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

We flew in on Thursday, took a bus to Acadiana - Cajun country to visit Jim's sister (good excuse to the co-workers and acquaintances who would never understand!) If you ever get a chance to go there - do it! great people, great music, hot food - cold beer - all day long! (btw- frog legs do NOT taste like chicken, and alligator tastes like ……well, alligator ;P ) Monday morning - 4 hour bus ride to the big easy. I booked the hotel on the internet - under $100 and walking distance to bus and venue. Well we get there and it's all glass and brass - 8 chandeliers in the lobby that are each bigger than my livingroom! So I smooth out my PJ t-shirt, adjust my back-pack and we check in (feeling slightly out of place) great room - bar and all. We shower, change clothes and spend the rest of the day in the French Quarter walking around, drinking hurricanes, listening to music, getting drenched, but enjoying it all. Then back to the hotel, shower again, dry clothes again!

OK, this is Jim's first PJ concert (except for Bridge) so he doesn't understand my need to get there early. He's hungry, I'm too excited, but we find a place to eat. The waitress brings out menus and kinda stands over us waiting for us to order, so we do. Damn fast service - she explains that she wants to get to the show, too! Then she proceeds to tell us and the people at the other 2 tables the fastest way to get to the Arena - every one there was going to the concert!

THE CONCERT:
We make it through the metal detectors and grab some t-shirts (the black binaural, and beige insignificance-didn't see any posters :(( go downstairs to get wristbands - we didn't use Ten Club for this concert, but managed to pull up 16th row on my third try at ticketbastard.com! I really liked Sonic Youth. I'd never seen them before, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but they were good. The venue was only half full but everyone applauded and enjoyed them, I think. The place filled in during the break. Everyone is high fiving each other when they see their seats and I'm thinking this is going to be a great crowd (unlike Portland '98). I checked my watch, figuring I could save my battery and wait until 9:00 to set my camera so the flash would not go off, but at 8:45 the lights went down and the guys strolled on stage. We all jumped up and cheered and never sat down again for the next 2 hours and 20 minutes!

Eddie picked up a guitar and I knew we were going to get Long Road, which I love! They fired off a half dozen songs and I needed air! One right after the other - really on!- I always judge bands by their live performance - records can conceal - PJ kicks ass live! - every song was great, every song was better than the record. This guy in front of me and to my left was dancing around, singing along and I was having a mental contest with him to see who could name the songs first. I'd say about 1/3 of the people knew all of the words. Evacuation and Rival threw some of them and Sonic Reducer made the dancer freeze in his tracks! Mike was on fire - does that get said enough this tour? Damn he is good! The rest of the band seemed to be enjoying his playing as much as we were. And once again he was in a great mood, smiling and gesturing to the crowd - a lot of interaction. Stone was a lot more into it than I have seen him. Matt - damn, is he a great drummer or what? He really fits the band well! And Jeff - what can I say - he inspired me to play bass - how many bass guitars does this guy have?

Photo credit: Brian Byrd

The band was totally on! I don't think anyone missed a beat the whole night except it looked like Ed wanted to add a tag to Daughter, but couldn't quite spit it out, so Stone added this cool guitar thing at the end. Eddie smashed the mic with his guitar at the end of RearViewMirror, which really rocked, but I cringed seeing the guitar get smacked - I have a lot of friends that save forever trying to buy instruments - including me! -recycle, dudes. During one of the encore numbers Eddie did a balancing act with the mic stand - having fun - I was out of film by then - thought I counted better, but too easy to loose track -pictures were not foremost on my mind! Eddie was very possessive of his wine this show. He didn't 'take it down, pass it around' during Crazy Mary and when he was talking he smoked a cigarette, took a few swigs and cradled the bottle very possessively -- must have been good stuff!

Eddie talked about what the band had been through and how the fans had helped them get through it. I felt a lot better hearing him talk about it, don't know why really, I guess I was just worried about them, like everyone else. They seem to be moving past it slowly. After hearing him talk about it I know they will be ok. I have a feeling we will never hear Alive again, though. If they can play that, I will know they are over it as much as they possibly can be. I always like the personal touches of the show - the talking, greetings, speeches - political bullshit - makes it all more …well, personal! But in the end it is the music that counts, and this concert was GREAT! I got to hear 29 of my favorite songs - 4 more shows to hear the other 50!

Waiting for the bus to the airport the next day we met a fan on her way back to Alabama. We talked about the show and how great it was, then at the airport we met a couple more fans flying standby to Memphis - got me extremely jealous! The consensus was that New Orleans Rocked!