Oh My God,
Probably the most amazing night of my life (so far). Queuing since early, sore legs, people arguing in the queue over who was there first and people skipping and stuff, but it was so worth it. When we got in there was the usual rush to the front row. The Vandals were pretty cool, very punky, and the singer kept adding into his songs "I say pearl, you say jam, pearl *JAM* pearl *JAM*"
And then they appeared, and Eddie started Sometimes. He seemed a bit down at the start but after a few songs he seemed to cheer up somewhat as the crowd really got behind every single song. Sometimes was the usual type of opener where everyone is just in shock from seeing the band and then the big bang into Breakerfall - excellent! :)
Mike was in great form again, running around, playing over his head, having chats with Stone in the middle of songs - I saw him having a conversation with someone in the crowd during one song as well! Stone seemed really happy to be there too, I shouted at him during one of the breaks and he heard me and smiled back - that really made my day!!! :) Jeff seemed very quiet and Matt did a very small type of standing up solo thing at one point.
There were a few little mistakes - one in particular which was really funny, everybody looked at each other and Eddie accepted responsibility for it and everyone laughed. Another time Ed was walking around the stage and he stood on Stone's pedal board and his guitar just cut out. That was real funny - Eddie did a bow for that one :)
It was nice to hear the WMA tag on Daughter again - I could never get bored of that tag! Garden was really cool. "We haven't done this for a while but we're gonna try it" (or something along those lines). Eddie needed help from the crowd on the lyrics :)
Every song just went down brilliant with the crowd, I thought it was quiet a cool set list - well spread out over their catalog. I was hoping to hear Of The Girl as an opener and Light Years, but, I've always got Glasgow, Manchester and Cardiff :)))))
And then there was Eddie's story - he asked the crowd if they wanted to hear it or not and of course everyone cheered in approval! The short version:
He was telling someone a story of a farmer who had a son and a horse. One day the horse ran away to be with some other wild horses and he was stuck with no horses. But then one day the horse came back and brought some friends with him so he now had 6 horses. Someone said how great it was that even though he had no horses for a while no he has 6 and his reply was: "Yeah, whatever!"
Then his son had and accident and broke his leg and he was stuck with no help. But the a war broke out and all the young people where drafted except for his son because he broke his leg. Someone said how great it was that even though his son broke his leg, he didn't have to go off and fight in the war and his reply was: "Yeah, whatever!"
Then the person he was telling the story to said, "So what's the point?" Eddie's reply: "It's this really cool place to play in Dublin!!!!!" :)
(I might be a bit off but it was along those lines; I'm open to any corrections!)
But the main thing about tonight's show was the closing song - Black! unbelievable. Eddie seemed so emotional during it - my cousin said he actually saw a tear! He seemed to stop singing as if he just couldn't go on and started wondering around the stage while the band played out the song. He had already put tape around his ankles early in the show (I didn't cop on at that stage what he was thinking of) and while wondering around he taped up his shirt around his waist - so it wouldn't come off when he jumped!!!!!! He climbed up on the speaker stack at the side of the stage, looked for a second - and dropped 10 feet into the crowd - fucking amazing! I never thought I'd see Eddie do a stage dive again! I was just completely brought back to the *early* days while watching this - all I could see was the Even Flow video in my head! He was helped back onto the stage where he finished off the song and they left. He seemed like he was in a totally different place (I think he felt like he was back in the early days as well!!!) and they left the stage. It really looked like he was finished, like he couldn't do any more for some reason. The roadies seemed to set the stage up for a second encore but then the lights came on and they started de-rigging the stage - I couldn't help but think that they had planned to come back out but Eddie just couldn't! Really weird but fucking amazing, sorry if this is complete babble but I'm still in shock!!!
Pearl Jam... forever!