Having seen the first two shows and last two shows of this tour I have to stand up for them and say they are getting better and better. We know this doesn't always translate into boots but for stagecraft and performance on the night they're better now than the last two tours I've seen them. I'm not hung up on missed notes/flubbed lyrics, of which there were few if any that I noticed but they're fitter and more giving on stage than I can remember them being at all over the last 5 or six years or so.
They're still playing certain songs too fast and that's my only quibble with it but overall in terms of setlists and performances, I can't fault them.

How do you think these shows would sound to someone who does care about flubs and doesn't generally care how much jumping around onstage the band does?

I think they'd sound fine and recommend those people go see more shows or if they can't get over the flaws, just keep listening to the albums. If songs being played twice as fast doesn't bother them, a lyrical or note fluffed really shouldn't either.
They've been doing little jams in places they never did before(Evolution particularly and it's great) and playing better than before and enjoying it clearly a lot more than previously. Much rather see them enjoy themselves and be into it than have a sterile note perfect robotic performance every night. Not sure even radiohead fulfill that level of expectation.
One other thing is that their live sound is a lot quieter. You can hear everything equally now but it's nowhee as loud as before. That was noticeable from show one.

That's good, I guess.

I don't doubt for a moment that the band, and the audience, enjoy themselves very much at shows. Good for them. I'm talking about things that would the band more interesting to me, personally (and probably some other people too - I'm hardly the only person disillusioned with how the band have been chugging along for the last half-decade).

Their live sound has gotten way too quiet. Something I've noticed for the better part of the last decade. I've heard plenty of people complain about barely being able to hear them in the back. I'm pretty sure my man mastaflatch had that very complaint about the Montreal 2011 show.

Oh yes, because these are the only two kinds of performance.

Never gets old eh?
We've done this topic to death but Just thinking on it, if we all wanted note perfect shows, you'd imagine a hits set every night would be the way to go. Just remembered Ed screwed up an entire verse on daughter in Manchester and Jeff was in a different key completely for Smile in Oslo.

Go wild.

Also, was the ever a time PJ didn't jump around on stage? If we're blaming that being the cost of note perfect performances there's any tour we can point to where they've been animated and bouncing around and it's never been a problem. The 10c bootlegs have opened it up to overanalysis.

i want to hear the boots, but i was really happy with their sound in 09 and 011 so i guess ill be fine.
The setlists looks great btw, i love to see immortality being played so often, leash again, HTI, nice to see hitchiker...
I hope we get force of nature and speed of sound in the remaining shows.

After my last show in berlin 2009 and my big disappointment from the setlist and generally ed's perfomance i feel so lucky that i decided to attend amsterdam 2.

Wash was opener and Release played unexpectedly after 1st encore! My time favorite openers in one show..
Ed still in 2012 is full with energy and sounds great.

looking forward for the next tour

I don't know, saying lyrical flubs are "cool" and "part of the experience man" makes you a fucking idiot in my book, especially with the prices this band charges. Get the fucking lyrics to severed hand, don't fuck up corduroy and learn the fucking bridge to get right so you can play it. Enough of the excuses. They wanna play 10-13 shows a year and sound like total shit, fine but let's not justify it as part of the show, it's just laziness if you ask me.

Fucking idiot.

it just rolls off the tongue doesnt it? very satisfying.

Falls up the stairs off the tongue for lack of any other way to make a point I'd say.

Maybe the constant bitching about lyrical flubs/predictable setlists/... elsewhere is one of the reasons they seem to have toured Europe more than the rest of the world combined the last few years?

More appreciative crowds across the board and the euro killing the dollar making it more than worth their while I'd bet.

Right on, man. I stopped going to Pearl Jam shows because their performances have gotten ridiculously bad. This is acceptable for musicians who work day jobs 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, take two week vacations to tour the country in a van and play for a $5 cover charge. It's not acceptable for millionaire rock stars who charge $80 a ticket. If you look at the schedules of the various band members, it's obvious they spend next to no time rehearsing. This is unacceptable under the circumstances IMO.

And as others have pointed out, their sound system is garbage. They might as well mime to a CD player. Nobody beyond the first few rows would know the difference, and at least the performance would be accurate.

Then again, I don't drink the jamily kool aid or fantasize about sucking Eddie's cock.

I guess guys like us just don't "get" it, huh?

Oh c'mon now. Im sure you get it. I just dont think its as bad as you guys make it out to be. I certainly have never felt I havent gotten my moneys worth.

In all honesty, I'm not sure that I do anymore.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the case. In 2008 and 2011 they didn't visit Europe at all, and in 2009 and 2010 they played equally as many if not more shows in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Some of the logic here is just beyond my comprehension. I pay $90 for a concert ticket, the band messes up what at this point is probably every second or third song, I express disappointment at this, and I'm the one with the problem? I don't think anyone would expect the band to never make an error, but at what point do you begin holding professionals accountable for their performance beyond "the energy level"? Is it really so unreasonable that some people would go to a concert for the music and not to get some kind of adrenaline rush?



I've enjoyed my most recent PJ gigs as much as any I've seen, but I've also been lucky. The last show I saw was St. Louis in 2010, which was a near-perfect show on a good tour. Before that, it was Chicago 1 '09--not quite as solid, but the only song they really butchered was "Life Wasted." In fact, I think I've only seen Pearl Jam as a band truly butcher two songs--that one, and "Elderly Woman" from St. Louis in 2004. Not a bad track record. And I'll agree that there are some imperfections that don't faze me nearly as much in person--the deterioration of Ed's voice being the big one, as despite its shortcomings it's still a powerful instrument that fills a room unlike that of any other singer I've experienced.

That said, I just don't grasp this "it doesn't translate to the boots" business. Right, I understand a bootleg can't fully capture the experience of attending the show. But you make it sound like the bootlegs are somehow falsely capturing flubs and missed lyrics where the in-person performances are actually without error. If their "stagecraft" (?) and the fact that they're "fitter" is enough to have you legitimately believing that they're "getting better and better," I'd say consider yourself lucky. But let's please dispense with this horseshit of granting the band full immunity where accountability for their technical performance is concerned. They're a professional band; a paying audience is well within reason to expect them to conduct themselves as such. For most professional bands, that means enough rehearsal to pull off their own material, not just convening for a couple weeks per year for a vacation which happens to include a few concerts and hoping that everything falls into place upon arrival--which, while I don't like being presumptuous about it, increasingly seems like the status quo.

Last time I saw Eddie live was at a solo show in 2011. The atmosphere of the show was great, and I had a good time. But he forgot the words to almost every non-Ukulele song, and it got old fast. Most people aren't afforded the luxury of showing up for work so unprepared to do their job, and most everyone else gets paid peanuts comparatively. They need to rehearse more. Period.