Set List: Grievance (from Binaural)

Photo credit: Smirks

Sound file credit: LispyDiva@aol.com - Grievance.mp3 - [44mHz] (right click and Save As to download MP3)

Smirks (smirks@console.org)
Wow! What a great teaser of what is to come from Pearl Jam in the next few months! Seeing Pearl Jam on Letterman is and will definitely be something to remember for a life time.

It all started at about 8:00 in the morning, as that's when my alarm went off. I wasn't too happy so I snoozed until 8:30. Then I got up, got ready and went to go pick up my friend Oscar whom I was going into NYC with. We were on the road by 9:30 and right on schedule. Coming from cental NJ, I knew it wouldn't take us any more than an hour to get into the city. Here we were driving up the happy turnpike to get off at exit 16E, and I made a mistake and got of at 16W.... I had made a wrong turn. Anyway, I was able to navigate myself around and we eventually found ourselves at the North Bergen Park & Ride where we'd catch our bus into the NY Port Authority right there at 42nd & 8th, a mere 12 blocks from the Ed Sullivan Theatre.

We were in NYC by 11:00, which is what time the standby phone number opened for us to attempt to get tickets. The night before I had programmed the number into my cell phone, and I immediately started dialing. What did I get? You guessed it - busy signals. I continued redialing until we finished our walk to the theatre. Once we got to the theatre we saw a lady standing outside asking people questions giving away tickets to the show. Oscar and I thought, "This is it, we're getting in!" Of course we said this based on the trivia she was asking the other people before us. Finally it was our turn, and she explained to us if we could answer this one trivia question about the Letterman show we'd have two guaranteed seats in the show; we acknowledged that. She asked us, "What is the cue card holders name?" What?!? What kind of stupid question was that?! So, we obviously got the answer wrong. We waited around a little bit longer and then asked her for a second chance. She said she wasn't supposed to give people more than on chance, but she did and this time our question was "What is the bassist name of the CBS Orchestra?" Again, we couldn't answer the question, and then the lady said "Sorry, your only option is to try standby now." Great, we were back to square one.

By this time we were a little hungry, as it was around noon and neither of us had eaten all day. We decided to hike across the street to Roy Rogers and grab a quick bite. While eating I continued to call the standby line and I finally got through! The lady on the phone asked us another trivia question, but this time I got it right. The question was "What is the name of the Late Show band?" I answered "The CBS Orchestra," which was the correct answer. She then took our names and told us we were numbers 36 and 37 in the standby line. We thought since we were in the top 50 we would have a good shot of getting in. So after lunch we walked back across the street and found many other CBS pages around giving away tickets. We still had to try those people because they were guaranteed seats in the show.

The first lady we went to asked us, "Who was Dave's first guest on the show when he came to CBS?" Again, we had no clue. We then found yet another guy around the corner wearing a suit and tie and decided to ask him. We went up to him and asked if he was giving away Letterman tickets. He asked us, "Have you tried to get tickets yet?" I answered "No" obviously because if we told him yes he wouldn't have given us a shot.... not like it mattered anyway because another one of the pages came up and said to him "Don't give these guys a shot, they've been here all morning!" After the snitch left, the guy in the suit told us to meet him by TKTS in Times Square in a few minutes. We thought about it for a second and thought maybe this guy was just trying to get rid of us, but we decided to go and see what happened. We started walking the 5 or 6 blocks to TKTS around 1. We hung out there until around 2 when finally we saw this guy walking towards us!!! He told us something along the lines of "I admire you guys for being fans of Pearl Jam. They are a great band, and at that they are very hard to see live. I'm going to give you both tickets as long as you promise me you will not go crazy in the studio. No loud shouting, standing up, wooing, or noises any more than clapping or laughing." We told him we understood, and we would definitely not do any of that and that we would be good TV studio people." He said "Ok, what are your names?" That's it! We had gotten two guaranteed seats in the show! And we didn't even have to answer a trivia question!

Around 10 after two we began walking back to the studio as we had heard the band were to arrive between 2:30 and 3. We got there around 2:20 or so and there weren't many people standing around. Nothing was happening, so at around 3:20 some people told us we should go get in the line in front of the studio to get our seat numbers, etc., so we did that. Of course during the 15 minutes we were gone is when PJ arrived at the back door on 53rd street. No worries though because we knew we could catch them after the show.

At 4:40 we made our way back to the front of the theatre to be seated as we were told to do. By 5:10 we were being seated. We were placed up on the balcony in the 5th row, which wasn't so bad. We could still see everything and we had a nice arial view. After all, a seat is better than no seat at all. Once everyone was in someone went on stage and told us all the rules of the show... "No yelling, screaming, wooing, shouting. The two most important things in this show are 1) Laughter and 2) Clapping." So, right at 5:30 in the nose the show started taping. There was definitely lots of laugher and clapping going on in what seemed like forever!

Finally at around 6:15 they cut to commercial and you see the stage open up from the back and the stage hands all start to bring out PJ's gear! Once I saw them setting that up I glanced over to Dave's desk and saw a nice huge vinyl "Binaural" album sitting on his desk. Glancing back at the stage you now see Stone on the far right side, with his longer scraggly hair, hooking up, Matt in the middle getting ready, Jeff in between Mike and Matt plugging in and then Mike on the far left with his punk rocker look plugging in. Then towards center stage you see Ed facing backwards wearing his warmup suit. He doesn't turn around until after the commercial break is over. I was ready and excited for Pearl Jam's performance. Commercial break was over and Dave said something like "We're always looking for an excuse to have these guys on the show. Today's excuse is my birthday. Here they are- Pearl Jam!" The audience went wild, and they went right into this great fast paced song which everyone knew was new, but no one had any idea of what it was. Three and a half minutes it was all over, and it only seemed like a few seconds. At the end of the song Mike took off his guitar and threw it on the ground, picked it up again and tossed it once more. Ed went to pick it up, walked towards Dave and then noticed it was still plugged in. He unplugged it and gave it to Dave as a b-day gift. Dave thanked him and took the guitar. WOW! The band was great, everyone was performing at top notch. It was all just amazing.

After the show my friend and I rushed back outside to 53rd street hoping to see them leave. This time there were many more people out there, enough people to need 4 of New York's finest to stand guard. After a few minutes you see Mike, Stone and Jeff walk out of the door and immediately get in their black van. Than van pulls away and the other one backs up. After a few more minutes you see Matt walk out. Matt is really cool about everything, he actually stays outside and goes to the left of the door where I was and starts signing a few autographs. I was able to get many clear photos of Matt when he was merely a foot or two away from me. After a minute or two around there he gets in the van. While Matt is in the van we can see him through the windshield as we were right in front of the van. People were waving and making hand gestures, and he was waving back. At one point he apparently called a cab, and when it came near he jumped out of the van and got into the cab. Right after that one of the crew for PJ came out with a cup of tea and announced that it was Eddie's and if anyone wanted it they could have it. My friend jumped and the roadie handed him the cup of still warm tea. Then another roadie came out and was passing out picks. Unfortunately I didn't get one. :( So finally after a good bit Ed comes of the door. He was then mobbed by a young lady trying to give him a present on her birthday. Of course the rush of the person caused the cops to intervene, all of which made Ed get into the van faster. I was taking pictures the whole time, I don't know if I got anything. We'll see.

After that it was all over. We started walking back to Port Authority and discussing the great day it had been. So, to sum it all up, I can only say it was definitely worth all the trouble we went through, and all the mean CBS pages, and all the great Pearl Jam fans we met before, during, and after the show. Pearl Jam fans are truly some of the most amazing and dedicated people on the plant. Thank you Pearl Jam for giving me a great day to remember.