Hearing the Gospel '06 - Part 1

After getting done with Bird-a-thon on Sunday I dried off and headed down to Hartford to catch the Pearl Jam show at The Meadows. This was my 12th show and it ended up being really great. I rolled into the parking lot around 6:00 for the 7:00 o'clock show. Its been a while since I've been to the Meadows and I forgot how nice a venue it is. The main ampitheatre has around 5000 seats (I'd guess) and there's a lawn section further back. The venue seems smaller than it really is and there aren't many bad seats (except those near the walls)

My friend Glenn and I were about 10 - 15 rows in front of the lawn. Luckily for us and the rest of the fans on the lawn, the rain held off for the whole show. The opening band, My Morning Jacket, kicked off the show and they played around 45 minutes. I liked some of their material but other songs were just annoying.

After 45 minutes to switch over the setup, PJ took the stage at 8:30. They started off with fantastic versions of songs off the new album (Severed Hand, World Wide Suicide, Life Wasted, Marker in the Sand). The rest of the main set spanned the breadth of the groups work. There were a number of songs from Ten including Why Go and a new version of Garden. They also ripped thru three of my favorite live songs Corduroy, Rearviewmirror, and Hail Hail. One of the highlights near the end of the main set was an awesome version of Inside Job (one of my favorites from the new album)

After a short break the band retook the stage and attempted I'm Open for the first time live. It ended up being just the chorus but it was still a bit of a treat. The encore ended with a nice version of Do the Evolution.

As they always do, the boys came back for a second encore. They started off with Go and then moved on to Alive. An absolutely furious version of Neil Young's Rocking in the Free World followed and would have been fitting but they capped the night with Yellow Ledbetter.

The show was a solid 2.5 hours long and I had a great time. Even the parking situation was smooth and I was on the open road by 11:20. [Check out The Sky I Scrape for the entire setlist.]