“Good evening, Boston”.
Three words I never thought I would hear coming from Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder.
“Are you ready to sing? I’m ready to sing”.
Then came the classic count-in to ‘Elderly woman behind the counter in a small town’
“1,2,3,4-2 - I seem to recognise your face”...
At this exact moment, I knew that this trip was real. I was at Fenway Park, and I was indeed about to be mesmerised for the next 2.5 hours by my favourite band, Pearl Jam.
After Ed had warmed his vocal chords up with ‘Small Town,’ the doors to the Delorian came up. They took 40,000 ‘Boston strong’ back to August 27, 1991, to the release of their debut album ‘Ten’, back when the opening chords to ‘Even Flow’ tore through Fenway Park.
Mike McCready, ladies and gentlemen, might be one of the baddest men on the planet, too. When they're here in Auckland later this year (for the first time in over a decade), it'll be worth the ticket price alone to watch that man play the solo in that song. He goes somewhere when he plays that solo.
Before I could catch my breath, Stone Gossard had traded his electric guitar for an acoustic one and they gave us one of their biggest songs from their sophomore album 'Vs.', ‘Daughter’.
Holy flippin heck - what else were we about to get in this show?
Eddie dedicated the next song, ‘Save You’, to the die-hard Red Sox fans before he addressed the crowd briefly.
"There are plenty of people that are no longer with us since the last time we played here in 2018, but whose presence we can still feel here in this building,” he said.
The stadium lights went down and the entire stage lit up in deep red for Eddie to strum the opening notes of 'Immortality' on his notorious black and white ‘arrow’ guitar. The crowd exploded. This song is such a treat to hear live.
Then came the moment I was jonesing for - songs from the new album ‘Dark Matter’. First up was ‘React/Respond’ then into the short but wickedly fast-paced ‘Running’, which I hope we get at Go Media stadium in November.
Eddie told the city of Boston how glad they were to be back playing in ‘Bean Town’ and how he hoped he wouldn't get in trouble for smoking joints in the Red Sox general manager's office all day long.
"Well I wasn’t smoking joints all day, I ate a few gummies while I was in there, too," he said to uproarious applause from the crowd.
Then it was time to punch into the ‘anti-Ticketmaster’ protest anthem ‘Not For You’. The gummies had obviously kicked in well and truly because Ed mucked up and sang the wrong lyrics to the last verse, which he immediately realised.
"Oh wait, I fucked it up. It must have been all those gummies I ate earlier," he laughed.
We were treated to a beautiful rendition of ‘Untitled’ before a track from one of the best (in my opinion) PJ albums: ‘No Code’ - ‘Present Tense.’ A rhythmic and hypnotic song about living in the present by acknowledging and processing the past. ‘Won’t Tell’ was next on the list, this was a show highlight for me.
Did I mention that this show was special? As the moon lingered over the ‘Samuel Adams’ sign in Fenway’s outfield, Eddie addressed the crowd again.
“On Sunday night when we played here the moon was over on this side of the building and now it’s over…(looking aimlessly to the skies trying to find the moon)...Where is the moon? Oh, it's over here?...(still struggling to find it)....Wait. Where the fuck did it go? Oh, shit. THERE it is...(Looking in the direction of where the entire crowd was pointing)... I told you, those fuckin’ gummies were strong.”
He then went on to inform us that there was going to be a partial lunar eclipse that night in Boston and that it would be somewhat of a ‘Harvest Moon’.
"This song is called 'Superblood Wolfmoon," Eddie yelled into the mic before we got our only song from the 2020 release ‘Gigaton’.
Two tracks from their Debut album ‘Ten’ were next on the agenda. First was the opening track from the album ‘Once’, and then came the left hook. The Stone Gossard song originally named ‘E Ballad’.
As the opening notes of ‘Black’ reverberated off the 112-year-old concrete and steel of Fenway Park, my vision went blurry and my face ran warm.
“Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay, were laid spread out before me”...You know the rest.
After 2 solo tracks from Eddie, ‘I am a patriot’ and ‘Falling Slowly’, the band rejoined Eddie and the setlist was meant to move into ‘Got Some’ from 2009’s 'Backspacer' album, but changed last minute to reflect the band's mood. Therefore, we got ‘Why Go’.
Eddie said:
“This wasn’t what we were going to play here, but this is how we’re feeling…
“Why go home…Why go home…Why go home?”
If the crowd wasn’t feeling full of life by this point in the show, we were about to be given cardioversion shock therapy in the form of the next belter, ‘Alive’. We all know the meaning and story behind this song but I feel that every audience interprets this song differently.
The penultimate song was another cover. This time it was ‘Baba O’Riley’, from The Who's 1971 album ‘Who’s Next’. A singalong jam for sure and a song that PJ has been known to use at the end of their concerts over the years.
‘Ledbetter’ was the perfect way to round off the gig of a lifetime. While no one knows what the actual lyrics are (Including Eddie Vedder) it didn’t matter.
You sing whatever the fuck you want and as long as you throw in the lyrics “The boxer or the bag” and hit the ‘ahhh yeaahhhhhh’s” at the right time - you’re golden.
As the band gathered centre stage to take their bows and say goodbye to not only Fenway Park but to their American leg of the tour, all of the spent energy from the crowd, if somehow captured, could have powered the city of Boston until rapture.
Was I sad that it was over? Yes. Was I happy that it had happened - fuck yes.
You will have the opportunity to experience the magic of this amazing band at their New Zealand shows in November, which will be the first in over a decade.
Mike McCready made me a promise backstage and that promise was that come November, he will be ‘bringing the animal’ even more than he has for their American shows and THAT is saying something because he brought the animal at Fenway Park.
So, if you don’t yet have your tickets to the NZ leg of the Dark Matter World Tour, get them. I can personally guarantee that you will not regret it.
