STILL ALIVE: Pearl Jam 25th Anniversary Tour | Pearl Jam Live Review & Concert Photos | The BBT Center, Sunrise, FL | April 8, 2016

by Jenn Ross • April 23, 2016

I’m staring at my line cook friends through a steam-filled window full of hot steaks, fries, and prime rib when I feel my phone vibrate. Lately, I’ve been checking my emails like a person who should have a reason to check their email so frequently; and this moment proved why sometimes I’ll break the work rules for some welcomed great news! A notice from my colleague pops up. I just got confirmed to shoot Pearl Jam?

I.just.got.confirmed.to.shoot.PEARL.JAM. I hear my boss calling for hot food to be ran and I jump up and down yelling, “Yes, yes, holy shit I’m shooting Pearl Jam!!” and not at all as thrilled that Table 28 is about to have their delicious meal served by anyone other than me apparently. I’m reeling. I’m telling everyone I work with. Even the younger ones who look at me like, “Pearl who?” But I feel like this, this is what I live for.

The day of the show arrives and the entire ride down to Ft. Lauderdale, the city where Pearl Jam is kicking off their 25th Anniversary tour, I’m thinking to myself, “Hell yeah, this isn’t a big deal; you’ve got this.” Then it’s the following few moments that make the “Fraud Police” come storming into my brain. The men in our minds who like to arrest us for being in places we shouldn’t belong, even though we aren’t breaking any law. They are the inner dialogue in our psyche that beat us down and tell us we aren’t ready, we aren’t good enough. But you’ve got to tell those little pigs to scram. Something got you here, and it wasn’t telling yourself you’re a fraud. Though in my opinion and if you’re intrigued on the notion, Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls explains more thoroughly in her book, The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help, so if you’re looking for some creative stimulation and inspiration, sit down and read that book. Please. And if you do, you’re welcome.

I’ve now made it to will call for my tickets and photo pass which I assume is with the tickets, but today is a different setup. There is no photo pass (damnit, I was really hoping to add that to my growing collection), but rather we are to meet inside the security office around the back of the arena and await to be escorted to the stage. That being said, just getting to this part of the venue was like a military operation. Security was extremely tight and so we had to pass through a number of different cool turnstile gates. Security has to come first at a concert venue after all. It’s even got to a point now when venues are taking it upon themselves to protect their premises through the use of technology. This could be by using commercial security systems, or other similar CCTV systems. So I walk in, with no camera. I’ve left it in the car on purpose, thinking I’d have time to grab a bite before heading back in, but I see all these professionals strapped down with cameras ready to go. So I figure some things out: go get my camera and kind of mosey back in a little less dramatic than the first time. As I look around I see these dudes who I see all the time–they’re the real deal concert photographers and they’ve been doing it a long time. They’ve got the gear I am working to attain, the double harnesses with two to three cameras, and if you’ve done this, you know what I’m talking about.

So I look down at my sad little Canon brand camera bag that “comes with” some purchases and I start hearing the sirens of the Fraud Police sounding off loudly in my head. I start thinking, “I’m surrounded by professionals, I don’t feel like one of them.” But I AM. I just haven’t had the experience that they have had and that is okay. Everyone in there from the staff to security were really friendly, by the way, so I made a couple of friends and started calming myself down. But in reality, I was shaking from nerves. I get nervous before every show I photograph because I just love it that much. It’s now a few minutes before showtime, and we are being walked by security through the outskirts of the crowd to the pit where we are told to pick and side and stay there.

Now, for the band: Eddie Vedder. Mike McCready. Matt Cameron. Stone Gossard. Jeff Ament. If those names don’t read like a who’s who in the top 10 of Seattle’s grunge veterans then I don’t know what list of names would. This Pearl Jam is as original of a lineup you can find nowadays among the “classic” bands who are still touring. This wasn’t Eddie Vedder and some wannabe grunge group behind him looking out of place wearing flannel or Doc Martens; this was really as OG as it gets: a group of lifelong friends who came together from other Seattle musical machines such as Soundgarden, Green River, and Mother Love Bone to form one of the most celebrated bands in Pacific Northwest territory history. This is also the moment I will not leave out Boom Gaspar, the organ player who has been with the band since 2002 without whom songs such as “Black” and a fan favorite by the original Victoria Williams “Crazy Mary”-a tune sadly left out of this particular set- among several others would sound vacant live.

Having become a fan through a family tragedy several years before the age of ten, Pearl Jam secured one lifelong fan in me. Now twenty-five years later, these dudes came out on stage putting on a performance that put ACTUAL twenty-five year olds to shame. By the first split jump Eddie did from the center of the stage I was jumping on Google to find out if he’s really been faking his age this whole time. And, he’s not. He’s 51. Previous to the show, and regarding the amount of years this band has spent rocking all over the world, I had speculated this would be the softer side of Pearl Jam. Would we hear the slowed down ukulele tunes from Vedder’s solo work from 2007’s Into the Wild? Would the show consist of a majority of slow songs and just a few hard classics they know we love?

Hell no! This was Pearl JAM. They came out on stage and Eddie had this notebook in hand as he surveyed the crowd, slowly walking around with his hands behind his back with a determined look on his face. But then he smirked and gave this look around the stadium that said, “We’re about to show you what’s up.”

Though just before this, they delayed their set (40 minutes) from their scheduled ticket time as a courtesy to people showing up late expecting an opening act. By the time the house lights went down in the home of the Florida Panthers (and the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs), we were all anxious to see what the night had in store. Me, along with about 20 other photographers are locked-and-loaded on the band as the stage goes dark. Lights start flashing and they don’t even go easy on us as they open with the balls-to-the-wall tune “Go” followed by “Mind Your Manners” and a Vitalogy favorite, “Cordurory”.

Being a photographer, I am prepared to spend those precious “first three” songs in the pit as both a photographer and a fan. I have noticed when I am shooting, I don’t remember the songs (even as I may be singing along at the moment) so I try to take a few seconds and just watch, and remember. Therefore it wasn’t until the third song I was confident I’d got my shots. I watched a band, whose debut album came out when I was five, tear down a crowd of 20,000 plus in minutes. These guys are the real deal. True performers. If anyone one reading this is an aspiring touring musician, I feel like this show could be a class of Rock, a one night long semester with Professor Vedder lecturing over the mic. A lesson on how true rock stars act and perform.

After being escorted out of the pit we were invited to take our seats and I was in the section just behind Front of House, so to me it was a perfect location. Not in the standing-room only crowd, but just enough in the middle of everything that hearing twenty thousand people sing almost every song verbatim, was so elevating it would lift you right to center stage if it were possible. I did pay attention to those watching from the floor, I saw lots of flags, signs and a few girls atop their friend’s shoulders. But aside from reaching towards Eddie when he ventured off stage and into the crowd, the floor as a whole seemed to just watch in awe. No crazy moshing, no crowd-surfing. I think everyone was feeling the same way as I, like, “I am watching fucking PEARL JAM right now!” And this wasn’t my first time. Listening to Eddie sing the buildup to a chorus and then hearing the roaring buzz of tens of thousands of people shout the lyrics back at this quaint stage while Eddie throws his arms up in honor without finishing the line and just allowing us to takeover was just breathtaking. I haven’t experienced that level of crowd participation since 2009 when I first saw U2.

The one thing I love about Vedder, apart from his activism, is his unabashed mocking of politics. At one point in the night, he rocked a Trump mask while doing some strange dance moves before tossing the mask in the crowd. Merch offered a three quarter sleeve red-and-white shirt with a clown version of Uncle Sam–on the back read “No Clowns in ‘16.” So thank you guys. Thank you. This leaves me with the notion that many of the people in these sold out arenas are like minded individuals, so there is hope yet, right?

Eddie is also very aware of his fans. At one point, someone in the crowd had a sign that he brought on stage to read. And as he began to explain it, he got choked up and said to the man who lost a son to war that he, “Hopes I remember how to play this” and played Steven Van Zandt’s version of “I am a Patriot.” In the aforementioned notebook he had a list of people to congratulate and thank, a few of whom were a five-year-old boy celebrating his first live concert, a couple celebrating their 25th anniversary of which their first was the last Pearl Jam concert they attended, and two older gentlemen in their early nineties! Eddie was personable every time he spoke to the crowd. Much like an old friend you haven’t seen in awhile, you’re spending the next few hours swapping stories. My favorite story he told was how before the show he was brushing his teeth and saw this reflection of an old man looking back at him, judging him. Then he made some comment about being careful of what those little mints things in the toothpaste might be made of!

Throughout this blazing three-hour, thirty-two song set, I stood amazed, listening to a version of Pearl Jam that is better now than ever before and realizing how lucky we are that we still have them in 2016. We’ve lost Layne, Kurt, Scott, and many others, but thank whomever you want to thank that we still have Eddie. That era of music doesn’t have many frontmen left, and the bands that do don’t even have much of an original lineup intact anymore. Candlebox, one of my favorite bands from Seattle, has been left with just Kevin Martin–the only person currently in the band that is a founding member. So we must not take these explosive tours for granted. This leads me to explain that it being the opening night of their tour, I originally expected a more grandiose stage setup. I quickly realized this is not a band who needs to distract their audience with fancy things to keep us engaged. My most favorite part was when the songs did slow a bit. An intricate installation made of what appeared to be driftwood, was lowered down just above the band. The lights were a little calmer, hues of blue and magenta giving the feeling like we are watching an episode of MTV Unplugged being filmed. If this was intentional, it was a nice touch.

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Nearing the end of the set, after hearing the greats–“Even Flow,” “Sirens,” “Black,” and “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town”–they slayed us in the second and final encore with “Better Man,” “Alive,” and an intense cover of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” where we shouted in unison, “They’re all wasted!” We knew it was over when they came together at the front of the stage and took a bow. The house lights had been on for several songs, at which my sister pointed out that it felt like we were outside. And it did. Somehow those lights made it feel even bigger than it was and you could see everyone in that crowd. Sometimes I’d look around and would make eye contact with another and it was like, “Yeah. This is happening.” My final thought was, “Here’s a band who just played three hours, and we still didn’t hear ALL the hits.” And well, that is why Pearl Jam is on their 25th Anniversary tour.

And that is why we played Pearl Jam on a three hour drive home.

Pearl Jam Live Review by Jenn Ross, edited by Matthew Weller.

Pearl Jam Concert Photography by Jenn Ross.

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