Shows > Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam At Austin City Limits: The Grandest Finale
By Johnny Firecloud
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
There is only one band I will stand outside in the mud under a blazing sun all day to see: Pearl Jam. I did just that on Sunday, the final day of the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival, and was rewarded with a front and center grand-finale display of aggressive heart and hits from the most consistently incredible live band you’ll see in your life.
The fields of mud that greeted Sunday’s festival attendees served as the ugly hangover to Saturday’s downpours, and once the sun broke through the clouds the smell wasn’t far from that of a porta-potty at a chili cookoff. If only I knew then what I know now…
As far as openers go, Clutch, The Toadies and The Dead Weather couldn’t be much better, and certainly made the 10 hour standstill position bearable. Once the band took the stage and delivered an incendiary version of Why Go, Vedder explained how blown away he’d been by the Dead Weather and Them Crooked Vultures. He also mentioned that the band had been in Austin over the previous 3 days and were thankful for the many gifts they had received while here. He promised they’d do their best to return the favor, and that he wasn’t going home until he was as dirty as the crowd. He kept his word, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
Given the festival atmosphere, the band kept the new stuff to a minimum, opting to play a solid selection of their better-known hits, while steering mostly clear of balladry. The Backspacer tracks that did appear translated beautifully, fitting remarkably well with the rest of the set. The escalating intensity Unthought Known brought the massive front section screaming “nothing left” over and over again. Of course, that was anything but the truth, as the band then tore up a great rendition of Daughter, which featured a lengthy W.M.A. tag at the end, following a call-and-response singalong between Vedder and the 75,000-strong crowd, which included more than a hundred military men and women watching from the wings. Vedder gave them his heartfelt thanks for their service before tearing into an impassioned rendition of the anti-war anthem Insignificance.
Present Tense has grown more muscle over the years, with both Mike McCready and Stone Gossard’s guitars revving harder from the onset and Soundgarden-expatriate Matt Cameron’s steadily building power of the kick drum. The high-octane peaks prepped the audience for a desperate version of State Of Love And Trust, which followed to wild enthusiasm.
Speaking of Gossard, he’s a man transformed. The rhythm guitarist has returned to his long-haired roots, and made his way about the stage in a more energized fashion than fans have seen in years. McCready, of course, was a blazing showboat rooster, absolutely tearing apart the solo to Even Flow – with the guitar behind his head.
Despite its inclusion as a tag at the end of Not For You for years now, Vedder’s sampling of Modern Girl by Sleater Kinney is always a chills-inducer; an achingly beautiful ending to a vitriolic song.
Vedder told a story on how he and Ben Harper stayed up drinking and smoking until 8 AM that morning, “figuring out all the answers to all the problems,” and actually wrote down what they’d concluded – but it was an illegible mess. Harper then made an appearance for what the true-blue fans out there were expecting to be Indifference, a song the soul-rocker’s been out to sing with Vedder and Co. on many occasions. But instead of haunting and quiet, Ben sat down with the lap steel and peeled off the opening slide riff to Red Mosquito. A gloriously rockin’ rendition followed, with a shit-eating-grin-wearing Vedder pouring himself into the No Code favorite.
The band kept the pace up through a finish that nobody could’ve seen coming. After searing renditions of Do The Evolution, The Real Me by The Who and Alive, Eddie ecstatically announced the arrival of Perry Farrell, the legendary frontman of Jane’s Addiction. Before the ear-splitting roar of the surprised crowd even reached its peak, Perry took the wheel and led the band into a mind-blowing version of Mountain Song, with Vedder on backup vocals.
Gone as quick as he came, Farrell left a tone of dumbfounded glee in the air, which suited Vedder just fine as he made good on his promise during show-closer mega-anthem Rockin’ In The Free World; the singer hopped offstage and did a running dive into the mud, after which he ran up and down the barricades slapping it on anyone else within reach.
Ed climbed back onstage to sing the final verse, concluding a song, set and festival in the best fashion a fan of this band can imagine. The heart of Pearl Jam is as strong as ever, and their performance at Austin City Limits was a well-designed and perfectly-executed production that sent the mud-soaked masses into the night in a state of euphoric exhaustion.
And now I’m walking out the door to see them in Los Angeles!
Setlist: Why Go, (Interstellar Overdrive) / Corduroy, Got Some, Not For You / (Modern Girl by Sleater Kinney), Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, Given To Fly, World Wide Suicide, Even Flow, Unthought Known, Daughter / (WMA), Hail Hail, Insignificance, Present Tense, State Of Love And Trust, The Fixer, Go
Encore: Jazz Odyssey, Red Mosquito w/Ben Harper, Do The Evolution, The Real Me, Alive, Mountain Song w/Perry Farrell, Rockin’ In The Free World
Mountain song video by mfc172.
Antiquiet’s trip to Austin for ACL 2009 was graciously sponsored by our friends over at camelcamelcamel. They set up a cool little site that lets you track prices of items on Amazon and a bunch of other online retailers. Please do pay them a visit to show your appreciation.
http://www.antiquiet.com/shows/2009/10/pearl-jam-austin-city-limits/attachment/img_8274/ Near the bottom…Scot..Baio?
aww, really nice review and nice pics, thx :)
Beautiful review, i luv what u guys do…I’m a long PJ fan and I was blown away by this article…just awesome.
Have you guys been to Target yet today? that’s what Eddie would want
No, but I was at the Pearl Jam show last night where Jerry Cantrell and Chris Cornell came out, and then backstage after when all of Soundgarden were hanging out – together.
sorry, thats just all I hear anytime hear PJ now. They were better than that, I expected better than that, and anything they contributed to the world artistically now means pretty much nothing, regardless of their history, they’re just pitchmen now.
I’m sorry, Mike …i beg to differ. What is so wrong from profiting from their art form. Oh…i’m sorry…you were the huge success here…..my bad….
Damn Mike, that’s a bit harsh. I admit the commercial is attrocious but the Target deal was a neccesary evil considering they were releasing it themselves w/no label. Target was the only one that was going to let the independents sell it so they went with them.
Uninformed dismissals are built in to this kind of deal. Dig a little deeper on the issue, Mike. There’s more to see than what you currently do. But yeah, that commercial is an epileptic mess.
Hey Mike, hipster world is calling, and they could care less. Please stfu you newb.
few things
1. This has NOTHING to do with profits.
2. Its not harsh, its a fact. Every word that comes out of PJ’s mouths from this day forward has to be taken with a grain of salt, because they now have a dollar sign on their foreheads.
3. A distribution deal would’ve been just fine, although they didnt need it. hell even throwing up logos(sponsorship) on tour is totally fine with me, but when you do a commercial, and tell your fans “go buy shit here”, for a price, you’re no longer an artist, you’re a pitchman. You get paid to sell other peoples products, and thats what we call a fucking salesman.
4. PJ could’ve done great things with the release of this album, instead they chose to trade one shitty corporate overlord for another, and then peddle the new one to their fans too. They took the easy way out, plain and simple.
I do freelance web design, and am in the process of starting a web design and marketing company. I have no problem whatsoever with people making a profit, or promoting themselves in any reasonable way. However, when you choose to use your voice as an artist for promotion of a for-profit entity, outside of your control, you’re selling out in the most literal sense. PJ decided that instead of creating their own marketing scheme or fronting the money for traditional marketing channels, which they have more than ample fund to do, and instead of maintaining control over their art and image, they would rather just sign a cross promotional deal and be one more bunch of salesmen without artistic integrity. Now, anything Target does is endorsed by PJ, because that was an easier path for them than doing things the right way.
Artists are great, and being a salesman for hire is perfectly fine, but you can’t be both at the same time.
this is getting a bit trollish. there’s some giant gaps in your logic i think you might be interested in investigating on your own. it seems that any argument now is just going to entrench you into your position more.
Standing outside in the mud under a blazing sun for Pearl Jam? You say that like it’s something rare. I’ll tell you what? There are about million of people who will do the exact same thing if they knew they were going to see Pearl Jam play. In fact, just look at the European crowd. Look at people of Milan couple of years ago. They were under the rain and it was fucking cold!
So, yeah, you didn’t do anything “special.”
Sure felt special to me, you jealous parade-raining jackass – though “special” was your word. And it’s rare for me to ride the rail all day when I’m on assignment, I’ve got two kids and I’m not fifteen anymore. The epic battles must be chosen carefully.
that video gave me chills
Ha! This is what happens when you take a regular ol’ fan and give them a camera and expect them to act like a professional journalist.
ha. we still made plenty of sacrifices. we missed huge chunks of some of our favorite bands’ sets in the name of professionalism. i sat in a hotel room editing while missing the entire crooked vultures & yeah yeah yeahs sets.
Yep, we’re regular ol’ fans – except I make a living doing shit you can’t stay away from. You aint the first troll we’ve had, and certainly not the most imaginative.
was he trolling? i couldn’t even tell.
Mike, there are people dying overseas, so if this is worrying you so much maybe you need a little self pollution to help you relax a little. Chill out, have a beer, watch some tv and just remember that there are people like Britney and pink – they truely vomit endless sickly sweet shit to make as much money as their 13yo fans are stupid enough to pay them.
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