Pearl Jam and Wolfmother - Antwerp

I'm like a zombie at work... but I'm a really charged zombie. I spend the whole day working like a trojan and wanting to tell everyone I interact with that I saw Pearl Jam last night and I'm going to see them again tonight.

Mowgli and Luke are heading off to Antwerp on an earlier train to ensure that if there is any special bit for Ten Club ticket holders that we are getting in the front tonight. This means that I'm getting the two hour train to Antwerp on my own. I roll up in a ball on the seat and try to get some shut eye before I arrive in Antwerp... I wake up with half an hour to spare, and start the ritual of necking cans of red bull and liquid meals and getting togged up... I get a few looks as the rough looking guy sleeping in the fetal position, turns into tartan clad, wide awake Pearl jam man.

By the time I get to Antwerpen Berchem, I'm so excited that I just have to get a taxi to the Sportpaleis. The taxi driver says "Pearl jam" when I get in, I don;t even have to mention the Sportpaleis. Either Antwerp is dead mid-week, or this event is going to kick off.

I meet Luke at the door, and he hands me my ticket... Now I'm ready to rock.... I'm really excited tonight.... I think yesterday, I was tired and had too much admin surrounding the gig. The 2 hour sleep on the train has done me good.

We walk in to the arena, and it’s a much nicer sight than the previous evening. Although it's large, and will hold a lot of singing lungs, it's intimate, we can be right down the front quite easily. Mowgli is already kicking of the audience and has found some Australians to chew the fat with. Mowgli and I leave Luke with them, as we head off to get in the beers.

After asking for about 397 different belgian beers of the bar, we settle for the Bastard Love Child of Tennents and La Chouffe:



We spend a while wandering around and getting acquainted with the venue and our fellow concert goers for the night. We come across some scousers. We start talking to them, cos the guy has got the coolest suit jacket I have ever seen. His Girlfriend made it:



I told her she should start selling them on ebay, so if you see them there, then it was my idea.

We generally wander around until wolfmother take to the stage. Last night I didn't say much about wolfmother. Truth is I've had the album for about 6 months, an they really really Rawk! Anyone who's a fan of meat and 2 veg rock could do worse than go out and buy this album:




Having seen them the previous evening, it's good to be up close and to get a good look at what they do. What they do is provide a great live act over some rocking tunes. They have a really fat sound for a three piece, with Chris Ross moving between bass and organ duties. He actually plays organ in a way that would merit the invention of "air organ"... never residing to be upstaged by the not so inanimate object that he's playing:



In fact the two legs of the organ are rarely on the ground at the same time.

What's wonderful is that the pearl jam fans seem to have taken the band to their hearts and rock out to the whole set, with most fans knowing a fair percentage of the words. We're lucky to be standing with some Australians, so since wolfmother are australian, we suggest getting a sing song going that will make them feel at home. The ozzies respond with a tuneless chant, of "c'mon lads, show's yer tits. Get yer titz out son... c'mon", hilarious....







Once Wolfmother have left the stage, it's a case of waiting and keeping the energy and excitement up before the boys take to the stage. We wave the Saltire, and Mowgli starts a chant of "There's only one flag in Belgium":



It's soon joined by some guys at the front flying an Irish tri-Colour, so we sing "there's only 2 flags in Belgium"....

Pearl jam wander out on the stage to rapturous applause, as always there's little said by eddie or anyone else, they just start a bit of Pink Floyd- Interstellar Overdrive... a little more raucous than the subdued start of last night...It's the same start as Reading... and it fades away into Corduroy.... The clapping starts to the riff and and then the real gig starts as soon as Matt hits that first note, and the band join in.... and then it just kicks off "The waiting drove me mad".... maybe a dry joke relating to Pearl jam's never having played in Belgium.

It's much better being at the front, and its actually not crushed at all, just comfortable and 1 metre away from your idols.

Ed alters the lyrics and says "Can't buy what I want because it's peace... can't be what I want because I'm peaceful"

Once the song breaks down, we get our first mike wails of the night, I love the Vitalogy period wails, they are so bluesy that you can almost smell the dust. He really lets rip.... and we all know he's just warming up.



There's no stop and they are straight into Animal from VS. If Ten is the holy grail, and Vitalogy is the album that opened them up to experimentation, then VS gets lost in-between as an album full of amazing songs. It does in my mind anyway. Daughter and Rearviewmirror are obviously constantly on set lists, but animal's one I often forget about.... and how can you, it has some of the fastest Mike lines in their canon...

It's a pretty in your face beginning, and they don't let off. It's straight into Hail hail from No Code. Probably my favourite album if I have to decide. The band are on fire. Matt's ride cymbal kicks in at the chorus, and you know that they're upping the ante an playing a little faster than they should be. It's pumping along with the adrenalin flowing through our hearts...

They're just not going to let up tonight.... Ed with an Ebow in his hand, means that it's World Wide Suicide next, a classic, and it's only been out 6 months:



The band seem to clearly enjoy the new stuff. Mike dances and shakes a groove all the way through... he seems to have specific actions for all the different parts of the song... and side by side with World Wide Suicide comes Severed hand. It sounds like a foot to the floor simple rocker, which it is, but there is a ,lot of complexity in what they do. The trick is to make it sound simple. I suppose thats why the band has been around for so long. Their new stuff drips with both simplicity and professionalism. Mike still gets a chance to twiddle his way out of the song, which the rest of the band are a rock solid back bone providing the groove.

Back to vitalogy, and we get the moody Not For You.... I love the grimace sing that Ed does on this song. He's got an issue with a few people and he isn't afraid to put it in a song. You would not want to make an enemy of this man. Although Not For you isn't fast, it's loud and churning with attitude, and balls. Thats 6 loud rockers that get the heart pumping, with no pause... no hello, no nothing... just rock, this case Bluesy rock of the Vitalogy nature same as corduroy. When it ends... Ed starts a little arpeggio and lands on a tag of Modern Girl by Sleater Kinney:



It's beautiful. Maybe Ed knows that if you hit hard with 6 rockers, and then go delicate, that it makes the light and dark so wonderful. I don;t have time to ponder. They continue the delicacy with In hiding, my favourite track from Yield.

I love this track. Loads of fans go on about Yield as being Pearl jam's best post Ten album. While I like all the songs, in places it's a little light. This song was the one for me on that album, the note Ed hits in the chorus, can't be done without feeling the music, and the meandering soloing of Mike just carries so much Pearl jam history in it. I can't put into words, but this song was raw Pearl jam DNA oozing out of it. The really old school stuff. Only Pearl Jam could have written this song in my mind for some reason, and now almost 10 years later, I'm standing watching it ive for my first time with Matt classing up the place and driving the whole thing along... The whole thing meanders off and then there's no pause for the "eddie eddie" chants before we hit full pelt again. This time it's back to the new album... unemployable.

The band are the tightest they've ever been on this new stuff, it all seems to gel so well. Every component of the band has their own parts intertwined in the music. Whn it finishes, the band are back to "eddie eddie" ....

Ed responds with a "Goede Abend"...Ever the poet – Eddie says “finally we're here.. we finally landed and thank you for being here to catch us”

Ed says that he's completely fluent in Dutch and French, but that since Belgium can't decide what language to speak, he'll just use english...

Now we ebb and flow into Given to fly... for some reason the song always makes me feel at home with the boys, most of the songs are a secret among those in the know anyway... but this song feels like it's just the fans and the band against the rest of the world. I love the way it closes, it always brings a tear to my eye, there's memories locked in the outro... I don't know what they are, but like smell they can zone you straight in on an emotion.

hee hee....a wicked laugh from everyone present and we kick into evenflow... we're off!!!!!

It's all just foreplay before mike....

Then bendy bendy bend... and matt definately kicks faster as the solo starts... long solo notes getting slightly higher and more furious... like the whoel things going to explode, then tremolo picking and down a wail of notes... then stone stops the riff and mike just lets rip, i can never tell if he's twiddling or bending, but neither can he.... the band explode and groove around mike, who's off in a world of his own.

Always one to mix it up, we get the behind the head soloing here instead of during alive:







we return to an augmented groove on the riff, and mike sounds like he's killing the guitar... we noise solo for a while and then wiggle down the way with a little bit of whammy bar into some furious tremolo picking that rises and heads for a climax, of twiddles and something resembling the riff, then he really goes for it, and the whole thing breaks down... then stops in a watery noise.....

.....we get what is now becoming standard, a drum solo from Matt:



I don't know what it is, but listening back to the bootlegs of these concerts, Matt's drumming sounds so fresh... some of the songs are just a few clicks faster, and he feels like he's doing the impossible, putting even more into it.

He's on fire!!!! He rattle around the whole kit constantly getting this really sold juicy noise out of his toms... I can't help feeling that this is the closest I'll get to making up for not being born before Bonzo died....

The band kick in and you smile and laugh again.... It's just a simple sing song to end the song now.... our last little flair of mike comes at the outro....

Ed dryly introduces us to Matt Cameron after evenflow, and then introduces us to Mike who is going to start the next song...

It's Present Tense. I get a look from Mowgli. He knows it's one of my favourites. There's a delicacy and innocence to both the lyrics and the guitar. The guitar is beyond heavy, but it sits alone and you almost feel sory for it. I love how the guitar is set with the tones low and you can feel the body of the guitar and everything that contributes to this human sound. Eddie's existential lyrics pick up and Matt and then Stone join in to the groove, before it settles on a really slow heavy dirge which seems to ask such primordial questions, that I worry when listening to it that we might not want to hear the answer. The song then suddenly changes.... into a arpeggiatted theme(that is always riddled with mistakes), before the band kicks together by jeff and seems to culminate for the guts of these existential questions. I always feel confused after it. Did we just hear some answers? We get another elongated outro, where there's some wonderful guitar moments from Mike, Stone and Ed. And thats why No code is my favourite pearl jam album...

Unrelenting... Ed kicks off the whimsical by evolving into Do the evolution. It's a foot to the floor number. It seems so long since we've heard one, but Evenflow and Present Tense will mess with a man's head. Ed says we'll continue with the evolution as he kicks into another new cut; Big wave.

It doesn't sound new, cos it just kicks off and locks into place. This new stuff was just made to be appreciated live. They sound like they've been playing them for years.

If there was any suggestion(there wasn't) we were getting bored with rocking, Ed solves it by kicking into the one song that I can play in any weather on the guitar. Elderly Woman behind the counter in a small town. Mowlgi and I have our moment by shouting "I just wanna scream Ahoj!!!"

From here, we continue with the sing songs and head into Jeremy.... It's great singing along to a song you;ve sang along to for 15 years with another 15,000 people.....

They're playing so much from ten these days... Why Go? is no longer a tour rarity. I've seen it live 3 times now.

It's amazing to watch mike wail away on the solo!







After Why Go? Someone throws a T-shirt on stage for ed. It says. "we played Belgium for 4 hours".. he suggests that they owe them 6, an that you can't have 6 hours without a ukelele song. As always, Ed gets the words and the music wrong a few times..... But it's still wonderful.

From here, it's a straight kick into black. It starts... and I realise it's the first time I've heard it live. It sounds almost unreal like it's not happening..... It's an emotional rollercoaster of a song. It's the most real song on Ten. Fine, alive and evenflow and all the rest, rock, but black is so heartfelt. I am singing along with every word, and it's like an out of body experience. By the time Ed is singing " I hope some day you'll have a beautiful life...." I'm no longer there, I've drifted to a higher plain. I don't remember it. I was so lost in the music that all memory had just turned off. I was just zombied standing with my eyes shut letting the music envelop me..... doo doo dee doo dee do dee do

doo doo dee doo dee do dee do

doo doo dee doo dee do dee do

doo doo dee doo dee do dee do

doo doo dee doo dee do dee do

I open my eyes.... I'm not the only one.... 15,000 people are singing along...... but the audience just won't stop singing. The band jam over the 15,000 strong chorus... "we belong..... together"



The band stops..... but the audience have no intention of stopping. Ed eventually has to join in with them.... He's astounded.... They only stop when he starts playing Betterman... playing.... not singing... the crowd do that for him.... Two of the great emtional sing songs back to back!!! Only when the band kick in do we drop back down to reality for a second.

We're well into the gig and the energy is immense, the crowd are just on fire.... I never expected this from Belgians!!!! I don;t really know what I did expect, but they are putting their all into it. The boys meet them at every step of the way.... Black into Betterman into Crazy Mary!!!! Another never-heard-live-before favourite of mine.... Now that they have Boom, this Victoria williams cover gets played a lot more often. It's a good sing along and another camp fire song of mine, but no one knows it outside of the Pearl jam fan base, so it never goes down as well as I feel it should.

Come the solo, boom goes for it.... only to be joined by Mike, then they trade off licks for about 10 minutes. It's such a great moment. A simple little song by a sweet little lady, has been made into one of the most amazing rock trade offs I've heard, while Stone Pummels three chords on an acoustic for 10 minutes.

Mowgli gets up on Luke and my shoulders and does his flash. He has one of my socks on his cock, and he takes it off and throws it at Ed. we get no reaction... maybe its getting a little old.

From here... I could just go home now.... but Comatose keeps us up and announces that we're approaching the end of the show.... They rip through it like it's a reset button, clearing us for the encore which is bound to be truly great....

They kick into Alive.... Always a pleasure, never a chore... a sing along with a mike solo..... as would be expected the belgians are in fine voice when it gets to chanting along to the solo. Mike gets up on a speaker cabinet, and Luke manages to catch one of his plectrums, which is better than Mowgli who only managed to recieve a jeff plectrum on the chin.

The solo last for what seems like ages. When it finishes, mike is still twiddling away, like the duracell bunny he is!!!

Eddie gives a heartfelt thanks for the support that the audience has shown to a bunch of scrappy americans.

I get yet another new experience tonight, Indifference. The bass starts it off and I get chills, then mike just plays this reverby night time guitar. It's timeless. And I get to float on the moment some more. I don't think much can top this... Normally after alive, it should be yellow ledbetter or rocking in the freeworld and then home....

It just gets better and better... Eddie announces he's doing a a duet with the singer from wolfmother. CAN IT BE???

IT IS!!!!!

Hungerstrike by temple of the dog. It should be Chris Cornell. The song's only been performed live about 5 times or something, so you'll understand that the tears are running down my face as the opening lines are being sung.... It doesn't get any better......

BABA O'REILLY

I couldn't have dreamed for a better setlist. Two tambourines fly in from right of stage and Ed kicks off the Who rocker by banging two tambourines together like they;re plates at a greek wedding!!!! Now I'm crying and jumping.... and singing....

It's at this point that I agree with Mowgli that my hat shoul go on stage. Mike Picks it up and sits it on his amp..... My hat is famous!!!!!

Andy from wolfmother and Ed are going for it... both of them trying to brust tambourines over their head.. and both failing... It feels like such a feel good freee for all... The band are having fun and so are we... There have been a few treats tonight... And it can only go one more place....

we're all doing funny dancing to the outro of mike soloing and our wristbanded hands are held aloft:



"We don't say goodbye in the US, we just come toa country and occupy it"

"we'll see you next year"

We close the night to Yellow Ledbetter as always.

For some reason you never tire of listening to mike wail... and wail he does... he plays a little run that I don;t recognise in the middle of the solo. He had been practicing it at the end of alive.... who knows.... we close with mike being beautiful and a crowd clapping in unison.

When they go off. Mike doesn't take my hat, so I tell one of the roadies that someone stole it off me and threw it on stage and that I need it back. I think about telling the same story about my sock, but I think it's a litle less believable.

What a night!!!!!

They played for close to 3 hours. We missed the last train to AMsterdam by about 2 hours.... the next train to Amsterdam is about 6.30..... the three of us hang in Antwerp and slowly make it to the station. We are high on happiness.... we talk czech to a polish dog, get a bottle of red wine, ad walk along the longest underpass in the world:



We stagger into Amsterdam at about 10am...... having had a few hours sleep on the train...

Next gig..... Barcelona...

Pearl Jam and Wolfmother - Arnhem

I'm meant to be catching up on the past month of blogs and work, so I should really be writing up other things before I write up this, but I downloaded the bootleg of the gig and my fingers just went for it.

I'd been travelling round Eastern Europe on trains for about 5 weeks, and I ruched back to the Nether Regions for the Pearl Jam gig in Arnhem. I worked during the day, but squirmed about like I had beasties in my underwear... before long it was tiem to meet the troops at central station and get the train to Arnhem. Even though I saw them in April, and any gig this summer is unlikely to top that, I'm jumping about like a little kid. I'm really tired, I had no time to rest after my travels. My only night off was spent picking Mowgli up from the airport. I've had a Red Bull just to make sure I stay full of energy...



I'm literally flying to the station in a kilt.

As usual for Pearl jam concerts, we look like a crossbetween Mother love bone and the bay city rollers, decked out with Kilts, Saltires, Wristbands, Seattle T-shirts...





We arrive at the Geldedrome and I'm super super excited.... I need to meet a fellow Pearl jam fan I know from london to give him a ticket... but he's fallen asleep soemwhere, so by the time we get in it's super busy and wolfmnother are just going on. We spend a while trying to get to the front, but there's a second barrier we're not allowed through cos we're too late.

We enjoy wolfmother. I've had their album for months. It's very 70's and is a great rocking album. I don't pay too much attention to them , cos I know I'm seeing them 3 times, this week,a nd I still hold out that I can find someway to get into the front section. Alas it's not possible. Pearl Jam take to the stage!!!!



Release – tears and we head for the main area of the crowd. Give up on getting to the front…. Release is the opener for the Fox Theatre Atlanta Bootleg from April 1994. I always thought that this dirge was a such a brave opener… The tears roll down my face… what a start to a Pearl Jam summer. I couldn’t have thought of anything better.

Why go home, and we just go wild… It’s feels so rare to have this early 90’s staple, even though this is the second time I’ve heard it live. The solo is unbelievable and reminds me that we have a summer of mike solo’s in front of us.

Save you…..and the energy keeps going…some people poo poo riot act, but I think it’s one of the greatest albums in their career with such honesty and emotion, this is one of the foot to the floor rockers from this album… the crowd gets going when the song breaks down and start furious clapping to the beat… It’s F@CKING PEARL JAM, and the crowd is following.

Dutch crowds are usually stoned, so they are the most placid I’ve experienced, but even they are goin wild tonight… the warm cheer emanates from the 30,000 bodies around me… and you know you are with common souls….. We’re all feeling alive….

Eddie starts talking 3 songs in, which is pretty early compared to the Astoria… He seems to be genuinely touched that he can fill a 30,000 seat stadium after all these years. He also starts on the security and making sure everyone’s safe and helping each other out. Then they kick into corduroy – Stevie Wonder’s favourite colour!

Its one that I forgot I could play on the guitar, that I’ve been jamming about with while I was on trains in Eastern Europe. It’s a classic old rocker . It’s got everything, a riff, a catchy chorus and a bluesy bendy solo with enough twiddle to make you think “mike is the man!!”

Now we are into new territory. Severed hand. We heard it in the Astoria, when it was still new to the boys. Now we know it a bit better, and its starting to feel like and old friend like the rest of their canon. When the riff kicks in, we’re bouncing up and down as if it’s a song we’ve been listening to for 10 years. Matt really shines on the new stuff live!!! The toms sing, and he comes out to the forefront…. Sometimes I forget Matt is there, he’s so good. Mike makes the solo look effortless, there’s not letting up even on their new stuff.

Now we get the first surprise of the night… Eddie starts vamping along to a few chords and before he can sing the first line the audience are singing Bob Marley’s no woman no cry. It stops and makes way for betterman…. Eddie doesn’t sing betterman any more… he just strums the opening chords and lets the audience take over. It’s one of those moments where there’s all this commonality with you’re fellow concert goers. Betterman’s just played with a spotlight on eddie, so when they lights are launched and the whole band kicks in, I get major chills. I’m shouting at Luke Skyetrekker – “You see that?” “How cool was that?” The mood totally changes. The band are on fire, they seem to get more ferocious with every passing year. The band then breaks down and we return to a bit of no woman no cry….

The end to Bettermam is such a free for all that you feel something’s been achieved when it closes. I can close my mouth. I’m satisfied that I’m at a pearl jam concert and am just starting to get over the shock. Now the adrenalin can carry me through and I can start enjoying the concert.

World Wide Suicide, and despite not being at the front, we start our own little boogiespot. WWS is really dear to me. Not only was it the soundtrack to the excitement, but it was the theme song for our trip to the Astoria, and now, the boys are bring it back, slightly faster, slightly tighter as a pumping rocker for us to boogie to here in the middle of nowhere in The Netherlands…

The band kick into Insignificance. Binaural is considered to be Pearl jam’s worst album. I have no idea why, I love it’s muddy apprehensiveness, innocence and delicacy. I feel in love with this song when I learned it on the guitar. It’s a got a great riff, and the punky downstroke guitar make you want to go crazy….. yeah it’s inaccessible but so what!

From inaccessible, to the most accessible. Pearl jam didn’t play Jeremy and Alive for years because MTV had overplayed them to the point of saturation, but now Jeff can kick it with his 16 string bass again and give us all a wee sing along the takes us back to the early 90’s again, made even more special because it’s not been played that often. Although most people worship the bass in Jeremy, I think it’s stone that is the hero of this one for me, his rhythm just holds the whole thing together in a groove that I’ve known since I was 11 or 12. By the end the whole 30,000 are oo-ing and ahh-ing again, and eddie can take a break. I’m not sure whether to intonate it as the Ten recording or to do it like he does it at MTV unplugged. Half the audience go for Unplugged and half go for Ten – Pretty comical.

The boys are career-spanning tonight, so we kick straight into “do the evolution” from Yield. Eddie doesn’t care if he gets the words right or not, and stone takes the solo…… Brilliant….

We stick with Yield…. and start on Given to Fly…. A song that’s like the sea… It washes over you and builds up to a sing song chorus…. You can bounce along to it as well. It’s one of my most vivid memories from Glasgow when I saw them in 2000, bouncing along to the hippy strains of the “harder than it sounds” signature, which is a “Homage”, to Led Zeppelin’s Going to California….The energy of the song flows too…. The riff seems quiet, you can almost smell the sea air, but they never fail to fill the chorus with energy that gives you the hit to punch the air and sing along.

You know it’s coming, they play it nearly every night, but you still get superexcited when Evenflow kicks in… and you’re on tenterhooks wondering just how fast mike will be able to play when it comes to the solo, there’s hints sprinkled liberally through out the song, but you shake and become like a coiled spring waiting for the solo, and “move over red rover and let mike McCready take over” after some serious single note banding and drukms which are definitely kicking faster than they were in the verse, we get a great scattered, speed fest of notes, that lands on a bend that makes the hairs stand all along your spine… He’s enjoying himself, and stone picks up a little rhythmic groove that Mike takes on in the solo and it wooshes like water, and into some little triad progressions followed by super fast picking till we’re almost supersonic…… and the groove all comes together…. And fades away to be left with……..

…… Matt……

Our new feature of the tour seems to be that Matt’s doing a solo spot at the end of evenflow, and what a solo spot, the man who thumped the tubs to Jesus Christ Pose by Soundgarden finally starts to show off the amazing talent that I know he has…. I’m loving it… You can tell Matt’s listened to a few “Moby dick’s”. The spirit of Bonzo lives on,……so does evenflow, the band kick back in, after 15 years of playing the same song every night it’s still special and fresh. I don’t really understand… the outro groove is just wonderful, the band’s laughing and loving it as much as we are.

Eddie says as much. He rattles off the various Pearl jam concerts from the early days in the Tivoli, the Melkweg and the Vera, and says that Matt was with Soundgarden and that he’s glad to have him in the band…



From there he announces that they’re going to play a song they wrote with Neil Young. My heart explodes. I got Shit is one of my favourite Pearl Jam songs. It’s got a delicate start and a rousing chorus and is an example of everything Pearl jam are wonderful, the studio version has the added bonus of a Neil Young guitar solo… but we don’t need it tonight. Tears run down my face, I don’t even know what the words are, but the song always just seems so heart felt. This is what I love about Pearl jam its not the words, it’s the music, the chord progressions that the feeling is locked in.

After the emotion comes the humour, Ed announces that he’s dedicating the song to a Dutch woman who was kidnapped from Utrecht and is being held in America. Matt Lukin, the bass player from Mudhoney is the kidnapper.

LUKIN – The song named after the man. A burst of energy and ferocious singing that lasts less than 2 minutes, but its great and we go mental to it.

2 minutes clearly wasn’t enough cos they kick into spin the black circle, the first single form Vitalogy… as wild then as it is now. My world shook when that record came, gone were the safe MTV sounds of Ten and VS… this band was here to stay, and stay they have.

From here they tease us with a very slow rearviewmirror riff, which quickly builds into the full familiar groove. This is up there with all the other favourites. I predicted(or hoped) when we got even flow so early that we would get rearviewmirror, and luckily I was right. The last time I heard this song was when I was randomly flicking through Slovakian television and the Saturday Night Live Performance from 1994 came on. It was like an old friend when I was far away from what I knew…. and now I’m grooving to the real thing. The song is generally the same all the way through it starts with such a fast pace that the energy has to build from within the players rather than from within the notes.



This makes the energy that’s created really raw. We break it down to a few drum and bass notes and a lot of clapping and ed says “you’re fucking beautiful”, then the tortured climax comes… my spin is popping with energy… I can’t stop moving, every beat of every beat is stamped out and then we do our best to sing three vocal parts at once. Pearl jam are only doing 2!!!!! Then the outro beats along to my heart and create this storm of sound that has to be the heaviest ball of aural energy Pearl Jam can create…. Then we get the big finale……… but you know there’s so much more to come…. I’m crying tears of happiness…. The whole things just begun….. Now comes the encores…

We now have a cello, and a chair. It could be something special, I assume Daughter, Eddie comes out and starts ripping on America. All about being a superpower and not having to speak foreign languages, but we can teach our children to break the cycle.

Ed says he’s sure there’s some ugly fucking people up the back, but that the people down the front are fucking beautiful and healthy.
Turns out we’re getting Man of the Hour, the beautifully subtle arpegiatted song from Big Fish. It’s so sweet that you can play a stadium for 30,000 people and still look small and innocent and sound as if you need a hug. Their intimacy is astounding.

I was write, just premature, the cello is for daughter. It starts as a sing along, and soon breaks down to a groove, where you never know what ed’s gonna do. He usually tags a song onto the end. The people around me start singing another brick in the wall – one of the many tags, and we join in along to the groove. We stop when ed starts a very slow ramonesesque “Hey Ho Let’s go”

State of Love and Trust, wow….. how can a bunch of 40 year old have the same energy as they did in 1992… bizarrely they have… mike is on fire, and matt just fires out the notes…. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen this live, but it feels as though I haven’t go wild with energy. The energy stays with me as they kick into comatose.

I immediately remember what Ed said at the Astoria after Comotose. He said that it fucks up his voice and that he can’t sing anything after it. Lets hope he’s learned to hold back a little. Afterwards it’s clear he has… Ed starts a very slow intro to Porch, which you just know is going to kick into “the” energy song from Ten. We’re not wrong. We are blessed tonight. 5 songs off Ten so far and SOLAT.

At some point in the proceedings, possibly now, ed does something that I've never seen before - He's an inventive little chap - He places the guitar on his head and looks up for a few minutes. No one quite knows what he's doing until you relaise, that he's reflecting the spot light off his scratch plate to be able to target it onto certain areas of the audience. It's pretty cool.

The groove in Porch is to the whole band what evenflow is to mike, and the energy rises a la Rearviewmirror… this meanders and builds until theres about four grooves winding together from different directions. It’s pretty reminiscent of the groove at the end of Reach Down by Temple of the dog… the original energy that started Pearl Jam… it breaks down and ed gives us something to sing along to….. The big note comes before the return to the Chorus, and we return to “bounce and sing” mode. I take a look around me and marvel at 30,000 like souls all bouncing to the same energy,.,,,, the place is on fire!!!! Encore 2 ends much like encore one did….

This time, I wonder for a few minutes whether they will come back on…. Yellow Ledbetter is the clichéd closer, but we’ve had throat stripping versions of Rearviewmirror and Porch….

….. this is no ordinary night, the band are back on, and a cheer goes up when someone come out in a spangley jacket and a bush mask.

The boys shelved Bu$hleager after they got an adverse reaction in the US, but it looks like it’s back. It’s so strange seeing humour from Ed, he comes across as this stern grumpy guy, but his humour is so dry and wonderful….



The crowd sings along… in mass anti Bu$h chants, and watch’s as ed sings to the bush mark, feeds it wine, stand on it… and then drop kicks it into the audience.

“If anything I’ve just done on stage seems violent, nothing is as violent as killing 100,000 innocent civilians. We need to take control of the earth from massive corporations”

Drop The Leash………I almost go into shock. It’s only been played a handful of times since about 1993. A group of fans constantly hold up signs for Leash, but Pearl jam rarely play it. Tonight they do…. And it’s brilliant… fresh… alive….

I’m still reeling from the fact they played live, when they hit into alive… Now we know we’re on the home stretch…. But what a nice home stretch a 30,000 strong mass sing along!



Ed calls for the house lights to go on, and I sing and dance, as I watch my cohorts have the time of their lives. The solo never fails to amaze… it’s starts pretty standard, but after all we’ve seen it, nice to get a little grooving solo rather than 1000 notes a second, this is bluesy instead… and as it tails out, the fist in the air “hey” to every beat, and for once the band is playing along with the audience instead of vice versa, and mike seems to channel a little bit of the energy from the audience down into his fingers…. For a little bit of Kiss inspired noodling….

They’re not finished, the last note of alive is the first note of Rockin in the freeworld…. Another I’ve not heard live…. Ed gets thrown tambourines from the side of the stage and starts rocking away… alive and rocking in the free world are boogie speed, and a little bit of Boom piano emphasises this.



We’re rocking out with nothing to go on but fumes. When the solo starts, the simplistic Neil Young groove sits so well that the solo seems new… even after 2 hours of solo… I love the versatility…It just makes you look back on the whole night…. I’m happy and assume that’s it….

But the show ain’t over till the little skinny man plays the little wing rip off!!!!

“Heel erg Bedankt” – Ed’s learned some Dutch!!

Yellow Ledbetter is just the moment to smile and look back at the gig, to know how great it was…. The band leave mike with his guitar, and he just goes to the zone…. Spends his little moment worshipping Jimi and all his memories. He’s like a little kid… it’s good to know that the person who plays music you get off on, gets off in the same way to something else…

After the show we trudge along to the train station and joina conveyer belt of people on buses and trains and taxis and finally crawl to bed at 4am... it's abeen about 7 weeks since I had a full nights sleep... about the same since I had a solid meal...but my heart is still pumping, my ears are still ringing, the adrenalin is stopping me sleeping and I'm going to do it all again tomorrow. Bring on the Pearl Jam summer~!!!!!!!!!(and maybe just one long lie)

Accidentally arriving in Slovakia

Having adopted a small English PE teacher, who we'll call Gash Hunter, we head to the station in Krakow with the intention of getting on the 13:30 to Budapest. With time to spare we stand in the information queue for 30 minutes and ask for tickets to Budapest. She tells us there's a direct train to Budapest at 22:30. We again ask for tickets on the 13:30 that changes once. She tells us it doesn't exist that there's a 13:35 that changes twice. Sounds like a plan. We now have to queue in another queue to get tickets.

After 45 minutes.... and roughly an hour and a half in the station to get one ticket, we get to the woman and she shouts at us, telling us that the train was 13:30 and not 13:35. It's 13:31, so we've missed the train. we're told to go back to the information desk and decide what train we're getting. Why do we think there is a 13:35 etc.

We've now missed the train to budapest. So we go in search of the internet to inquire with Deutsche Bahn as to how we can get out of Krakow and poland today without waiting till 22:30 for a 9 hour night train to Budapest.

Our luck is in, there;'s a train to Zilina in slovakia thats 2 hours and 5 changes away, at least we can sleep in a new country tonight..... cos Poland's starting to get on my wick....

With only minutes to spare, we manage to negotiate a ticket to Zilina.

It's clear as soon as we start on this train, that we are not on a tourist backpacker train to the next capital city. It's a very quiet and run down train and it's travelling at about 20km an hour. We make our first change, and get onto a slower more rural train. .....

By our third train, we have no idea if we are in Slovakia, Poland or Czech Republic, which is quite a strange experience. To get from platform to plat form you just walk along the train track:

==Walking along the train tracks.

Eventually we arrive in Zilina. We have phoned one of the cheaper hotels in the city, because the place doesn't seem to have youth hostels. We have a tripple room booked, we just need to find the hotel.

When we walk out of the station, a man starts talking to us in Slovakian. He's really friendly, but doesn't seem to understand that we don't understand slovakian. I get the phrase book out and tell him that we are scottish and that we are scottish and don't understand slovakian, he understands so speaks to us a little slower.

We make our excuses with body language as best we can, and head towards the centre of town. It's a really nice little town:





Our hotel is just off the main square. We check in and apprehensively head to our room. I know from my hotel experience, that you can never tell the state of the room by the state of the reception. It looked nice enough.

We get in the room and it looks very nice. Clean... Comfy.... we go into the toilet and discover a heart shaped jacuzzi. We're laughing and joking about landing lucky(It's between 15 and 20 euros a night each), when one of discovers that the cupboard is not a cupboard, but an en suite sauna.



In all my traveling for meetings and conferences, I have never been in a hotel with an en suite sauna......

There's further hilarity when luke and I discover a mirror above our double bed.

We head out to try and get something to eat, it's now after 9pm, and our luck seems to be out. We settle for a couple of pints of fresh Staropramen that cost less than 0.50 euros each:



We enjoy the luxury of the hotel room, and sleep late, once we're up and showered, we head to the only lonely planet point of interest... zilina has a castle.

We walk back down to the square where Tesco is and get a view over the town:



We follow the road along the river, and eventually we can see the castle. The river is huge:





We get a photo of us crossing the train lines. It's still alien to us:





From here, there's a nice view over the city:



It's strange, there's a peaceful country feel to it, with a motorway running through the middle and a dilapidated ex communist industrialism to the whole place.

After a few wrong turns, we eventually make it to the castle:



They don't make much of it, and we seem to have more video footage than camera footage. We get a guided tour of the place in Slovakian... which is pretty bizarre, but it's quite cool knowing that there won't have been many scotsmen through here.

After the castle, we take a walk along the river. We're not long into our trip, but it's good to escape the bustle of Krakow for somewhere a little more rural:





From there, it's back to the centre for some food, beer and then sleep.

Tomorrow we are heading for Eger in Hungary as a stop off point for getting to Romania.... it;s the home of Bull's Blood. A potent red wine.

Exploring Krakow and Auschwitz.....

We decided last night that we woul spend the mornign exploring Krakow by Daylight.... because there is a tour of Auschwitz which leaves the Hostel at 13:00... We hummed and hawed all last night as to whetehr we wanted to go to Auschwitz or not... eventually we decided to go... based on the fact that it was a huge part of History, and if either of us returned to Krakow, we may not be with people that wanted/were willing to go.....

First up though is Krakow by day.... what's immediattly clear is that despite the lack of road and huge roadworks which surround the station, this is a really touristy city.... There a re seas and seas of people.... We got some photos of the main square by daylight - hopefully I can uload these shortly.... then we headed down to Wawel Castle.

Krakow used to be the Capital of Poland, so the King would be in residence here. He had a huge impressive castle which sits on a hill just south of the city and beside Kazimierz which is the Jewish District where Spielberg shot Schindlers list.

We walk up and around the castle and get a view across the Industrial south of Krakow.. which is full of High rises and the standard skylines you expect in ex-communist countries. Once we get round the the inner courtyard of the castle, it's immediattly impressive. Really huge with very ornately decorated buildings. There is a cathedral and a museuam and a view of the royal appartments. There are three queues for each of these which looks to be at least an hour long.... We opt instead to take a few photos, buy some postcards and then head back through the centre back to the Hostel for the bus....

Once back at the hostel, we start talking to the other people who are heading to Auschwitz. The tour is 100 zlotys, we could almost definately do it cheaper by public transport, but for ease of getting there the bus is good. It's also a good way to meet other travellers in the hostel and get a bit of a chinwag about where people have been, where to go next, the tricks people use to rip you off etc....

As soon as we're out of Krakow, we are on Country B-Roads.... The scenery remains un remarkable.... too flat for my liking. The conversations and laughing and joking(Bizarrely on a Bus to Auschwitz) makes the journey fly by pretty quickly.

We arrive at Auschwitz and join our tour... They don't seem to a have a toilet at the main gate, so we hop along with the tour.

Since I decided to come here, I;ve been numbing myself to what I'm going to see. The edge is take off it by the lines of tour buses that sit outside of the place and the people with Cameras and Video Cameras.... It says no photos, but the guide was even telling us to take photos... I took the odd one, of Brabed wires fences and such just to say I've been there... It's chilling when you go off on your own and you can imagine lines and lines of tired, abused broken people walking along on the same ground you are.

The tour basically involves standing in a queue of people and shuffling round little corridors as the guide tells you all the facts that you already know.... There's some really moving stuff like huge piles of dicarded shoes and stuff... You some how fel closer to the people in the camp by seeing there belonging all stacked together with little identity or individuallity... We were at the Holcoast Memorial in Berlin... Its' hundreds of Pillars of concrete of varying sizes sitting at varying degrees. We surmised that it was about individuality and human characteristics that from affar can't be seen. The shoes are kind of the same.

After about 2 hours, we grow weerie of the tour... well not so much the tour, but the shuffling. It's hot... we need a pee and my head is getting sore... all in all I feel very uncomfortable... This could be because of what I'm witnessing.... some kind of bizarre sub concious reaction...

After Auschwitz I it's Auschwitz II Birkenau. Auschwitz I was an ex army barracks. Auschwitz II is a flat land with huts and chimney's as far as the eye can see... The train goes straight through the main gate, where the prisoners were divided into fit and unfit and sent into a gas chamber or to a work barracks... There's huts for over 100,000 people... the sheer scale of this death factory is phenominal.....

We head back on the bus and everyone agrees that they didn't really know how to react. I didn't feel I gained much from my trip, but I'm glad I went. I suppose I expected to learn something new about this period of history... but it's so commonly documented that you almost feel like you've been there before, so the horro doesn't really hit you... that and the american standing behind you saying "Gee this is great - get a shot of that Hank...."

We get back to Krakow quite late, and the only things left to do are get a cold beer and some more din dins and then decide where we're going tomorrow.... after studying train timetables online for a few hours, we come to the conclusion that it's Budapest......

Good Night....

Arriving in Poland

We arrive din Poland on Tuesday night after a long boring train journey. It's strange, I think it makes it more boring having a travel companion. You've got someone to complain too about the boredom. The scenery was unremarkable...... I can't get my photos to upload just now... so this will be a purely textual experience until I do.....We listened to some jimmy Carr Stand up on theiPod. It's hilariously funny, and many people were wondering what type of music we were listening to that could make us snigger so much.

We arrived in Krakow station, weerie and needing a bed for the night. The station was huge and seemed to be one big set of roadworks..... we had already booked a hostel by phone, so set about trekking across the roadworks and trying to make sense of Polish street signs..... The Hostel was nice enough.... very basic, maybe about 3 beds across three dorms.... It was dark by now, and we headeded down to Rynek Glowny - The mian square...... It's huge!!! a huge big square with lots of old impressive buildings, the hugest of which is the Cloth Hall.... It's similar to the Rynek's that I have been to in Warsaw and Poznan... even down to the same chains selling very unpolish food...

OUr first stop is a well deserved beer... it is Okocim....

Having not eaten anything other than munchies and train food for the whole day, we check the lonely planet for some restaurants that are cheap enough for our budget and also serve something a bit more Polish than the Mexican restaurant..... after finding a few closed places, we settle in a little place.... It's very cheap.... so we're not sure of the size of the portions... we wolf down a CHicken Schnitzel and some roast pork in a cumin sauce... very tasty... very hearty.... but not enough.... it will do us for the night though.... we head home for our first night in the hostel.... we finally get to sleep after getting a mattress from the staff because they'd overbooked.....

Apologies.....

My apologies... I am travelling too much and falling behind on the blog. I've still to write up the trip to scotlnad.... a trip to Italy... a Guns N Roses Concert, an Alice in Chains concert, and 2 weeks in Austria..... We've(Me and Luke SkyeTrekker) just arrived in Poland, after getting a long train from Berlin, where I spent 10 wonderful days exploring Berlin with Paprika.... from now on for the rest of August, we're hopping around eatern europe with our homes on our backs like turtles.... so the blog will be a wee bit more sporadic, while stealing the odd moment of internet time on Hostel Computers.....


Here's some photies from Berlin: