Pearl Jam - "Grievance (live in Washington D.C. 6/22/08)" (mp3)

When Pearl Jam began their 'official bootleg' series 8 years ago, it was an idea before its time, literally. It was pretty brilliant, a band with a big, obsessive fanbase releasing every single concert they played as a live album. Especially since Pearl Jam rose to popularity in the early 90s, when some stores still sold outrageously overpriced, badly recorded unofficial bootlegs of popular bands (either my brother or I paid at least 30 bucks for a Vs.-era live recording, if I recall, at one point). But releasing all their shows since 2000 as double or triple CDs to stores, which clogged up Pearl Jam sections in record stores for a few years and struck a lot of people as ridiculously indulgent and kind of became a laughing stock, was maybe not the best execution of the idea. And it's only in the past couple years, with digital distribution easier and less expensive than ever, to the point that a lot of bands at or near Pearl Jam's level are releasing their studio albums that way, that they've realized that MP3s are the right format for these things (especially since the CD versions of these bootlegs generally have pretty barebones assembly line packaging with the tracklisting and a uniform look for each particular tour). And it was pretty nice to be able to just cheaply buy (for 10 bucks!) Washington D.C. 6/22/08 Bootleg, 2 hours of MP3s from the show at the Verizon Center that I reviewed in June, which was available 2 weeks after the show in early July but I just got around to getting this week.

As cool as it is to own recordings of shows you were at (I also saw the band once each in 1998, 2000 and 2003, and own CDs of the latter 2), it's also a little weird and sometimes spoils the memory. Apparently I was way too excited about them playing "Who You Are" that night (which I kind of saw coming, since they played "U" and "You Are" right before it) and Matt Cameron not butchering Jack Irons' original percussion arrangement, that I didn't really realize until listen to the recording that the rendition of it was kind of shoddy overall. But then, it's fun to hear stuff like the trainwreck that "Evacuation" turned into, before being abandoned about a minute in. I don't like that song much to begin with, so I probably got more entertainment value out of it falling apart than if it was played well. I remember hearing a bootleg from a London show from I think the 2000 shows where "Alive" fell completely apart, and it was kind of fascinating to hear them screw up the 2nd most-played song in the band's catalog.

There were a few surprises in the setlist that night, like opening with a b-side, and a short snippet of the rarely played (for good reason) "I'm Open," but the one I was most excited about was "Grievance." It was a little ragged at first and I think Eddie came in with the vocals a little late. But I don't think Pearl Jam has written a song I like as much as "Grievance" in the 8 years since Binaural, and I was always pretty bummed that they played the song on Letterman when the album came out and it sounded amazing, but then the 2 singles they released off that album were downtempo duds by comparison. The show also featured a particularly great "Rearviewmirror" and "Crazy Mary." And it was pretty cool to hear "Why Go" as a big end of the set (before encore) crowd-pleaser now, since the last time I saw the band in 2003 was the first time the band had attempted to play the song in almost 8 years and it was pretty shaky back then but still a neat moment to witness.

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