More from Derek Kouyoumjian
"There's a
great arena rock show going on out here," said Eddie Vedder to the masses
during Pearl Jam's second and final encore Monday night at the TD Garden. He
then turned around. "But there's a great club show going on back here." He
was addressing the fans seated in the seats behind him - sure, they'd been looking at
the band's backs all night, but they were closer to the stage than pretty much anyone else. The Jammers then played the majority
of "Soldier of Love," the B-side to "Last Kiss," facing
that part of the room.
What was notable
about that exchange to me was that my strongest memories of Pearl Jam involve
their early 90s days when, having discovered instant success that they were
less than enamored with, the band - or Vedder, at least - made it clear that
they would probably prefer a career of playing club shows to filling arenas.
They rejected MTV back when MTV's support was still mandatory for a band with
platinum aspirations. They publicly feuded with Ticketmaster on political
grounds, leading them to play infrequently for a few years in the mid-90s. And
they included more and more abrasive tracks and leftfield experiments on each
subsequent album. It was all the kind of stuff that would suggest to
amateur armchair psychoanalysts that they were trying to get rid of at least a
segment of their fans - separate the casual listeners from the serious
diehards, as it were. And on a micro-level, it worked, sort of: small sample
size and all, but a lot of the people
I talk to jumped off the PJ-wagon somewhere between Vitalogy and No Code.
But in aggregate, they're still popular enough to book arenas due to demand
(and not as a hubris-filled refusal to acknowledge their own decline in
popularity).
And the kids who
moved on from them in the early years are missing out: 1997's Yield is pretty outstanding, and
although Binaural and Riot Act were kind of duds, 2006's
self-titled release and last year's Backspacer
are both solid, workmanlike efforts. They're
not yet in late-career cruise-control mode (hi, U2!) or descending into
self-parody (I see you there, R.E.M.!). They are a rarity in rock: rather than
softening with age, they've gotten angrier and edgier and in doing so have
maintained their relevance and dignity, all without seeming to try too hard or
resorting to trend-hopping. They've simply gotten better at doing what they do,
which includes playing places like the Garden to crowds of thousands of New
England Doodz, where they certainly seemed comfortable on Monday night. Vedder
estimated it was their 27th show in Massachusetts - Boston, by all accounts,
holds a special place in the band's heart (it was here in 1994 they learned of
Kurt Cobain's death).
The band picked a good setlist for the occasion, for
sure, as hits ("Not For You," "Hail Hail," "The
Fixer," "Animal," "Given to Fly") and deep cuts
("Pilate," "Red Mosquito," "State of Love and
Trust," "Push Me Pull Me") co-mingled seamlessly. They still have a
way with dramatic catharses that can fill a big space like the Garden - they
did a pretty amazing version of (Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard's first band)
Mother Love Bone's "Crown of Thorns" - but mostly they were in
musical attack mode. They ripped through versions of some of their more
inescapable songs, like "Rearviewmirror," "Alive," and "Evenflow,"
but whereas in the hands of a lesser band such uptempo renditions could sound
perfunctory, here they sounded somewhat fresh, as though the band were trying
to adapt their older material to these angrier times (and re-assert their punk
rock bona fides at the same time). Even "Better Man," a song I
consider to represent the band at their soccer-mommiest, gives them a chance to
pay tribute to the English Beat, as Vedder sang a chorus of "Save it For
Later." And the two covers they played were perfect - The Who's "Reign
O'er Me" and Neil Young's "Rocking in the Free World" both
sounded absolutely massive. I'm less sure how well Vedder's remembrance of the late
Howard Zinn went over with
this crowd, though; again, small sample size, but the people I was near seemed
to be politely tolerating it more than anything. I'm pretty sure I heard some
boos, too, when Vedder name-checked Sean Penn while trying to salute his
charity work in Haiti, though most did applaud when the topic shifted to the
work of local organization Partners in Health.
My biggest complaint, weirdly, was the opener. Don't get me wrong, Band of
Horses are a totally competent, acceptable band. They can write some pretty
nice hooks, and "The Great Salt Lake," "No One's Gonna Love
You," and "The Funeral" are all pretty good. Their new songs
sounded inoffensive and unobtrusive. Which was precisely the problem; their
music wasn't bad, it was just easily
ignored. Maybe my impression would change if I was watching them at the
Paradise instead of the Garden, but I was unmoved. It could also have something
to do with the fact that I knew past Pearl Jam openers have included awesome bands like
Sonic Youth and Sleater-Kinney, the latter of whom Vedder paid a (possibly
impromptu) tribute to by inserting a few bars of the chorus of "Modern
Girl" from their planet-destroying final album The Woods. Hey Eddie, here's an idea: clearly you love Sleater-Kinney, so why don't you and your popular rock and roll band record a cover of
one of their songs, release it as a single, and give their back catalog some
exposure (and let them in on some of those sweet royalty checks)? You guys
could totally turn "Good
Things" or "Entertain" into a hit!