Remembering Ed at Carnegie Hall

I have been a PJ fan ever since first seeing the Jeremy video in August '92 and shortly before moving out to Seattle for a year. However, the first time I saw any of the band live was for a 50th Birthday concert for Pete Townshend that Roger Daltrey put together in later February '94 at Carnegie Hall. I got about the highest up, most remote seat in the house, but at least I was in the room, in no small part because Ed was on the bill. I like to think of this period as the peak of Ed's pissed-off phase. There was a revolving door of special guests, hecklers all night yelling "Where the fuck's Pete!" At one point, an exasperated Roger yelled back for them to shut up. The night felt overall very haphazardly organized.

After a sort of intermission, enter one singular Ed Vedder quietly ambling on to the stage without as much as an introduction. I recall that he got a moderately reasonable crowd reaction, some howls of approval upon his presence. He proceeded to buzz through 3 or 4 Who songs (I think, Squeeze Box, Naked Eye, definitely My Generation) with just him on electric guitar. I remember loving the voice, but feeling like the performance was too much like a teenage kid in his bedroom noodling around. Then that was it, he swiftly left the stage and did not return, even for the obligatory sing-along finale. There was one other night of these shows and I think Ed played different Who tunes that other night. These shows were also infamous for the report that Ed trashed his dressing room in true rock n' roll fashion. By the way, Pete did come out for like two songs at the end, but I think crowd would have wanted him out there a bit more than that.

In recent times, I've been thinking about that performance of Ed's a lot. Perhaps, I would have a different view of it now, having followed the band for all these years since. And, how wild it is to think now that I actually saw Ed perform at Carnegie Hall. Just curious if anyone else out there went to either of these two shows?

Thank you for listening...