What is a Pearl Jam?

ChadsStillAlive

I'm back with new Examiner articles. Yes, the Spectrum shows will definitely be involved in this week's theme. Check out the first one here: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3940-Indianapolis-Pop-Culture-Examiner~y2009m11d3-What-is-a-Pearl-Jam Thanks!

cannotstaylong

I'm excited to see the rest of this article. I've liked the other stuff you've out out before.

RyanBeanstalk

Wow, this article is really onto something, re: the idea of the unexpected.

I saw U2 a few weeks back in Washington, DC, where I live. I've had trouble explaining to my friends (including others who were there) why I just didn't really like the show that much. I mean, it's U2. It's just a given that it's going to be amazing, right? Well, no, to me it was just okay. They played a lot of stuff from the last couple albums that I don't really like, some of the biggest hits from the older albums that I do like, I enjoyed myself, I suppose, and was entertained, and I can see how someone who hadn't seen a lot of concerts or was a bigger fan of the more recent stuff would have thought it was really phenomenal, but to me it was really expensive and a pain in the ass to get across town to the football field they played in to see a show that (with the exception of a song or two) didn't really take me anywhere special. Everything that happened, more or less, was totally expected.

Contrast that with the 3 1/2 hour rapture that was Halloween at the Spectrum. I've always loved all sorts of music, but when I was in middle school/high school in the early to mid 90s, there were a handful of pretty big mainstream bands that I just adored, bought every album, etc. that are still active today. I'd say they were R.E.M., Pearl Jam, U2, and maybe Green Day to some extent. I have to say Pearl Jam is the only one that still thrills me as much they did when I first got into them. Because of all the Ticketmaster stuff, it was a long time before I finally got to see them live (Tibetan Freedom Concert '97) and 2000 before I saw an entire PJ show (Houston 2; was living in Austin for a brief period), so admittedly there was an Emerald City kind of mystique about them. But I think I've seen 8 shows now and that magic has never worn off. For only two of those shows did I not drive to another city/state than the one I was living in at the time, and for every one I just felt like an ecstatic kid seeing his first concert. Yeah, you can read the setlists and have some idea of what they're going to play, or what covers they're doing on a particular tour, or whatever, but there's still so much that's left to chance. There's still so much that's not expected about a given show.

Halloween was the most epic, most inspired, most energetic, most impassioned, most amazing thing I've ever seen. And aside from expecting it to be great, a lot of what went down was so unexpected. That's why in a world with a lot of great music in it, they're the fucking best.