Pearl Jam @ Gorge Ampitheater, WA

Set 1: Wash, Corduroy, Hail Hail, World Wide Suicide, Severed Hand, Given To Fly, Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, Even Flow, Down, I Am Mine, Unemployable, Daughter/(It's Ok), Gone, Black, Insignificance, Life Wasted, Blood
Encore 1: Footsteps, Once, Alive, State Of Love And Trust, Crown Of Thorns, Leash, Porch
Encore 2: Last Kiss, Inside Job, Go, Baba O'Riley, Dirty Frank, Rockin' In The Free World, Yellow Ledbetter

We meet Ryno in familiar territory: a concert, the Pacific Northwest, a Pearl Jam experience. He sends his love, a photo, a setlist, and a message from the edge:

"A concert at the Gorge is more than watching a band - it's an experience. One might say a pilgrimage. But, I wouldn't. From Seattle it's mountain passes, some forests, and warning signs for snow avalanches shimmering in the heat. Faceless irrigated farmland fading to sage and rock. East, east towards mecca in the wake of a thousand Subarus, RVs and V-dub Vans. We masses climb out of the Columbia River to wind through dust and melted macadam to see Pearl Jam. A fast drive, in the heat with the sweat running.

"Making camp is parking the car and pulling out the Guinness Draught - hot as the trunk of my car.

"Past the black rocks, the river is far and cruel blue. No clouds above, but across the canyon a chiaroscuro boils the high ground. The mirage of space between makes the horizon waver, fighting the hills for the best seat to the show. You see, the Gorge is big. But, not in the hopeful way of a mountain from far away. It's not cocky like that. The Gorge is subtle in its size. With jagged details clear and touchable, as if we are indoors. But after a while, staring into the chasm, you feel the immensity of omitted earth mocking your existence. Emptiness methodically unhinging notions of time and location, size and proportion. Trying to fill that void with my imagination would drive me mad. A venue like this can swallow a band whole (Sasquatch 06, ...Trail of the Dead).

"Trying to time the buzz and the crowd and the start of the show, leaving an hour early is too late. With the great venue comes expensive monopolized camping and parking (it's still worth it). A through-hike to the amphitheater with whole crowds of people pulled to the side of the gravel hobbling on blowouts of flop-flips and flap-flops. Booze patrol that's Draconian, largely indifferent or drunk. Splintery unjumpable fences turning a docile herd into a corralled mob. The management managing to leave about five thousand people in the entrance queue while Pearl Jam started to play.

"That's me, I'm an amateur, getting inside on the fourth song.

"I muddled through the cattle chute and waded through the beer garden. A real IMAX moment to rise over the terrace and have all space and sound opened up in front. The void pulling you out over the cliff while the band fights to hold the balance. If the music isn't big enough, it gets sucked off the backside, drowned in the largesse. Pearl Jam was huge. With 'World Wide Suicide,' they brought us out to the edge of the precipice and then held us there in space for the rest of the night.

"Two hundred miles from home, they were playing their last venue of the US tour for a family crowd. Eddie said 'clouds never looked so good,' and swigged from a big brown bottle with a stopper top. They went through classics and new songs in a pretty standard set with the sun setting long, coloring the sky in homage to Seattle's band. After a break in which no one sat down, they came out to play what Eddie called 'short encore.' Short because they had another show to play the next day. But then he said 'fuck those tomorrow people' and the riffs got richer and the drums beat longer. They strayed from the album versions, improvising out into the open space. Somewhere around 'Alive,' the sun set, Eddie jumped off speakers and amps and joined the crowd, Mike McCready, Stone Gossard, et al, started to fill the night and there wasn't really anything going except Pearl Jam playing the best show I've seen.

"By 'Last Kiss,' the light was gone except for the stage and a stray blast of fireworks somewhere from the black water below. The band took some pauses between songs, playing tired near the finish. Eddie threw out tambourines (lots of them) to the crowd, calling out people he'd known in the old days. Exhausted and comfortable, they teased as if to close and then came back with 'Rockin' In The Free World.' The lights started coming on in the seating area and Eddie said Mike would put us to bed with the last one. 'Yellow Ledbetter followed.' I've listened to that song, often on repeat, for twelve years. It never sounded as good. Eddie sat on an amp in the middle of the stage and drank while he watched Mike McCready carry the world as he went from 'Yellow Ledbetter' through some assorted Jimi and out with the 'Star Spangled Banner.' In the best outdoor venue in the country, Pearl Jam was home."