Leeds request: please play Fugazi's Suggestion as a celebration of the old times and tale part 1
milenaferrante
Posts: 21
Hi, this is a kind request by me. Fugazi marked my life as Pearl Jam did and I'd really like you make this connection in Leeds where I will be attending the show.
I am offering my tale about Milan and Trieste's shows in exchange. As a band you have accompanied all my life, made me discover music, bands, people, hearts and souls. More than 20 years is a life....Please keep going and never stop.
That's my tale as an humble gift for your artistry and relevance....
When you’re approaching your 50s it’s inevitable: the unforgettable fire slowly becomes forgettable. For me it all started ages ago with another band (guess which one) so it’s difficult to keep the candle burning. When I first discovered this band it was the era of flee markets where you spent hours searching for the ultimate picture disc and when you found it it was as if you owned a piece of flesh of the members themselves. I’m sure all of you know what I mean, or at least the “aged ones”. Then time passes, and since you remember very well (Alzheimer’s disease hasn’t caught on you yet luckily) what Mr Vedder said about playing in stadiums years ago, as soon as you hear the word San Siro Stadium your eyebrows raise in disdain, at least mine. I must confess I was not in a frantic frame of mind waiting for this tour since I had already decided it was going to be…forgettable. Pearl Jam had started having all the signs of the rockin’ dinosaurs: one record and tour every 4-5 years. And, what’s more, tours are getting thinner and thinner and venues bigger and bigger. So while I was going to the stadium in Milan I was definitely really relaxed. In Milan I came late at 7 with my friends, had read the soundcheck setlist spoiler from Bugs (the European list) which was promising but magic? No way. The 8:45 start was immediately a surprise actually.
Something should have warned me it was going to be some weird scenario: Release, the first song, was the same one I cried on at my first concert in Rome don’t know how many years and Eddie’s hair ago. A classic, predictable opener, sure, but what about those nearly sunset streaks in the sky, the melancholic distance from which I was watching, the fact that I was with the “same old friend”, the cracked voice not so sumptuous and still because of that more achingly sorrowful? Found myself re-living a life as a passenger of a crashing plane who is going to die soon. Gosh. Twenty years or so. That’s what you call LIFE. Lots of things and changes in between. As the song went on I decided to my relief I was mostly the same person since that song gave me the old, usual chills. The 30 minutes subdued opening setlist was a healthy, Neil Young-ish and brilliant choice to wait for the dark to come down on the 60.000 attending people. We were discussing with my friend Chiara how Eddie’s voice has lost the higher (and more powerful) tones but I am grateful for this so that he cannot scream anymore as he used to do. All of these openers, Sirens, Black were the perfect gift for a quiet start before the mythical tempest. It’s raining hard while I’m writing, Wimbledon in the background has gone (the marvellous geniuses of satellite dishes which disappear for a hint of rain), but it’s not the same rain which came down after Black last Friday evening. I felt Go, Corduroy, Do The Evolution were healthily soaked with very screeching guitar sound mostly coming from the Television era rather than the hard-rock-Soundgarden-heritage. Loved the conciseness, the not-so-epic sound. Simply sparkling, talented, inspired 1-2-3 songs, which sounded fresh as if they had just come out of the magic hat. The new songs (which I almost didn’t know since I had decided I was going to listen to the new album when I would have been comfortable) were fitting perfectly in the mix sandwiched between Corduroy and Mini Fast Cars, a song I’ve always loved mainly because of that reason, being exactly a SONG. Meanwhile, weirdness was slipping in to hinder safety. In a rock concert, when safety comes in, you are almost sure it’s not rock. Pilate, In My Tree, Who you are??!!?? When the hell are you allowed to listen to those songs in stadium rock? Yet still the darker edge which came with the trio Not for You/Why Go/Rearviewmirror seemed to me and stood out as the deep, deep heart of the show. Jeff’s bass was thundering into Deep! That brings me straight into Trieste. I was standing on the “tribuna” far away from the stage and Jeff, all the band, went INTOOOO deep. Ferocious, animalesque, brutal. Deep into the punk side. If the Milan DVD-fit show was all crowd-singing, broken hearts, messages to loved ones (the sweet Eddie’s anniversary which gets celebrated at each Milan show and Matt’s wife’s birthday and Matt’s son on stage appearance), wine and the warm embrace of the community, Trieste was the cold, unruly, individual fight with harsh reality.
Trieste was a rather unusual but justified choice for the band to cover eastern and central Europe. I expected to find a contingent of foreigners, instead I feel not some many came from outside Italy but I might be wrong. In my mind Trieste was the gig where you could afford to go your own way: far away from the demanding London crowd and the exam challenge that Berlin or Amsterdam force the band to take. You cannot play around there. You are not allowed to fail. In Trieste, probably, you could. The now already traditional ballads set at the beginning was even more of an eccentric giveaway if compared to the rest of the show. Yet Low light and Sirens coming from very different worlds revealed that invisibile, precious and crucial streak of folk music that hides behind the roars.
The ballads set in Milan and Trieste showed Pearl Jam relating to the very heart of American music, the one of Tim Buckley and Gram Parsons with the desperate, romantic, idealistic search for eternal love and the very realistic awareness of it being mortal. Strange that most fans, even friends of mine, tend to reject it. Maybe because that is more of a feminine quality, and Pearl Jam historically have a rather strong and dedicated male following: I have never seen a male identification with a rock singer as the Pearl Jam male audience has towards Vedder. I remember in Pistoia, which was a rather old style gig if compared to these ones, hordes of boys and even men screaming Eddie’s name in sheer devotion. I could touch that devotion by hand when hearing Vedder tales from male friends.
As a singer, Eddie has that quality of embracing his audience which is never Mick Jaggeresque. He’s mostly tender and mellow, yet taking that sweetness from a heart which is rather full of mystery and darkness. He is revealing but not to the very end. That is what makes his leadership fascinating. He is powerful but he is not dominating by force. A beloved friend of mine keeps saying that he prefers the angry Vedder of the ‘94 era. If fans only care about the angry side of the story, I feel they are probably missing what is keeping this band alive, despite their late rock mainstream status: fragility, the awareness that everything could come to an end, which is, it seems to me, the recurring theme of their latest songs.
Out of all of this, Eddie declared that in Milan he had drunk too much and lifting what I could identify as a paper glass with water in it, stated that he didn’t want to drink that evening. And as it is really true of the Pearl Jam post-2000, when the leader is into the songs that’s when the whole band gets alive. Eddie was way more concentrated and focused and so was the band......part 2 to follow...
I am offering my tale about Milan and Trieste's shows in exchange. As a band you have accompanied all my life, made me discover music, bands, people, hearts and souls. More than 20 years is a life....Please keep going and never stop.
That's my tale as an humble gift for your artistry and relevance....
When you’re approaching your 50s it’s inevitable: the unforgettable fire slowly becomes forgettable. For me it all started ages ago with another band (guess which one) so it’s difficult to keep the candle burning. When I first discovered this band it was the era of flee markets where you spent hours searching for the ultimate picture disc and when you found it it was as if you owned a piece of flesh of the members themselves. I’m sure all of you know what I mean, or at least the “aged ones”. Then time passes, and since you remember very well (Alzheimer’s disease hasn’t caught on you yet luckily) what Mr Vedder said about playing in stadiums years ago, as soon as you hear the word San Siro Stadium your eyebrows raise in disdain, at least mine. I must confess I was not in a frantic frame of mind waiting for this tour since I had already decided it was going to be…forgettable. Pearl Jam had started having all the signs of the rockin’ dinosaurs: one record and tour every 4-5 years. And, what’s more, tours are getting thinner and thinner and venues bigger and bigger. So while I was going to the stadium in Milan I was definitely really relaxed. In Milan I came late at 7 with my friends, had read the soundcheck setlist spoiler from Bugs (the European list) which was promising but magic? No way. The 8:45 start was immediately a surprise actually.
Something should have warned me it was going to be some weird scenario: Release, the first song, was the same one I cried on at my first concert in Rome don’t know how many years and Eddie’s hair ago. A classic, predictable opener, sure, but what about those nearly sunset streaks in the sky, the melancholic distance from which I was watching, the fact that I was with the “same old friend”, the cracked voice not so sumptuous and still because of that more achingly sorrowful? Found myself re-living a life as a passenger of a crashing plane who is going to die soon. Gosh. Twenty years or so. That’s what you call LIFE. Lots of things and changes in between. As the song went on I decided to my relief I was mostly the same person since that song gave me the old, usual chills. The 30 minutes subdued opening setlist was a healthy, Neil Young-ish and brilliant choice to wait for the dark to come down on the 60.000 attending people. We were discussing with my friend Chiara how Eddie’s voice has lost the higher (and more powerful) tones but I am grateful for this so that he cannot scream anymore as he used to do. All of these openers, Sirens, Black were the perfect gift for a quiet start before the mythical tempest. It’s raining hard while I’m writing, Wimbledon in the background has gone (the marvellous geniuses of satellite dishes which disappear for a hint of rain), but it’s not the same rain which came down after Black last Friday evening. I felt Go, Corduroy, Do The Evolution were healthily soaked with very screeching guitar sound mostly coming from the Television era rather than the hard-rock-Soundgarden-heritage. Loved the conciseness, the not-so-epic sound. Simply sparkling, talented, inspired 1-2-3 songs, which sounded fresh as if they had just come out of the magic hat. The new songs (which I almost didn’t know since I had decided I was going to listen to the new album when I would have been comfortable) were fitting perfectly in the mix sandwiched between Corduroy and Mini Fast Cars, a song I’ve always loved mainly because of that reason, being exactly a SONG. Meanwhile, weirdness was slipping in to hinder safety. In a rock concert, when safety comes in, you are almost sure it’s not rock. Pilate, In My Tree, Who you are??!!?? When the hell are you allowed to listen to those songs in stadium rock? Yet still the darker edge which came with the trio Not for You/Why Go/Rearviewmirror seemed to me and stood out as the deep, deep heart of the show. Jeff’s bass was thundering into Deep! That brings me straight into Trieste. I was standing on the “tribuna” far away from the stage and Jeff, all the band, went INTOOOO deep. Ferocious, animalesque, brutal. Deep into the punk side. If the Milan DVD-fit show was all crowd-singing, broken hearts, messages to loved ones (the sweet Eddie’s anniversary which gets celebrated at each Milan show and Matt’s wife’s birthday and Matt’s son on stage appearance), wine and the warm embrace of the community, Trieste was the cold, unruly, individual fight with harsh reality.
Trieste was a rather unusual but justified choice for the band to cover eastern and central Europe. I expected to find a contingent of foreigners, instead I feel not some many came from outside Italy but I might be wrong. In my mind Trieste was the gig where you could afford to go your own way: far away from the demanding London crowd and the exam challenge that Berlin or Amsterdam force the band to take. You cannot play around there. You are not allowed to fail. In Trieste, probably, you could. The now already traditional ballads set at the beginning was even more of an eccentric giveaway if compared to the rest of the show. Yet Low light and Sirens coming from very different worlds revealed that invisibile, precious and crucial streak of folk music that hides behind the roars.
The ballads set in Milan and Trieste showed Pearl Jam relating to the very heart of American music, the one of Tim Buckley and Gram Parsons with the desperate, romantic, idealistic search for eternal love and the very realistic awareness of it being mortal. Strange that most fans, even friends of mine, tend to reject it. Maybe because that is more of a feminine quality, and Pearl Jam historically have a rather strong and dedicated male following: I have never seen a male identification with a rock singer as the Pearl Jam male audience has towards Vedder. I remember in Pistoia, which was a rather old style gig if compared to these ones, hordes of boys and even men screaming Eddie’s name in sheer devotion. I could touch that devotion by hand when hearing Vedder tales from male friends.
As a singer, Eddie has that quality of embracing his audience which is never Mick Jaggeresque. He’s mostly tender and mellow, yet taking that sweetness from a heart which is rather full of mystery and darkness. He is revealing but not to the very end. That is what makes his leadership fascinating. He is powerful but he is not dominating by force. A beloved friend of mine keeps saying that he prefers the angry Vedder of the ‘94 era. If fans only care about the angry side of the story, I feel they are probably missing what is keeping this band alive, despite their late rock mainstream status: fragility, the awareness that everything could come to an end, which is, it seems to me, the recurring theme of their latest songs.
Out of all of this, Eddie declared that in Milan he had drunk too much and lifting what I could identify as a paper glass with water in it, stated that he didn’t want to drink that evening. And as it is really true of the Pearl Jam post-2000, when the leader is into the songs that’s when the whole band gets alive. Eddie was way more concentrated and focused and so was the band......part 2 to follow...
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