Pearl Jam Glasgow

In a move to beat bootleggers to the punch, Pearl Jam decided to release their 2000 European concert performances in a series of inexpensive double-CD sets. The June 3rd show from the Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre Arena in Glasgow finds the band playing in the town for the first time in eight years, and from the reaction of the crowd, the wait was worth it. The cosmic "Nothing As it Seems" teams nicely with the soaring "Given to Fly," and the paired "Untitled" and "MFC" work even better. In hindsight, a moment in "Given to Fly" when lead singer Eddie Vedder stops the song to see if a group of people crushed in the front of the stage is coldly eerie. The fans in Glasgow were unhurt, but in less than a month nine concertgoers at Copenhagen's Roskilde Festival would lose their lives in a similar situation. On this night, all is celebratory as the crowd rips through "Even Flow" (a great version) and "State of Love and Trust," rounding out the first disc. The crowd lovingly sings along with "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" and their version of J. Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers' "Last Kiss." After a loose version of "Once," Vedder acknowledges a debt to Mike Scott of The Waterboys (and does a humorous impression of the Edinburgh-born singer) before running through his precious ukulele-only "Soon Forget." The final encore of "Yellow Ledbetter" includes guitarist Mike McCready's tribute to Eddie van Halen with a "Cathedral"-styled riff thrown in for good measure. All in all, a good show and a fine recording.Pearl Jam's late-spring 2000 tour is remembered for the mosh-pit tragedy that claimed the lives of nine fans in Denmark. But up until then, the tour had been a musical triumph, a nightly celebration of the deep bond between this band and its audience. The proof is in the band's latest project, the release of twenty-five separate double-disc CDs documenting every show on the tour before the calamitous Denmark date.

No rock band has ever flooded the market with twenty-five unedited, simultaneously released concert recordings. Pearl Jam's core foursome — Eddie Vedder, guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, and bassist Jeff Ament — make for a volatile mix that can soar or stumble over the course of a night. But the band's authority and the consistency of these performances are astonishing. Much credit is due hard-hitting drummer Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden, whose boundless energy and drive temper the band's more ponderous tendencies.

The band's unfashionable roots in metal and Seventies arena rock are precisely what make its music so well suited to its present stadium setting. Pearl Jam overhaul their set list for each show, treating this arena tour like a month-long club engagement. Songs come from all corners of their repertoire, supplemented with covers of the Who, Eddie Holland, the La's, Arthur Alexander, Split Enz and Neil Young. No two shows are the same, and the band digs especially deep during multinight stands in London and Katowice, Poland — if you're looking to buy just a couple of discs, here's the place to start. Early touchstones like "Jeremy" make only occasional appearances; these songs are now less about their original anger and more a celebration of the enduring audience relationship they've created. The sets tend to favor the recent Yield and Binaural albums, and while there's plenty of attitude in songs like "Grievance" and "Do the Evolution," the elegiac "Light Years" and Vedder's intimate "Wishlist" connect on different but no less powerful levels.

The paying customers play full partner in any Pearl Jam show, and in Lisbon and the Czech Republic they might actually outperform the band. During their nightly sing-alongs, the largely non-English-speaking audiences act as a human teleprompter when Vedder loses his place — he sometimes stops just to listen to their word-perfect delivery. Vedder answers their devotion with obvious affection and more humor than his dour-puss reputation would suggest. "There's another band with a singer called Ed," he announced during a Dutch festival with Live, "but I've been told I give better Ed."

Vedder's concern for the well-being of those down front is continually expressed. In light of what we know awaits on the tour's twenty-sixth date, each of his requests for them to be careful and look after one another cuts a little deeper. But make no mistake: These twenty-five concert recordings tell us that Pearl Jam are still among the very best we've got, and getting better.[Download]