Ed's set and participation: Take a Walk, Better Man/(Save it for Later), Stuff and Nonsense, Corduroy, History Never Repeats (w/ Betchadupa), I See Red (w/ Betchadupa), World Where You Live, Soon Forget, Paradise

(Hope I didn't miss anything!)

Wednesday night. As Neil Finn said near the beginning of the concert, "my favourite night of the week... It has something to do with the impossible spelling of the word - Wed-nes-day." The St. James Theatre was packed, and in "fine voice" in the words of Neil. But it was Eddie we were there to see, and he didn't disappoint.

Take a Walk was his first number, and he was in fine voice himself, taking time out in the middle for a bit of a dance. Then he was gone. Just before the break, he came back out, much to the delight of the crowd. He made a comment that he had come down here with under the pretence that he would do some Neil and Tim Finn songs which he could do with the left lobe of his brain tied behind his back! But Neil was "a visionary" and had other ideas. There was some discussion about who's ideas they were, and Ed came to the conclusion that "there are a lot of visionaries up here." He then began playing Better Man - with the crowd helping out for the first verse. I was hoping for a Save it For Later tag, and there was one.

The second half, and Eddie's main set. Stuff and Nonsense with Tim Finn was absolutely beautiful. A 'Sonic Reducer' style intro with Ed O'Brien (Radiohead) into Corduroy - one of my favourite Pearl Jam songs. The highlight of the night for me was seeing the two Eds rock out the instrumental, jumping all over the stage. Next, Eddie introduced Betchadupa, Neil Finn's son Liam's band. They rocked with History Never Repeats, then began what sounded like 'I Got You' (not sure) - Ed stopped them, turned around and pretended to tell off the drummer saying he couldn't do anything right. "Now I want you to hit it again, and this time hit it with a tasty groove." He did. I See Red was played faster than I'd ever heard it before - with Ed throwing his mic stand up in the air at the end. Crowded House's World Where You Live was next, with Neil and the other guests.

The next time we saw Eddie was the second encore, when he strolled on stage with his ukulele. I knew what was coming, and it was obvious that others in the crowd knew too. He began by telling us how he had been somewhere recently where he didn't hear much about what was going on in the world, and how it saddened him to read the newspaper afterwards, seeing all the stuff about death and suffering. He told us that he had a clip from a newspaper that he had been keeping on him, and he read it to us. It was about the amalgamation between AOL and Time Warner, and how they wanted to imbed the 'AOL/Time Warner experience' deeper into our lives. "That's just fuckin' scary. Here's a song for guys like that." It was, of course, Soon Forget. Toward the end of the first verse, some people in the crowd started clapping the rhythm. Eddie tried to stop them but it was too late, he was distracted and had to stop. He said "The lyrics are more important than the rhythm... If I do say so myself." Then he picked up from where he left off.

The last bit of Eddie to keep us satisfied until Pearl Jam venture this way again, was Paradise where he played the ukulele with Lisa Germano in the background.

The other guests were also amazing, Lisa Germano in particular had an incredible voice and is obviously a very talented song writer.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings, and a big thanks to Eddie for brightening our world with his presence!