BACK TO MAIN SET
After a short break, I can hear a sudden tuning of a single guitar. The upper string goes down a bit, allowing the singer, alone on his stool, in the dark, to go low key and deliver a very rare performance of Dead Man Walking. This is the first time ever this song has been played as a part of a regular show in Europe. It is a very intimate moment of sharing with the audience and I feel blessed to be a part of it. But before the song starts, Ed catches his breath once again. “I just wanna say thank you.” No, thank you Eddie, I scream with the crowd. After a short pause, a subtle “Ďakujem.” follows from the singer. I am not sure, if I heard right, but either Ed has misheard his translator or had a Slovak one. Indeed, he voiced his gratitude in my mother tongue. He follows with his peculiar mix of English and Czech, holding a piece of paper in his hand: “I just wanna say -- Thato peesnychka jhe o muzhi” [This song is about a man.]
“Sailing on my every step. Inching off of the earth. Is magnified by the things I've done. The thing that I've become.” The tones of a single guitar, and a single man, very much alive, ring out through the stunned hall, which only bursts out after the last notes. When the crowd noise settles down a bit, the singer introduces the next song in the same manner as the previous one: “Thaato piisen je o muzhi” [This song is about a man.] He continues alone into a first verse of another man-song, Man of the hour. “And the road the old man paved. The broken seams along the way The rusted signs, left just for me. He was guiding me, love, his own way”
"He who forgets will be destined to remember". We are destined to remember the show. When I hear the first tones of Nothingman, I know I am part of something special. Not just because this is my first show, or that there is a certain pattern to it. Although this is indeed my first performance, I am not at all unfamiliar to the experiments that the band conducts during their concerts with their setlists and order of songs. There have been times before when the band played these man songs in threes, but never in this order. This is different, there will be more! I think while the song breaks down into a jam: “Oh into the sun, Oh into the sun, burn, burn...”. I forget my calculations and wonder rather about the harmony of instruments - Boom’s Hammond B3 organ, Matt’s drums and his and Eddie’s vocals, Stone’s and Mike’s guitars, Jeff’s subtle acoustic fretless bass.
“Thaato piisnichka je o muzhi” mumbles Eddie, while Matt taps off the beat to the next man-song, Leather Man. Stone speed’s up the band “go, go, go!”, like sending them on a mission. The fourth man song in a row marks a next stage in a memorable show. My first show becomes the first show where the whole set of encores is dedicated to a simple formula:
Dead Man Walking > Man of the Hour > Nothingman > Leatherman > Better Man
“Thaato piisen je o zhene.” [this song is about a woman]. I am laughing from ear to ear when I hear this, as we say back home. I am overflowed with happiness, pure joy and the ability to enjoy God’s humor behind all this. The best known man-song, Better Man, is actually introduced as what it is, a song about a woman who “can’t find a better man.” Hilarious. And the solo? Beyond belief. Save it for Later. Well, not the solo, that is the “tag”, a snippet of a song by The English Beats attached at the end, an obscure influence, but something the audience truly appreciates - a touch of The Who’s Pete Townshend. Over the years, Pearl Jam have brought me and other fans to music they as a band were influenced by: Rolling Stones, The Who, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, The Police, Ramones, and many others. We have valued their guidance, but to this day, every fan I know places Pearl Jam among these bands as their equal or better.
This is history. And followed by the most historical, of all Pearl Jam songs, the almost mythical Alive, where the chant “I am still alive, I am still alive” goes up towards the roof of Sazka Arena. A year later the singer will comment that the song for him once was a curse and the joyous fans “broke the curse.” It certainly did break a course for me. The crowd roars “hey” with every stroke of Mike Mc Cready’s guitar before he takes us on a ride with final solo of the second encore set.
How does he do it? How do they do it?
I am lost for words, acknowledging what I have just seen was real with the fans left and right. But there's no time to talk tonight. In less than a minute, the band can be heard again. Swinging to the rhythm of the song, Eddie comes back on stage in a shiny tuxedo covered with silver dust, dancing and sporting a rubber mask of George W. Bush, the menace, The Bu$hleaguer. History is followed by farce, burlesque, satire. A man with a mask, a smoke, a sip of wine, a laugh, a kick from the mic stand. The mood becomes festive, but one of a protest. “Like sugar the guests are so refined.”
“I remember when you sang that song about today. Now it's tomorrow and everything has changed” I sing with the room and I remember my first parliamentary election again. What a load of crap! “Change, change, change - chains chains chains” I leave out my all what’s left of my anger here and in the next song of this fast-pacing rock marathon that has already surpassed the highest expectations I could had from my first show. It is Comatose, another two minutes of punk “free of Bush and frictions.” I feel stronger than ever. “High above,... I'll break the law,... If it's illegal To be in love,” I sing and enjoy myself. “Yeah, I'll be hanging upside down. And there I will swing. For all eternity.”
But the beat goes on. Usually not happening so late in a show, Matt gives way to a fast, rapacious
rendition of one of the most beloved of Pearl Jam tunes, Given To Fly. Beaten, torn, sweaty, but ecstatically happy I really feel like a “A human being that was given to fly.” There is nothing before and there's nothing after, just the raw energy of the present moment. The band keeps us “Rocking in the Free World,” with a classic Neil Young blow-out. The foundations of Sazka Arena are humming to a brutal bass tune. More than fifteen thousand fans are dancing. This is not an encore, it is a party celebrating music, friendship, love and freedom. There is a sense of equality between the fans and the band, between the fans and among the band themselves. “There are thousand points of light for the soldier man. Come on, bring him home while we can”, improvises Eddie into Neil Young's lyrics and sets Mike on a solo that lasts several minutes and reaches for heaven itself, where it meets Stone's lead guitar and lets it take over. Certainly no one is a preferred star in this band as they treat us with a concert of our lives.
“Gitara Stone Gossard, gitara Mike McCready, bubone a vocal Matt Cameron, piano Boom Gasper, uh .. vocal - that’s Eddie”, introduces Eddie the band for the last time. “Dhakujem moc krat.” Is it really time to go home? No, Mike protests. He comes forward with his guitar and plays first notes of Yellow Ledbetter, a real jam song, as if made for finishing performances like this. When the band joins for chorus, Jeff comes up to Mike and whispers a dare into his ear. He then incorporates some heavy metal tune into the song. Jeff bows down. During the very last solo, the band leaves, slowly, Ed leaving last with a peace sign and a howl: "Mííííííííííííír --- Thank you. You've been very kind to us. Ďakujem."
28 songs. 3 hours. It’s Sept 23rd after midnight and the day after tomorrow’s supposed to be my first day at the British and American Studies of the Prešov University. But it can wait. I look forward to Pearl Jam in Vienna instead!
TO BE CONTINUED.
You can recreate your own Prague experience here ;)
http://blinkeyeprojects.blogspot.com/2009/02/pearl-jam-prague-06.html
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