Pearl Jam at the Viejas Arena: 10-8-09

This was how it went. The show was in San Diego. My sister lives in San Diego. I figured I could go to San Diego, see the show, and crash at her place. However, the Angels had a playoff game at the very day of the concert. My dad got tickets for my sister and himself. She would not be in San Diego at the time. She told me I could still come, and she ordered her boyfriend to look after me. This ended up working perfectly.

My sister's boyfriend is named Mike. He was extremely accommodating. So much so that he was actually OK with us ditching the lousy seats we were given and sneaking closer. So instead of being up in the nosebleed section staring at Matt Cameron's back all night, we were actually only a few rows up, off stage left--

But you know what, you don't really care about any of that. I'll talk about the show now.

First off, Ben Harper rocks. There's lots of other ways to say that, but none of them sum it up so nicely. He's clearly a powerful enough force to rock a venue on his own, and he deserved way better then a half-empty arena of concert-goers who are barely paying attention. At least they WERE barely paying attention until the tiny, flannel-clad Eddie Vedder staggered onstage and he and Ben ripped through a cover of "Pressure" which really woke everyone up.

Eddie, it turned out, wasn't just staggering around because he's clumsy. Someone who made his name climbing hundreds of feet onto lighting fixtures, leaping over speaker cabinets, and generally being a human tornado wouldn't have made it into his forties if he was clumsy, but at this show he'd be limiting his stuntwork to some gravity-defying yoga-type poses with the very sturdy microphone stand. Other things he tried, like the jumps, the throws, and the simply walking across the stage wouldn't work so well for him.

Blitzed. Three sheets to the wind. Shitfaced. Hammered. Furry. Zipped. Talking to Earl on the Big White Phone (my favorite). Call it whatever you want, it's probably why Eddie Vedder squeaked on his highest notes and breathed through his lowest, but losing his voice didn't stop him at Outside Lands, so getting swimming drunk wouldn't stop him in San Diego. Pearl Jam was wrapping up the American leg of the Backspacer world tour with this show, and three members of the group spent important parts of their lives in the city so they were treating it like a homecoming and celebrating accordingly. "We got lots of family and friends here," said Eddie, "and you guys are making us look really good, so thank you!"

As usual, you'll have to go elsewhere for the setlist. It didn't strike me as that special until the encores, which were heavy on the hits, but this was one of those shows where the energy hit the roof early and just stayed there. The crowd was on their feet, almost every song was a sing-along, and the group were fired up. Quoth Eddie: "We got a shitload of amps and guitars, lets blow the roof off this motherfucker."

THIS is why Pearl Jam has made it almost twenty years. played tens of thousands of shows over almost twenty years, but they seemingly effortlessly convince you that tonight, tonight, is as special for them as it is for you. They are as glad to see you as you are to see them. After tens of thousands of shows to massive audiences all over the world, how the hell they manage to do it is beyond me, but Mike (who had only a passing knowledge of Pearl Jam) walked out of there talking about what a down-to-earth, genuine, likable guy that singer seemed to be. He said it was cool that they played "Last Kiss" facing the seats directly behind them where Mike and I would have been if he hadn't gotten away with stealing closer. That was considerate of them. Then Mike asked if he could burn my Pearl Jam CDs to his computer, and what that song they'd played about surfing was called.

It was called "Amongst the Waves" and it was from Backspacer. We listened to it in the car on the way back to the apartment. Eddie had intro-ed that song by saying "This is a song you'll like if you're a surfer. Or you'll like if you're in love. If you're a surfer in love it'll blow your fucking mind." They ended up playing most of Backspacer that night, including "The Fixer," "Got Some," "Johnny Guitar," (less obnoxious live then it was on the record) and a powerful version of "Just Breathe" that featured just Eddie, alone, with an acoustic guitar. "We've been playing this with a string quartet, but...fuck it, this time I'm going naked." For the record, he remained fully clothed throughout the whole show. Just saying. Mike said that song was what proved to him what a singer Eddie Vedder really is. Even if I, sadly, can no longer deny that the alcohol and a lifetime of smoking have eroded the window-rattling power he had when he was twenty-five, the raw, unironic, unapologetic honestly of his voice is still among the most formidable weapons in Rock and probably (hopefully) always will be.

Eddie told stories about the band's respective histories in San Diego: Matt Cameron was born there, Mike McCreedy lived there as a kid, Eddie spent about two decades there after leaving Illinois, discovering surfing, learning guitar, and working odd jobs as well as morphing into the open wound he'd be when he shipped a demo-tape to some dudes in Seattle who were looking for a singer.

One more story from Eddie: Pearl Jam's single longest-running roadie (now working for Ben Harper) was the first of the band's extended "family" to take the big step into adulthood and have a kid. He had an adorable little daughter, all the more adorable (according to Eddie) for being named "Lou. What's cuter then a girl named Lou?" Eddie remembered going to the hospital the day after she was born to visit her, and catching the new parents on their way home. Dad went to put the new Mom in the car, and somehow Eddie was left holding this day-and-a-half-old baby, trying to shelter her from the pouring Seattle rain.

"She just turned sixteen today!"

He brought "Lou-Lou," a blond girl in a sporty hat who was only a little bit shorter then the front-man, out onstage, put his arm around her, and hugged her like an adoring uncle. Then he had the whole arena sing "Happy Birthday" to her while the band brought out a cake and had her blow out the candles. I didn't miss that when it looked like she didn't have enough lung-power and was gonna miss a candle or two, Eddie, hovering just over her shoulder, lurched forward to help, but she got it. Everyone cheered.

Someone just became the coolest kid in school. Suck it, My Super Sweet Sixteen. You brats all WISH you could be Lou-Lou.

I ask you, how many multi-millionaire, A-list, globe-trotting, platinum-selling bands would do that for the kid of a former roadie?

Mike McCreedy's old high-school drama teacher, whom he has kept in touch with over the years, was there, and that fact had inspired Eddie to track down an important teacher from HIS high-school days, and actually find him! "After thirty years, I just had to tell him..." he gestured around at the audience. "Check this out! This one is for them." And they played Betterman... which of course the entire audience sung along to.

Eddie talked about how he had worked as a night-shift security guard, and had had "a really great boss" whom he had begged to let him get a mohawk, saying "I really appreciate this job and it's a great job and I appreciate that you gave me responsibility, making me SUPERVISOR of night-shift security and gas-pump detail," he said with relish, "and I wish I could promise it would be worth it but I can't because I don't know, it might never go anywhere at all, and I like this job a lot but if I don't do this thing, this punk rock thing, I..." he didn't finish the thought.

And his boss thought about it, hemmed and hawed and eventually said "Yeah, you should do it."

The boss was actually there that night: a huge black guy in the VIP section that Eddie kept pointing at through the whole story. He was pointing back and pumping his fist. The mood was so joyous and communal that Eddie closed with, "I liked that job, it was a great job, but this job, this job I've got now...I AIN'T NEVER GONNA QUIT!" You believe he means it.

I can't help but wonder if that boss had ever heard Eddie sing before he decided to humor his rock and roll dreams. I wonder if he suspected that he'd be standing in a stadium full of thousands of people all transported, all because of his supervisor of night-shift security and gas-pump detail. And his band, of course.

Who knows where talent comes from. Some people are just born with the raw stuff to conquer the world. But it doesn't do everything: far more people have talent then manage to build an actual life with it. Some crash and burn trying. Most take a look at the odds and choose a normal, reliable life instead, keeping their talent locked in a secret box inside them.

Some make it to Viejas Stadium, standing center-stage with their old mentors just off stage left, bursting with pride while an entire arena belts out the words to a song you wrote in your room when you were a teenager.

Also, there is Mike McCreedy. If you ask me he is, bar none, the best guitarist to come out of Seattle since Hendrix himself.

I'm going to quote Jason Owens of the San Diego News Network because it summises the ending of the show perfectly:

"While Vedder takes center stage on almost anything and everything Pearl Jam, the final two songs were definitely about Mike McCready and his guitar.

With the crowd hungry for another Pearl Jam hit, the band delivered with a version of “Alive” from the debut album that featured McCready and Vedder climbing on to the tops of the stage-side speakers as McCready wailed on what may be the band’s most familiar guitar riff.

By the time they closed with “Yellow Ledbetter,” which McCready transitioned into a Hendrix-esque “Star-Spangled Banner,” there was nothing left to give."

The biggest hits had already been played, but the show didn't end. Eddie thanked everyone from the heart and said goodbye, but the show didn't end. Mike had to leave to get to the car before he got ticketed, but the show didn't end. The house lights came up, but the show didn't end. Mike turned the end of his solo into a whole other song while his bandmates ran around throwing guitar picks, set-lists, and drumsticks at the crowd. Up until the very end, the energy level was just insane. Like that, it was over.

Finally the curtain call. Lou-Lou returned to the stage. The two music teachers, who had replaced their students for a cover of "Little Wing," also came back to the stage. Everyone threw their arms around each-other, and bowed deeply.

They don't make rock shows better then this one.

Dreamer Reviews: Black Gives Way to Blue

Grunge was a genre that saw more then it's fair share of brilliant singers. Layne Staley of Alice in Chains was one of them. Layne had a voice like a heartbroken werewolf, all bitterness and wild power, and he could hold his own easily with rock's best frontmen.

Layne Staley is also the one Grunge casualty to boast of an end even more harrowing then Kurt Cobain's suicide blast to the head. A shotgun, though gruesome, is at least quick. Layne chose the long, lonely, painful path of the hard-core drug addict. In the end, he had become so isolated that he would be dead for weeks before his 6'1, 86-pound body was finally found.

Maybe that's what Jerry Cantrell, the band's surviving principle songwriter, is referring to in "All Secrets Known," the opening track of Black Gives Way to Blue. This is Alice in Chains first album in fifteen years, and first album ever without Layne, but their former band-mate casts a long, dark shadow over the group that they have only just begun to make peace with.

The song starts with a Slash-in-a-haunted-house style riff, which swings back and forth as the vocals kick in. "Hope / A new beginning/ time/ time to start living," a life-affirming sentiment made flat and factual by the droning, weary singing. Jerry Cantrell, lead guitarist and the band's principle songwriter, has mostly taken over lead vocal duties, and his voice, though tuneful with a pack-a-day grizzled edge to it, lacks the dog-of-war power that Layne took with him to his grave. Instead Jerry sounds flatly amazed that life continues on even after "we died." There's no joy here, just perseverance in a world that won't ever be the same, and for reasons everyone knows about.

The group members have, for the most part, avoided talking too explicitly about Layne in public, but for for me it makes the most sense to think of this album as the band's attempt to say goodbye to their band-mate properly, even if posthumously. Like most posthumous goodbyes, they'll probably spend the rest of their lives trying to get it right.

Check My Brain has become a hit all over rock radio and it's easy to see why: the churning, droning guitars are classic Alice in Chains. Jerry Cantrell's singing voice may or may not be up to sharing space with a ghost, but he's a powerhouse on the guitar and probably always will be. He doesn't have the naked virtuosity of Mike McCreedy but his brand of droning, haunted, bluesy metal sounds like nothing else you'll hear.

The song's topic is Cantrell's re-location from Seattle, with it's rain and oppressive cloud of memories, to sun-bathed Los Angeles which he declares "alright" with all the enthusiasm he can muster. It looks like California is one of the last places he expected to end up, let alone be happy. You get the sense that he's not really at peace with being at peace, calling himself "a creep in the fog," but he's found healing there, for better or worse.

Last of my Kind is the first track on the album co-written by new member William DuVall, and it starts with an atmospheric, haunted ambiance before degenerating into the kind of deconstructed, post-apocalyptic noise of see-sawing, screaming guitars and slow, thundering drums. It's a one idea song and while rocking hard, I found it a bit musically underwhelming.

The lyrics are pure Alice in Chains too: a portrait of a mythical outcast, exiled and forced to scrounge for survival in a world that hopes the hardship will beat him into complacence. It's dark, it's dream-like, and it fits right into the pantheon of dystopian metaphors that Alice in Chains has always traded in.

Your Decision is the first track on the album worth actually buying it for. It's a mostly acoustic number and displays an unexpected strength for the new Alice in Chains: sentiment.

I was listening to this track on headphones in the middle of the community college computer lab and I started tearing up. In public. Some mournful cello adds portent to the situation, the acoustic guitars have an almost folk feel before the aquatic, electric solo kicks in. This is one of the first tracks were new guy William DuVall's supporting vocals are audible,

The lyric writer was, simply, powerless. He couldn't stop "you" from destroying yourself. He couldn't change the fact that, when faced with the world, you chose to die rather then deal. They needed you. You choose fear instead. It's a choice you made knowing what it meant, and it inflicted no small damage on the people around you. "You feed the fire that burned us all/when you lied."

The singer loves you and he hates you, he's washed his hands of you for the pain you've caused him, he desperately misses you. There's something bitter and angry in this song, wounded and howling, quiet and sad. Tragedies are whirlwinds, and there are no easy answers. Art might be unique in it's ability to take something so painful and make it into something so beautiful. The spell it casts lasts long after the song ends.

This live performance is noteworthy too. First because the lack of strings and the totally acoustic treatment of the song makes it sound more frank and places everything in a smaller space. William Duvall's choice to wear sunglasses onstage is an interesting one: they make him stylish but anonymous. Jerry Cantrell's face, on the other hand, says everything. He's the beating heart of this band. Maybe he always was.

Bands tend to stick together because they believe they can bring out the best in each other. If the three of them didn't still believe they have something to offer the world, as a group, then this resurrection would have never happened. Where DuVall fits in I don't know quite yet.

A Looking In View was the first taste anyone got of this album, being the framework of the atmospheric and very NSFW music video that featured, in succession: child abuse, obsession, decay, repression, dehumanization, religious fanaticism, despair and, at the end, something resembling renewal. The whole sad play is bathed in the colors of despair and isolation, and there's even a visual reference to Alice In Chains very first hit single. This video is what got me paying attention to this band's comeback. Bands that play this grim card are a dime a dozen now, but this one might just be the real thing. Another interesting note: the band themselves don't actually appear in the video, and that works too.

The song itself is like a dirge: the tempo is torturously slow, like a migrane throb, but everything piled on that kick-drum beat comes on like a hurricane: the bass-line is breakneck, the guitars drone and shriek, the vocals snarl. It's a long song, over seven minutes long, ending in a fade-out. It's a fairly accurate barometer of whether or not you'll like this new Alice in Chains: if you got through the whole thing, then you'll get through the whole album. It's also the second song on the album to end in a fade out. Apparently new AIC is more interested in how things start these days then how they end.

When The Sun Rose Again is where things slow down for me. Well they slow down for everyone, it's a very slow piece with acoustic guitars and shakers easily audible, and though this combination is usually a recipe for sadness, this song is more pensive and vaguely ominous then sad, and the lyrics are the album's most ambiguous yet. "Were you burned away/ When the sun rose again?" could be a reference to the resurrection of the band, or a retelling of The Snowman so that doesn't narrow it down. "Pray / squeal when you're caught/ cry/ it's not my fault," which, though straight-forward enough in it's imagery, could refer to any number of things. "Time to trade in never-befores / Selling out for the score" could be nitpicked to death. We're in dense metaphor country here, but at least we're out of fade-out country. The next songs flow flawlessly, one into the other, letting the landscape build: a feature they didn't even have to make a big deal about in the promos, (cough)Timbaland!(/cough)

Acid Bubble starts out sounding like A Looking In View's little, more sensitive brother with it's buzz-sawing guitars, the murderously slow pace, but the relentlessly dark tone suddenly takes a more mysterious turn when the chorus starts soaring. "I am the child that lives and cries in the corner." Since this is AIC we're talking about, they soar on broken wings close to the ground, but they are on wing nevertheless. This is as anthemic as post-Layne Alice in Chains is gonna get, I suspect. It even contains a Green-Day-Style plot-twist when the style shifts to a menacing march that sounds like an army advancing, then retreating, then taking the hill for good over the songs six minutes.

Lesson Learned reminds me of "Last of my Kind" in that it's another sloggy rock number that is shorter then "A Looking In View" and doesn't have "Acid Bubble's" militant plot-twist. However, it does have a nice tremolo-heavy solo.

It could be interpreted as being about that rock-bottom moment when you learn that the end is not the end. "Nowhere to buy in, most of us hiding, others are shining" is another nice positive thought wrapped in so much world-weary drear that you'd ALMOST think the singer was being sarcastic if the tone wasn't so frank. This is a quality Jerry Cantrell's voice has that Layne's never did. Layne was a beast of the underworld, and he never went near sentiment without the armor of angry resignation. Jerry Cantrell and William DuVall can voice the occasional positive thought without sounding sappy or insincere. "In your darkest hour you strike gold."

Take Her Out is yet another sloggy, droning rock number. Make no mistake: this album is not a triumphant return for one of the 90s most evocative rock groups. The musical choices themselves are redundant enough to make this a promising start at best. Yes, the sludgey metal IS Alice in Chains, but Cantrell himself is usually more then willing to dabble in other styles. I hope they just need to get their nerve back.

All the same, I'm probably not alone in suspecting that "Her" in the title is Alice herself (i.e, his band) and this song is as close to an answer to those who question his right to resurrect the group as we are probably going to get.

If I'm sure of one thing, it's that Jerry Cantrell wants to be in this music thing for the long-haul. His millions haven't robbed him of the fire in his belly. He's also realized that he's always going to be "Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains," expected to play those songs. Well, he wrote those songs.

"I feel time is dragging on/ Aren't you getting tired of me?" he asks. Who is he asking? Himself? The fans who keep showing up to his shows? The band-mates who where quick to answer his homing beacon? The people waiting for him to decide whether to claim AiC for himself or split from it entirely? All of them?

"Want to take her out again." At least he knows he wants to do what he's doing. It's everything else that's uncertain.

Private Hell is slow, with a mournful tone the electric guitar solo gently weeps, the arpeggio riff the song seems written around is beautiful, strong, and very sad. It'd be too easy to say this one is about the self-imposed suffering that you-know-who locked himself into. He's not the only one in the world who ever died this way. Choosing to stay in the cell you made for yourself, opting out of love, joy, and eventually life itself, nevertheless the song doesn't have much of "Your Decision's" droning bitterness. This song is a cry of mourning.

Black Gives Way to Blue. If you need one reason to get this album, it's this song. The song is a sensitive arrangement of acoustic guitars, a slow tempo, delicate, rushing cymbals, and one crying electric guitar that made me think of Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight:" slow, beautiful, and as full of love as a guitar can be. I even heard a xylophone in there somewhere. The band really pulled out all the stops for this song.

By the way, according to the liner notes, the piano was played by Elton John. Elton John + Alice in Chains = Owch my brain. However, if it sounds dorky in concept, it's not at all dorky in practice. This is the only piano I can find anywhere on the album and it gives this track a graceful solemnity.

Every time they've performed it live, it's the last song they play, and they've played it "for Layne." And maybe this is the best way to handle Layne, his legacy, and their own grief. After all the blessing, damning, begging, loving, cursing, and crying is over, this is the best thing you can do for the ghost you see everywhere.

You tell him you'll never forget him.

You tell him you love him.

Then you let him rest.

If this is the start of a new stage of Alice in Chains, or just the farewell the band deserved, I can't say. But I'll be listening. That's for sure.