Set List: Long Road, Grievance, Last Exit, Given To Fly, Hail Hail, Rival, Wishlist, Insignificance, Corduroy, Small Town, Nothing As It Seems, Evacuation, In Hiding, Daughter, Even Flow, Off He Goes, Better Man, Animal, Once, Rearviewmirror;
1st encore: Go, Do The Evolution, Jeremy, Crazy Mary, Black, Porch;
2nd encore: Last Kiss, Sonic Reducer, Yellow Ledbetter

Photo credit: Brian Byrd

Ed marveled at Mike a couple of times, sitting on the floor in Indian style. He opened "Nothing as it seems" by saying, "this features Mike McCready on guitar." NAIS and Off He Goes were the slow standouts. Perfectly executed for full effect. The band was really loose and enjoying the music. Stone jumped around a little. McCready really stood out last night. His solos on Even Flow made the song worthwhile. He was awesome on Porch too. He was better than I remembered him, I think. He had his half-windmill arm swings going. The rest of the band was in top form--I really think they should have given Matt Cameron a drum solo (he could have put his hair throwing to good use). Sonic Reducer was a nice surprise, even though I've only heard it a few times. Especially moving was Crazy Mary. Ed introduced it as something he wanted to play because he had been thinking about when he and Victoria Williams had been riding bikes in the French Quarter a while ago.

Ed proposed a singalong to Last Kiss, and he took pictures of the crowd. I was really happy when they played my favorites off the new album--insignificance, rival and grievance. The crowd wasn't really into these songs, but they kicked ass nonetheless. Ed was funny. With tongue in cheek, he said he had gotten an advance copy of Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention last night, and he said it would go something like: "My fellow Americans, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,...." etc. He also said, "Who are we to say. The important thing is to get out on Tuesday, election day, and vote. Do something. Do something." Hail Hail was great. I'm glad they didn't snub No Code. Along with Hail Hail, Go was a wonderful fast one; Animal too. I guess you'd just be really hard pressed to find a bad Pearl Jam song. For many more years, hopefully.

Brian Byrd (PearlJm96@hotmail.com):

First of all, let me just say thank you so very much for my absolutely perfect FRONT ROW dead center tickets from the fan club. I was the closest ticket holder in the arena to Eddie Vedder. It was unbelievably awesome!

From beginning to end and everything in between, this was the best concert of all time. Long Road was an awesome opener with Grievance and Last Exit being great rock tracks to get the crowd pumping. Then they played Given to Fly, which if you haven't heard it live before, it is amazing. It's just one of those songs that's great on the album, but sounds even better when performed in concert.

The rest of the first set included many great new songs as well as a mixture of some old stuff. My personal highlight, as far as the performance was concerned, was definitely when they played Rearviewmirror. This was my third Pearl Jam concert (Birmingham-1998, Atlanta-2000), and I must say that this performance of Rearviewmirror was the best song I've ever gotten to see them play. Absolutely magnificent.

And to top that off, they played two songs I really wanted them to play but never thought they actually would...Last Kiss and Sonic Reducer. Then the excellent ending of the show came with another rockin' performance of Yellow Ledbetter.

My personal non-performing highlights of the show came when I caught a guitar pick from Eddie and towards the end of the concert I got spit on by Eddie Vedder. I know it may sound disgusting to some of you, but to me it meant that I was fortunate enough to be that close to the greatest front man in the greatest band of all time! Hopefully, some of you can understand that.

To Pearl Jam themselves: Thanks again for the greatest concert performance I've ever attended, and I can't wait to see you on the next tour!

--Brian Byrd
PearlJm96@hotmail.com