Monday, October 25th 2010
Shows: Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam Cover Neil Young, Patti Smith At Bridge School Benefit
Pearl Jam‘s performance at this year’s Bridge School Benefit in Mountain View, CA over the weekend was also a celebration of the 20th anniversary of their first-ever show. In honor of the special event the band was in top form, enlisting a string section and an appearance from benefit curator Neil Young.
I’d love to write a review of the entire show, and there’s a chance I will once I return to Los Angeles (if you cats are interested), but for now I’ll leave you with two covers from Pearl Jam’s Bridge School appearance. The first is a take on Neil Young’s Walk With Me, off his incredible new album Le Noise. Listen below:
Next up is a stirring rendition of Patti Smith’s Dancing Barefoot, a beautiful gem that Eddie and the boys made their own:
Pearl Jam has long cited Young as a musical & spiritual mentor, and his appearance with them as they covered his song was met with equal enthusiasm from fans and band. After spending the day in an endless downpour, sipping hot cocoa while soaked to the bone on a steeply-angled lawn while the likes of Billy Idol, Elvis Costello, Kris Kristofferson, Elton John & Leon Russell and more rocked us with old-timer greatness, Pearl Jam’s appearance outshone the much-hyped reunion of Buffalo Springfield to make for yet another memorable set from one of the few true classic rock heroes of our time.
Pearl Jam’s song selections between the two sets (one on each day) overlapped slightly, with doubled renditions of both Black and Young’s Walk With Me, but complaints were nonexistent as fans reveled in rarities (Other Side), reworked arrangements (Better Man, Black) and fantastic instrumentations featuring what were some of Vedder’s most powerfully fine-tuned vocals in well over a decade.
Photo: Misha Vladimirskiy
here’s a vote for a review, would have loved to have been there
Always dig a JF review and would love to hear more about the show.
This bands drummer sucks
Wrong!
Blasphemy….
Please review the show!
Do you really think Pearl Jam outshone the “much hyped reunion ” of Buffalo Springfield ?When their best songs on both nights were covers.Guess i’ll go back to reading Spin and Rolling Stone.I’m guessing you’re just a lil biased.
Have fun! Jann Wenner can’t wait to tell you all about the next 5 star Yoko Ono record.
haha, is this for real? Pearl Jam have been beyond solid for every Bridge School benefit show they’ve played. Furthermore, they’re one of the few bands to actually be worthy of the hype that seems to follow them.
I second the motion for a review. Wanted to go to the show but just couldn’t swing it.
Thirded. But this brings me to make a point I’ve been thinking about for a few weeks.
Ya’ll do great journalism, and I really like your unashamed promotion of your favorite bands, but seriously, the benefit eclipses any one band that plays it.
PJ is awesome, but this is a bit on the annoying side of the fanboy line. A treatment more like you gave Incubus in the Smokeout review would be great.
Oh, and if PJ ever breaks up and we fans wait 40 years for them to get back together, lets hope someone reviews their reunion, even if it sucks.
Enough bitching from me. Antiquiet kicks ass – this is just my 2 cents.
The same reason you haven’t seen a full review of the benefit is the same reason for the charge (happily guilty) of biased reviewing. Having driven 400 miles to the show, I had every intention of soaking in every detail of the event. But with torrential downpours, lawn tickets and a 4 year old in tow, I had to pick my battles, and the “soaking” became far more literal than desired. So what you see here is the primary focus of my attendance – notice how the top header says “Pearl Jam: Show Review”. The title doesn’t say anything about the entirety of Bridge, because it’s not a full review of the festival. Had that been the title, you’d be seeing coverage far more in the SmokeOut vein, as you mentioned. I’ve left the full coverage to the writers less encumbered by peripheral circumstance this time. It’s better that way.
There are legions of Buffalo Springfield fans out there, and I’m more than happy to point you to the voluminous coverage of their appearance if you’re having trouble finding it. The flattery is appreciated, but we’re certainly not the be-all, end-all of music coverage. We work with the scale of our present capabilities. Hopefully we’ll get to that point, as our goal is to provide the most comprehensive resource of music awesomeness ever to exist – and as we work out our ass-kicking muscles on our way to it, we appreciate your enthusiastic support, as well as the constructive criticism. But to be fair, yes, you can be sure that if we’re still around and Pearl Jam is rockin’ a 40th anniversary, we’ll be providing the colored play-by-play.