Set List: Corduroy, Breakerfall, Animal, Hail Hail, Rival, Jeremy, Nothing As It Seems, MFC, Habit, Light Years, Lukin, Even Flow, Brain of J, Insignificance, Better Man, Rearviewmirror, Once, Fuckin' Up;
encore: Black, Leaving Here

Set list credit: Jochem Beuting

Well, anyway, we got a cab to the station and three trains from there (crowded with other pinkhaired and wide-clothed people like me) and arrived at our destination (Landgraaf Central) at about 10.15. My repeated “hurry up we're gonna miss Pearl Jam!!!!!” got us into a bus to the festival grounds (okay, so it was five hours until they would play.. I was excited, alright!!!!). Now if you've never been to a happening like this before it's pretty intimidating: 60.000 people were out and about, drinking beer, grooving to the music, buying shirts and everything. It was a beautiful thing to see, to be honest. Well I'm not gonna bore any of you with the other bands that played (I only saw KoRn, De Dijk and Venice, missed Gomez unfortunately). Let's skip right through to Pearl Jam.

After KoRn's performance (which was the exact same thing as they did a month before in the Ahoy, Rotterdam) everybody just left! I mean, all of the sudden there was nobody in front of the stage. I could hardly believe how stupid all those people were, and you guessed it.. I raced to the front and got to about six meters away from the stage. By the way, all the festival-goers (or at least 50.000 of them) came to watch Pearl Jam, so you can guess how lucky I was!!! The roadies started loading these guitar-carts up to the stage and there were about 5 guitars on each of them- all in a different colour, so maybe it was a fashion-thing (.It took about an hour to set everything up and to test everything and set everything.

Then, at 16.15, a wave of cheers and clapping started to rise from the audience and I stretched my neck to see what the hell was happening- Matt Cameron was getting up the stage with what I think was a huge relaxed grin- then from where I was standing I could see Stoney walk up the stage, (Mike and Jeff were on the other side of the stage, I couldn't see them since I'm 5”4) . Then, people started screaming and clapping so loud it could only mean one thing: You guessed it, Eddie walked up to the mic. I got goosebumps all over realizing this was it. Without a word they broke into Corduroy (which is a great first song since the intro fitted my mood) and everybody started bumping and jumping. I was squashed between two people at least twice my size as I thought “fuck me, I'm in the pit again!!!”. When the band entered into Breakerfall, I decided if I couldn't fit between these people, I just had to go above their heads- and so I did. A very nice guy lifted me up and threw me onto his friends, who carried me to other groups of fans. Now this was my first crowdsurf and I was rewarded for my courage immediately. As I rose above the other fans, I was face to face with Eddie (he probably doesn't remember, but I do and that's all that matters)!!! I could hardly believe my luck! Another set of goosebumps covered the old ones as I screamed along with Breakerfall.

When I was back on my feet, Eddie took the time to say "Hello" and contribute a little intro to the next two songs: "Is it okay if I speak to you in English? (sure, what else can you do?) The only Dutch word I know is.. (beats the hell out of me what he said!) Let me introduce the next way by saying it's nice to be out of the states for a while.. "We Americans are kind of a superiour race (booooo!!!) and we have our own way of dealing with the over population.. We buy guns and we shoot each other cuz it's so fucking cool!" (Um, he was smiling when he said that, okay?) Then they played Rival, and a whole batch of other songs. Before the band got into Light Years, Eddie gave the crowd a little advice, to care about and love their friends. "Do any of you know the feeling when someone you loved or were friends with suddenly went away, not on this earth anymore, and you know you never got the chance to say goodbye? Take care of your friends and love them while they're still here." I got tears in my eyes when that happened, I had to learn what he just said the hard way, a couple of years back, and it's still pretty deep. I'm glad Eddie personalized it for us.

The last song they played became Fucking Up, by Neil Young, and I just read someone's fanview, someone said "If you haven't seen them play it live, you should, it rocks!" I can only second that, it was fucking cool!! At a certain point I so much felt the words and music that I got someone to lift me up onto the crowd again and I just sang along, it was a beautiful feeling once again. It makes you feel alive. By the way, Ed said goodbye to all the fans just before that show since Live was waiting to get on stage after them. Here's what he said about them: "There's another band waiting to get on stage and I've heard their singer is called Ed too, but I've been told that I give better Ed than he does." Everybody went wild again and Eddie was cracking up on stage.

After the song he took some pics of us with his Polaroid and gave his tambourine that was smashed and battered to some fan that was in front too (I tried to get on one of the pictures too, then I realized how tall I was and how much taller everybody around me was, sniff..). So they left and me and another guy (yes, we were the ones who started it) started to chant "We want more!" ...clapping our hands and everybody slowly joined in. Of course the band couldn't refuse!!

They came back and Eddie started a conversation with Brett, the soundguy (?) about a tape. It was pretty funny, he thanked us (with a wide grin) for being quiet as he sorted out this personal matter. Through the crowd of heads I could see Jeff sitting back with a relaxed, big smile on his face and I guess everybody was cracking up. They played Black and then before they played the last song of the encore (Leaving Here?) Ed said he'd see us again soon in Rotterdam (which I can hardly wait for by the way) and said hi to all the people from Utrecht (he meant ME!!! ().Then it was really over and I was kinda sad, I'd liked it if they'd kept playing for the rest of the evening!

Well this was my fanview- if you haven't seen the band live yet, go see them. They're great!!