(photo from Pearljam.com)
Friday morning was the beginning of the Pearl Jam road trip! Hartford, Connecticut, here we come!
Unfortunately, the trip started out with a delay as we heard there was a tractor trailer flipped over near St. Laurent so we took the back roads to Mike’s place and ended up leaving town around 11AM.
The Google Map directions directed us to take back roads for the most part towards Hartford (through Ogdensburg). I didn’t question them, and we had some lovely scenery along the way.
We stopped into a diner (Mo’s Place) in Watertown, NY where we had a delicious burger and witnessed the most vile looking bathroom and a rogue’s gallery of patrons drinking coffee. If this is the national past-time, then I sure hope none of them have to go to the washroom!
The rest of the trip was quite nice…even if we did have to pay to use some of the highways. The rolling green hills are beautiful and I must admit that I didn’t appreciate the trip through New York State back in 2007 when I went down East to New York City with Vero. By the way, what’s a turnpike? I did manage to bite my lip pretty hard while eating an excellent peperrette, then commented to Mike “Boy, don’t you hate it when you bite your lip and then you end up biting it again?” and sure enough, I bit it again. Tears were coming down this guy’s face at my misfortune!
We arrived at the Hilton in Hartford, CT and as soon as we pulled into the parking spot, I get a call from my agent saying “You better leave the country more often!” as we received an offer on the first day the house was on the ‘official’ real estate market! We couldn’t believe our fortunes. Mike ran down to the beer store and proceed to bring back A LOT of beer and we questioned if we would be able to drink it all!
We sat around the hotel waiting for another call from the agent and he explained to me the details of the offer. My favourite part was at the end of the conversation where he said very seriously “You can’t get drunk until you receive those papers to sign!” So I took it easy for another hour or two and by 9PM we were starving so we headed out to the City Steam Brew Pub for a bite to eat and sure enough, as soon as we sit down, we get the call that there are papers coming our way on the hotel fax machine.
By 10PM, everything was signed, sealed and delivered and we headed back to the City Steam Brew pub which I had spied on the Internet looking for some good beer to drink. The atmosphere in this place was great and I must say that the fish and chips was the best fish and chips I have ever tasted, and I’m not lying here.
We tried the Naughty Nurse Amber Ale which was decent enough but Mike and I weren’t feeling the amber ale and we switched to a house stout which flowed a little easier. Two thumbs up for the service from Anastasia at the City Steam Brew Pub! The food and drink were excellent as well!
I should also point out that I found downtown Hartford to be quite lovely. A very clean downtown and some nice pubs along the way. We found out the next day talking to some locals that Hartford is nice for about five blocks and then has nothing. Good to know, good to know.
The next morning I awoke pretty early on as our window was front onto the sun and the curtain wasn’t closed completely. I tried to get back to sleep but the bathroom seemed to make strange noises…almost like the building was settling. We awoke around 8:30 all groggy as these things had been keeping us up for the past two hours. No matter, we were heading to the Outlet Malls!
We hit the road towards the Premium Outlets (basically the same stores that we go to in Waterloo, NY) which was a nice 45 minute drive to Clinton, CT. We hit up Banana Republic and the Gap first off and then perused the rest of the stores. I personally didn’t take home nearly as much as I wanted to, but I think Vero and Mike did pretty well. We did manage to buy $18 cleats that we will use for Ultimate Frisbee this summer.
We headed back towards Hartford and stopped into the Apple Store so I could pick up an iPad case. Unfortunately they were out of stock but they had one on display so I could feel the texture. It was a decent case but I since found out about the Marware Eco-Vue which seems to be a lot nicer.
When we got back to the hotel, I headed to the XL Arena (which was directly next to the Hilton…by the way, the Hilton had become Pearl Jam HQ that weekend with every room occupied by fans of the band!!! Quite the party!) to try and nab a venue-specific poster. Pearl Jam is great for creating venue-specific posters for each of their shows and I love hanging them up on the wall. Unfortunately, it wasn’t open yet and I would have to come back for 6PM.
Everyone took a nap for a bit and then Mike and I watched episodes of The Inbetweeners on the iPad in the bathroom so not to wake up Vero. This supposedly didn’t work out too well as Vero said she could hear us giggling the entire time while we downed beers and cracked up over this show. It is a great show…it is essentially American Pie, but a UK TV series of it.
The bathroom was starting to smell some marijuana (not because of us! It was from the hallway!) so we decided it was time to head off the to the XL Center to grab that poster. Unfortunately, we had to actually go through the gates to pick up merchandise and we wouldn’t be allowed to get back out. This posed a problem considering we hadn’t eaten yet. Vero and Mike convinced me to walk near the merchandise booth outside of the security barrier and convince the merch guy to sell me a poster. Someone confirmed that they saw a few people already do this in the day. I had no such luck with the first merch guy, but the security guy managed to get the attention of some fan and he bought the poster for me. I slipped him a $5 for his troubles, packed the poster in the tube (which Vero and Mike where laughing hysterically about) and left it back in the room.
We tried to find a place to eat, but no such luck with 15,000 Pearl Jam fans in the downtown core. We finally managed to find a Subway a few blocks away and then headed back to the XL Center.
The XL Arena was pretty crazy. Lineups galore for beer and food. I picked up a t-shirt and Mike picked us up a couple of plastic bottles of Bud for $9 each. I thought plastic bottles were an interesting idea and wondered why we don’t see more of that in Canada. Our seats were pretty good…we were in Section 118. At first I thought Section 118 may be pretty far away as it was near the curve of the bowl away from the stage, but the XL Center is surprisingly small. If you think of the Scotiabank Place, imagine not having a 300L. So in actuality, I would say we were the distance of halfway to the stage if you compared it to the Ottawa arena. Not too shabby at all. I must admit that I was a tiny bit disappointed to be in the stands for a concert but so be it.
Band of Horses was playing and they sounded decent. I had listened to their albums a couple of times before the concert and they are a decent band. We managed to get a few beers and chatted with Jeff, an accountant who follows Pearl Jam around whenever he can (otherwise known as ‘The Dream’).
~~~The Show~~~
The lights went down, everyone went nuts and were on their feet and the screams were heard miles away. This was quite the crowd! Hartford is supposedly the place of many a-good PJ concert…I believe the 2003 concert was voted the best of that tour, and the 2008 tour date wasn’t bad either. So there was a lot of talk of Hartford being THE venue to see it in (other than Boston or NY which also has a place in PJ fans hearts) and I was pretty anxious to witness my third PJ concert…the first being Ottawa 2005 (which was a doozy) and Toronto ’09 (with Sammy, Kelly and Dana).
They started off with Unthought Known which is one of my favourite tracks from their latest album Backspacer. It just builds and builds and builds and I thought it was an excellent opener. In true PJ fashion, they then continued with Corduroy which is an all-time favourite of mine. The crowd was going NUTS.
Do The Evolution appeared as the third song and I thought that was interesting considering it usually ends their first set. Definitely indication that we would have a different night than the rest of the tour.
Some highlights of the night:
– By the sixth song, I had to bail and go to the washroom. I noticed a TON of people getting beer. This was a surprise to me as I usually don’t see THAT big of a lineup during the time the band is playing.
– They played some excellent rarities that night; Low Light, Nothingman (which I never knew was a rarity until reading how lucky we were to hear it), Satan’s Bed, Indifference and All Along the Watchtower (as the closer)
– At one point Eddie goes on about how this will be a One Time and One Time Only kind of thing (OTOTO) and they play Ain’t Talking ‘Bout Love by Van Halen!!! What a treat! They’ll never play that one again! Mike McCready was on fire on that one and may I say that he may have been better than Mr. Van Halen? Is that even possible?
– Mike and I missed the talk during the first encore break where they introduced the artist of the Backspacer album as we were picking up a beer. It was an unfortunate happening of picking up beer as they ran out of draft beer as soon as we got to the counter. We had to fork out $9 for a bottle of beer. Mike had a sour taste in his mouth for the rest of the night after that!
– There was also this other moment where we went to get beer where Mike managed to get us halfway into the lineup. We played it cool and chatted with one of the guys who said that his great-grandfather came from Quebec and that many French Canadians came either down to Connecticut or up North to work in lumber. I thought this was intriguing and vowed to look into the subject more in the future. He did scoff at the fact that I was wearing a PJ t-shirt and then I realized he was kind of lame.
– Satan’s Bed was a treat with the lights all red and Eddie singing maniacally.
– The house lights went up around the time Indifference and All Along the Watchtower started up and it was an incredible moment when you see the crowds interacting with the band with the lights up. Everyone was singing along to Indifference and it was a moment that really touched me.
Some low points of the night:
I’ll be honest with you, at the end of the show I felt unsatisfied for some reason. At first I thought it was because there were so many songs that I wanted to hear that I did not hear…Yellow Ledbetter being one of them (“on a wizard, on a whaaalleee”. Then I thought it may be the fact that Mike and I had a few beer which takes me out of the moment (with waiting in lines and whatnot…it takes away from the entire concert experience). Then I thought it was the seats and the fact that there were some morons right behind us TALKING LOUDLY the entire concert. Irritation ensues. So in the end, I walked out of there thinking “Man, it was a good show, but not the best one I’ve ever seen.”
It wasn’t until I read the reviews when I got home on Monday that I realized what an amazing show we were at. Everything people wrote about was entirely true. People said it was the best show they’ve seen in twenty years. Some fans had been to 50 shows and said it was in the Top 3. The crowd was INTENSE. The setlist was solid gold, a good mix of the hits along with rare songs. Heck, they even played Van Halen for us! I then got excited reading all these reviews and realizing that I was there and yes, it was a great night. I cannot wait to hear the bootleg for the concert and realize the things I missed during the moment.
I did some analysis of my PJ concert going, and in Ottawa ’05, 31 songs were played. In Toronto ’09, 28 songs were played, 17 being songs I hadn’t seen live before. Now in Hartford ’10, they played 28 songs and with that, there were 14 songs I hadn’t heard live before! That is pretty stellar. What are the odds that three concerts in, I would have that high of a number of songs that I hadn’t seen live before?
I have since realized that I screwed myself by listening to nothing but Pearl Jam Radio for the past few weeks leading up to the event. Because of that, I had *heard* all of their songs in a live capacity and nothing was a surprise to me when I heard them. I just said to myself “Yeah cool! I love this song” but it wasn’t the mind-blowing experience which usually is “Holy crap, I have never heard this song live and this is incredible!!!” So mental note for next time, do not listen to only Pearl Jam bootlegs for three weeks prior to the show! It takes away from the magic!
All in all, it was quite amazing to see the band again and it made me realize how much I love Pearl Jam. They put on a rocking good show and the energy they project from the stage was dwarfed by the energy from the crowd. Hell yes. PJ fans are the greatest out there. Everyone just wanted to have a good time. I hope Vero and Mike did as well. I have a feeling that while Vero said she enjoyed the show, I know that she loves to see a band where she knows the songs beforehand.
After the show, we went to a pub for a few pints, chatted with some locals, called Sammy a few times to make it sound like we were still at the concert rocking out (but it was the music at the pub playing) and headed back to the hotel.
It took a LONG time to find a way to get some food in us (Downtown Hartford was PACKED!!!) and we finally managed to order a pizza to deliver to our room. I fell asleep and awoke to a severe case of disorientation. The pizza had arrived and I was munching away but was in a haze. I could clearly hear myself talking to Vero and Mike but I could hear that I wasn’t making any sense in the English language. Even when I tried to explain that I don’t know why I couldn’t speak English, it just came out different! Then at one point I asked where Vero was and she says “Uh, I’m right here.” and then this moment of clarity hit me. I really can’t explain it other than the fact that I was in a deep sleep and you know how when someone wakes you from a deep slumber, it takes a few seconds to get re-oriented? Well perhaps my body was just taking a few minutes to get re-oriented!
The next morning I was feeling top shape (but Mike wasn’t…hee hee) and we managed to make our way to Cabella’s, an excellent hunting and fishing store, where we picked up a few things and then hit the road.
Mike’s GPS ended up bringing us back up on a different route (which I questioned heavily…”How does the GPS bring us down one way, but changes it on the way back?!” which brought up through Syracuse and the 1000 Islands. I can’t really tell which route which faster as we were stuck in a traffic jam for 45 minutes and we stopped for some Chinese Food in Watertown on the way back. We managed to roll into our house around 9PM after a great road trip to Hartford, CT. A nice downtown area and lovely shopping around the area.
Here’s to seeing Pearl Jam in 2011! It looks like their MO is to do smaller tours each year instead of world-wide tours every couple of years. I can’t say I mind this approach one bit.
May 15, 2010 Hartford, CT, XL Arena
Opening: Band Of Horses
Set List: Unthought Known, Corduroy, Do The Evolution, Got Some, Severed Hand, Dissident, Low Light, Amongst The Waves, Even Flow, Nothingman, Johnny Guitar, I Got Shit, Jeremy, Daughter/WMA, Satan’s Bed, Lukin, Gonna See My Friend
1st encore: (Dan Perkin’s AKA “Tom Tomorrow” comes out on stage), Just Breathe (Dedicated to Dan and his family), Speed of Sound, State of Love and Trust, Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love (Van Halen) Dedicated to the University of Connecticut “UConn” Huskies NCAA Woman’s basketball team, Porch
2nd encore: The Fixer-Dedicated to Jennifer Jaff, Crazy Mary, Alive, Indifference – Ed discusses JP Hero charity for Haiti and Sean Penn, All Along The Watchtower with Ben Bridwell from “Band Of Horses”- (Dylan)