The 06 tour has always been one I really wanted to enjoy more. It's probably the last time Pearl Jam was playing super tight, but the speed problem was at its all time worst and the sets are littered with shitty Self Titled songs. Well in the recent months I've found songs from that album more listenable than in the past, so I think I'm ready to give this one another try. I mean, it was the best tour for Release, so it already has that going for it.

So, let's actually talk about the 2006 tour.

What's up with this crazy practice of putting more than 1 song on a CD track?

This was the year with lasers, right?

Yeah, I liked the one show I saw, Hartford. It was a really cold night in May and MMJ opened. I got to see I'm Open and Slight of Hand.

But, I always think of 2006 as the year I started caring a bit less about the band. Maybe it was Avocado combined this show and at the same time discovering a ton of other, more interesting bands.

I remember not being able to hear Mike very well at the first Boston show, both in house and on the bootleg. It kind of soured me on the whole tour.

I'm burning San Fran 3 to disc right now. I'm gonna put it on as soon as it's done.

That was a hangover from the MP3 days in 2005, I think Brett stopped doing it by the end of the tour.

The US shows got markedly better as they went along, but I think this tour really hit its stride with the European and Australian shows. Best post-2000 Pearl Jam tour for me.

On the subject of actually making this thread: I searched for 2006 in topic titles and outside of individual show/setlist threads there was a bunch like "ed's singing on the 2006 tour" and stuff like that and I thought "those are exactly the types of things that can be let's actually talked about in a thread like this".

You better believe that I split the songs into separate tracks for the disc I'm burning now.

I really can't get over how perfect Release was this tour.

A lot of great versions of "Sad" on this tour.

Oh yeah? There's one on this bootleg I just burned. We'll see how it is.

It's interesting listening to Ed's voice on this tour 5 years later. It's almost like a dividing line for him, I'm hearing aspects of the old and new.

Life Wasted is still kind of a shitty song. But like I said, there was a time when this was unlistenable for me. Now I'm sort of enjoying it, for a shitty song.

Two "Sad"s I really like are Milwaukee and Melbourne.

The '06 tour really opened up a lot of the S/T songs for me. I feel like almost all of them sound better live, "Parachutes" being an exception that jumps immediately to mind.

I've been starting to really dig Severed Hand in recent months. This version is pretty tight, with Matt being especially ferocious.

For the record, you can get the whole tour in FLAC here:
http://thepresenttenseboots06.blogspot.com/

I have all the tours in FLAC on my hard drive.

A few great performances that spring to mind from 2006:

"Man of the Hour," Milan
"Corduroy," Denver (w/Benmont Tench)
"Bee Girl," Denver
"Breath," Pistoia
"Tremor Christ," Torino
"Waiting on a Friend," Santa Barbara

This Hail, Hail kicks some serious ass. Matt really likes that cymbal, huh?

Slow the fuck down, Light Years.

I also do this.