I went to see Pearl Jam last night in Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and it was absolutely awesome! I have been wanting to go to one of their concerts for a long time, but wasn't able to until yesterday.
It had the feeling of a small festival, with 3 support acts and a big open field with lots of foodstands...
I largely missed the first support act: Perry Farrell's (from Jane's Addiction) Satellite Party, and from the 2 songs I heard that wasn't much of a loss.
Next support act was Kings of Leon, which I heard of before, and they put up quite a good set, but nothing spectacular.
Last support act was Incubus. I did see them already nine years ago on the Dynamo Open Air festival in Holland, but since I forgot most of that it also was kind of a new experience. They played for some 45 minutes and it was magnificent! There was a quite enthusiastic crowd in front of them, which I believe partly had come to see just Incubus :-)
And then, the main act: Pearl Jam! The stage was not too overdone with effects and background pictures/landscapes/whatever some bands throw on stage these days, so the band was really drawing all attention.
After the opening tunes from the "Ten" album (also the final "hidden" track on that album) faded away, they started with Release, to which the whole crowd (including me) immediately sang along.
To prevent talking about the whole setlist, let me say they played for almost 2,5 hours, and performed a very good mixture of the big hits (Jeremy, Given to Fly etc) with less known (to the radio-listening masses) songs (Insignificance, Unemployable). Pretty touching (yeah, I'm a kind of emotional sucker) was the moment where Eddie adressed the family and friends (who were present at the concert) of a Dutch fan who died in the Roskilde accident in 2000. On request of his sister, they played Better Man dedicated to him.
The concert ended with Alive, Rockin' in the Free World and Yellow Ledbetter, which made up for a magnificent finale.
All in all, I really had the time of my life! The tickets were 50 Euro a piece, but they were every last cent of it!
After the concert, I was home in 10 minutes - I live just about a kilometer from the Goffertpark where the concert took place. Last month there also have been concerts of the Rolling Stones and the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the same location, so I saved a few cents on these concerts by just opening my windows at home :-)
