Great Concert At The Schnitz

Linda and I attended a Pearl Jam concert on Thursday night at the Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland. The show was a benefit for the Northwest Chapter of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America (Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready has suffered from Crohn's disease for 20 years and has served as spokesperson for the Northwest chapter).

Comedian David Cross (he was on Arrested Development and makes occasional appearances on Celebrity Poker Showdown as well as on The Colbert Report as liberal talk show host Russ Lieber) and Washington rock band Sleater Kinney were the opening acts; but before those folks came on, McCready came out onto the stage, thanked everyone for coming, then introduced Eddie Vedder, who opened things up with a great acoustic version of The Beatles' "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away," which a lot of people missed because it was so early in the show.

Pearl Jam's section of the show was a lot of fun. It was the first time we had ever seen them in a smaller venue. Their new stuff -- "World Wide Suicide," "Severed Hand," "Inside Job," "Life Wasted," etc. -- sounded great live, as did their old stuff. I particularly enjoyed their performances of "Corduroy," "Why Go," and "This Is Not For You" (the last one being a great audience-participation song).

It was guitarist Stone Gossard's birthday, and Boom Gasper, the band's touring keyboardist, brought out a cake for him during the first encore and everyone sang "Happy Birthday." Gossard then took the cake and slammed it into the top of his head, which was followed by the band performing "Don't Gimme No Lip" with Gossard singing lead. That song was followed by a cover of Neil Young's "Harvest Moon," with Sleater Kinney coming back onstage to sing the background vocals.

For the second encore, Johnny Marr (formerly of The Smiths) came out and played lead guitar on "All Along The Watchtower," which was great. Everyone then came back out on stage -- including David Cross with a tambourine -- and they performed another Neil Young song, this time a kick-ass version of Neil's "Rocking in the Free World."

We thought the show was over, so we walked out of the hall and into the lobby. But just as we were about to walk out onto the street, we could hear them starting up on another song. We went back in and watched them close the show with "Yellow Ledbetter" -- with Drummer Matt Cameron playing Gossard's guitar and Gossard playing Cameron's drums -- and McCready finished off that song with an electric version of "The Star Spangled Banner."

Anyway, it was a very fun concert.