hail Hail, Mankind, I Got Shit, Rearviewmirror, Alive; 2nd encore: Yellow Ledbetter

Nick Edwards (nmedward@students.wisc.edu)
Two Halves Make A Whole
Noon. Friday, June 26th. Hot and extremely humid. I packed my bags and was going over the checklist. Sleeping bag, pillow, tent. Check. Guitar. Check. Tape recorder and tapes. Check. I felt like I was forgetting something necessary. The tickets! A big thank you to the fan club. The tickets were unbelievably close, being in the 20th row. I caught Eddie's every expression.

The 1= hour trip from Madison to Alpine Valley was filled with excitement and anticipation. I went with a group of friends, mostly the same people that went to the PJ concert at Summerfest in 1995. We weren't sure this one would live up to our memories of that concert, but with two whole albums of material since the last concert in Wisconsin, how could this concert be anything but fantastic?

Hanging out in the lot, cooking out, sippin brews, talking to other PJ fans was great. What is it about bands and music that creates a tight bond between people that don't even know each other? Our group started heading toward the gates, with me trailing behind trying to unload the tickets I had bought for some people who backed out last minute. I finally decided to do what another person did who wrote an earlier Fanview; I left my tickets with the guys at a radio station booth so that they might give them away to someone unfortunate enough to be without a ticket. Like Daniel Quinn says, some people are "Leavers" and some people are "Takers." I'll aspire to be the former.

Song Highlights
Do the Evolution - great high energy song to start the concert with. Ed came out with some sleek looking sunglasses. (reminiscent of Neil Young from the Transformer Man cover?) Wearing some cargo pants and a T-shirt. Ed was dancing around during the solo, obviously pumped and ready to rock.

Animal - Five candles, five against one, and all five were together on this one, still feeding off the high crowd energy.

Last Exit - The opening song off Vitalogy has been a popular choice for this tour, and was a good one to keep the tempo up. Near the end it looked like Eddie blanked on the lyrics or something and the song fell apart. Eddie said something to the effect of, "Nevermind that song. Let's get to the next one."

Given to Fly - During this song, the stage was illuminated in an almost sky blue light, creating a very cosmic mood. Eddie was really into it, really using hand motions to reiterate the lyrics.

Corduroy - The 1st song with Eddie on guitar, with its addictively simple opening. The crowd was definitely into this, and later in the song during the interlude, the guys just went nuts. Matt was on drums with a heavy tom beat, and the four others on guitar were interweaving their slightly improvised parts to perfection. One of the best songs of the night.

Wishlist - The lights went down and the band relaxed for this one. Just a light on Eddie. When he got to the "Fifty million hands" part, he noticed the crowd's literal reaction and remarked, "Beautiful."

Better Man - A great performance of this piece; my favorite of the night.

Mankind - It was fun to see Eddie take a break and just play the tambourine while Stone took over. He threw a couple of tambourines into the crowd as souvenirs.

I Got Shit - Introduced by Eddie, talking about their recording session with Neil Young, pointing out that over a very short time period Young turned out 12 songs, and PJ just turned out two, one of which being this one.

Alive - The classic from Ten was full of energy, and the crowd was going nuts since they knew the concert was beginning to wrap up. Killer solo by Mike, while Eddie ran around Stage Left and flipped off the video screen.

Yellow Ledbetter - What an ending song! Eddie introduced it as a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughn, who died leaving Alpine Valley years ago. Ed sang the mostly incomprehensible lyrics, as always, and then the rest of the band basically stopped to watch Mike play his solo. Stone was standing on the side of the stage, Jeff in back of his speakers, Matt behind the drums, and Eddie kneeling on one knee, resting his chin on his hand, just staring in awe at Mike.

Second Night