Review #4: If I Had a Hammer...

...I'd ring it in the evening, around the same time as Eddie Vedder took to the stage with an acoustic rendition of "Throw Your Arms Around Me". And I wasn't there. Sherkin and I spent most of Tuesday deciding how to get to Hamilton; when we learned that the last GO bus left Hamilton too early we decided to drive, and ended up getting stuck in one of the worst traffic jams either of us had ever seen. (Surprisingly, it was all show traffic...like, all of it. Clearly, nobody in Hamilton would be seeing Pearl Jam.) For that reason, we missed Ed's preset (and I, for one, have never heard "Throw Your Arms Around Me") and most of Sleater-Kinney's set as well. At least we weren't going directly to the concert: our first stop was Heather Johnson's house, and after we picked her up she guided us along an alternate route to Copps Coliseum.

En route to Hamilton, I also fielded one of the greatest phone calls I will ever receive. It was Bri - no surprises there - asking where we were. When I told her "Oakville" she responded, "Is tonight sold out?" When I told her I didn't think so, she said: "Okay...we're coming!" Much confus'd, I asked what she meant. Turns out her housemate Michael (who's the fucking man, by the way) came home that day, asked how the London show was and, yadda yadda yadda, the two of them and Michael's girlfriend/Bri's best friend Alana were en route to Hamilton. My BHBGGF, who prior to last night hadn't even seen Pearl Jam once, was now on her way to a second show in as many nights...and you say I'm not a positive influence! (The three of them ended up getting scalpers' tickets for $40 a pop.)

Tonight's seats weren't floors; rather, they were "in the wings" four rows away from Stone - basically, closer than I was in Thunder Bay, and slightly elevated. We arrived as Sleater-Kinney were starting into "Let's Call it Love". Having missed not just Ed's pre-set but most of Sleater-Kinney's set as well, I was slightly peeved.

Pearl Jam did their best to rid me of my peevedness. Firstly, and most shockingly, they opened with "Porch" (I'm reasonably confident this hasn't been done before, ever). Secondly, they played with such unrelenting force that you'd be forgiven for thinking that they didn't have slow songs in their catalogue. Seriously, it was one hard-hitting number after another. "Better Man" was a surprise highlight for me, with a bit of Sleater-Kinney's song "Modern Girl" tossed into the outro; "Rearviewmirror", meanwhile, was just as intense as London's version. Ed was in a chatty mood all night long; I'm pretty sure hasn't toasted an audience half as many times as he toasted Hamilton last Tuesday (more on this in a minute).

Once again, stools - and tonight, a complete shock. After "I Am Mine", Ed announced that a childhood friend of his was getting married that night in Seattle, band that he was unable to attend on account of us. This led, somehow, to Pearl Jam donning tuxedos, Sleater-Kinney returning to the stage as backup singers and the group performing an absolutely gorgeous version of "Harvest Moon" by Neil Young. Just an utterly surreal moment; seriously, it was magical, a totally off-the-cuff moment of inspired madness. This led, oddly, into "Black" (serious thematic dissonance here), and then a madcap version of "Alive". The second encore opened with "Last Exit" and "Go" (which is, like, getting slapped twice, hard, once on either cheek), then eventually meandered into "Rockin' in the Free World", during which the fabulous Ms. Corin Tucker threw on a Wayne Gretzky Team Canada jersey and made my tender heart go all a'flutter. By this point in the proceedings, our man Ed was drunk. I know it's been said that the wine bottle is a prop, but tonight's show offered serious evidence to the contrary...like, Ed was literally stumbling around the stage and at one point fell flat on his back while trying to climb atop his monitors. (This clearly upset Alana, who cited Ed's drunkeness as one of the three reasons she didn't like Pearl Jam.) Then "Ledbetter" to close, the audience collectively blowing its vocal chords...honestly, the Hamilton show was loud. And that's it! For the first time since Friday, I don't have a Pearl Jam concert to look forward to the next day...and for the first time ever, I'm at least slightly relieved.

So. A rushed review, this, but I'm of the opinion that I'm now officially in the "it's more important to write something" stage. But where does this leave Hamilton? The answer: an odd classic. On one hand, there was virtually nothing to distinguish it setlst-wise, apart from an unusual "Sad" / "U" double-shot. But the songs they did play rocked, the audience was vocal, the band clearly into it...I mean, if that isn't the most of what you could ever want from a concert I don't know what is. And seeing Corin Tucker in a Gretzky jersey? Who could ask for anything more?