Dropping the leash and chasing the dragon with Pearl Jam in Atlanta
By NICK TAVARES
STATIC and FEEDBACK Editor
Last Friday afternoon, I was sitting in Fox Bros. BBQ, nearing the stages of pure food coma, with my bag on the seat next to me and staring at a golf match on the TV on the opposite wall, surrounded by all the kinds of hung signs and license plates and paraphernalia that make a place like that work.
I was thinking about how, in a little while, I’d be on a plane home, with my headphones on listening to music. I had a notebook filled with notes and stickers. I’d eaten very, very well over these few days in Georgia. And I’d seen two of the better shows I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing this band play in person, the second of which still had me buzzing.
In short, I’d just seen Pearl Jam slay over two nights at State Farm Arena, the usual home of the Atlanta Hawks. I was feeling good.
Before the second of the two shows Pearl Jam played on this extension of the Dark Matter tour, I told friend of the program Matt Berry (who basically led our group through the hijinks prior to that second show) that, in my experience, Atlanta is an underrated American city. As these things go, it’s relatively easy to get around, politeness is the norm, the food is almost uniformly great and there’s definitely plenty to do and see over a few days. And it has a distinct character, a blend of the traditional south and a forward-thinking mindset with an allowance for people to be themselves. So I was enjoying myself, and this is before we factor in that I was escaping another six-week Spring of 40-degree days and constant rain in New England. I’ve been here a few times before, and it seemed like a good time to swing back down.
The band doesn’t come around here too often though. These would be the band’s first shows in the city since headlining the 2012 Music Midtown Festival, and the first non-festival show since 2003. But they have a history in the city, recording there with producer Brendan O’Brien several times (including one unfortunate incident during the Backspacer sessions).
Maybe their audience is just greater in other parts of the country, maybe it’s a victim of booking or planning, but the city doesn’t get the full-on Pearl Jam experience often. But they’d get two shows this time.
Night one was excellent in every regard. The crowd was the right blend of relaxed and amped, responsive and respectful, ready to party and ready to listen. And the band responded in kind, stretching the setlist out over most of the catalog, opening with the rarity “Can’t Keep,” breaking out gems like “Severed Hand” and “Nothingman,” and playing with real engagement and adventure.
In the midst of all that, they got to salute Matt Cameron and Soundgarden, who were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, teasing songs like “Spoonman” before tearing the place down in the encore with “Alive” and the Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” Eddie Vedder pulled out his cover of Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me in your Heart.” Absolutely, it was a great night of music all around, and I floated out of that building, folding in with the folks leaving the Kendrick Lamar show next door until we got back to the MARTA and on a train back towards our rental, feeling that perfect blend of contentment and exhaustion.
Then night two came along and blew that show away.
It began right out of the gate. As a group, we’d been playing our usual setlist-prediction games before the show, with “Release,” “Wash” and “Small Town” all kicked around as potential openers for the evening. With the lights down and their video curtain drawn, the sounds of “Present Tense” emanating from the stage absolutely floored me. It was a sign of what was to come, with the band dialed in and the crowd ready to respond in kind.
Only six repeats cropped up on this night from the previous show, with the band varying the presentation from recent efforts by eliminating Vedder’s solo spotlight at the beginning of the encore for a full-band version of “Off He Goes.” They broke out “All Those Yesterdays” and “Dissident,” while working in favorites like “Black,” “Why Go,” “Immortality” and “Corduroy” that had been left out the previous night.
As chatty as he’s been the past few years on stage, Vedder was relatively quiet on both nights, save for sporting a t-shirt reading “end gun violence” on stage. But he did relay a story before “Better Man,” confirming that the Vitalogy take was a live/studio splice, with the live section taken from their legendary April 3, 1994 show at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre.
Then again, maybe he didn’t have to speak. The band was already flying on a level I hadn’t seen in years (and to reiterate, they are always, at the very least, great), and maybe the crowd did the speaking for him. During the penultimate “Rockin’ in the Free World,” the camera shot around the crowd, catching the usual leaping and singing and smiling that that kind of video work usually does, until it landed on one fan in the front row wearing a shirt that read, “JD VANCE KILLED THE POPE.” I swear, I have never heard a crowd make such a noise as the one they made when that appeared. It lasted for all of two seconds, quickly panning away, but the sound of shock and surprise and laughter and incredulity all jammed inside of one collective noise will never leave my brain. It was incredible. I’m still laughing about it.
But, back to music and to really illustrate how different this night was, look at “Rearviewmirror” from the encore. As the years wind on, this one has taken a few turns, with its middle section extending and reaching truly spacey, noisy heights in the mid-2000s to becoming less chaotic and more of a jam with vocal improvs built in, before the crescendo and crashing finale. On this night, they took neither path, instead just blazing a trail through this section. This was fast, aggressive and loud, making for an incredible step up to its already loud conclusion.
As if that wasn’t enough, they immediately called an audible from the written setlist and followed up with “Leash,” bringing that building to its knees in furious, righteous exhilaration.
This was a band on fire, feeling itself and looking to make as much of a resounding impact as possible. It’s the sound that a band of guys in their twenties would be looking to make. And three of the principal five here have already hit 60. The sound is the sound and the playing and presentation is already impressive, but factor in all the years and miles to this moment in time, and it becomes almost unbelievable.
So, here we are, in the aftermath. Some of that includes gazing wistfully into a plate of barbecue and remembering the previous night’s rendition of “Upper Hand.” Some of it includes me briefly scrolling various websites in search of Mookie Blaylock’s Hawks jersey, seeing they all start at $800, and putting that dream aside. Some of it is me going back through my hastily scribbled notes in an effort to remember and re-remember and make this all last as long as possible.
What shouldn’t be understated is that, in this era of glossy, pre-recorded concert extravaganzas with digitally altered, pitch-perfect recreations of chart-topping hits, that this is still a band, now in its 35th year, stilly truly playing as a band. On a careful listen, there were plenty of examples of this — I think I caught minor mistakes and lyrical gaffs in five of the first seven or eight songs on night two. Ament had to swap out a faulty upright bass during “Indifference” on night one. But beyond those most human of flubs, this is still a unit of five principal members playing as a band.
It came across strikingly during a rendition of “Inside Job,” where guitarist Mike McCready came over to Vedder as his solo was giving way to the song’s final verse. Vedder placed his hand on McCready’s chest, handing that stanza back for McCready to shred on his Les Paul in the coda, singing right into his face all the while. It felt so real and intimate and spontaneous, the kind of spontaneity that’s hardly allowed anymore.
They’re professionals at the top of their field, which is why the April 29th show was such a wonderful experience for fans old and new. But they’re also an incredible band who can react to the moment, step up and deliver an absolute heater of a night, burning down the building on May 1st and finding new highs for these songs that have become so loved.
If I had gotten back on the plane after that first show, I would’ve left more than satisfied with the entire experience — the band, the city, the people, all of it. But that second night, that’s the real drug — that moment of escape and awe and inspiration, in the face of something fleeting that could only exist in that specific moment. That’s what we’re all chasing.
E-mail Nick Tavares at nick@staticandfeedback.com