i know, it was a joke. the spectrum shows as a whole are better than most give them credit for, but people here always point to these 4 shows as if they are some kind of rock bottom for pearl jam. most of night 3 was incredible. i thought the roof was gonna come off during the chorus of 'in hiding'.

Eh, those shows were closer to the train wreck people say they are than what you're describing now.

I think we need to have a separate stickied thread here just to discuss the Spectrum shows. Many of us were there for at least one of the nights and many of us have pretty strong opinions about them.

I'll also open another can of worms:
* The 2006 tour was way better than the 2003 tour.

Have fun with that one.

I think it's the worst shows ever goons that continually put fuel on the fire. I have positive opinions of nights 3 and 4. For that era of live PJ, night 3 is underrated. It is. Accept it already. What's needed is LAL thread more than a regular thread for the goons to repreach.

I'm a 2003 guy.

Night 3 has some of the worst playing of the run...the whole middle part of the main set is one long trainwreck.

I've never agreed with that.

I'm with you Matt, make it happen mods.


I can get behind this.

Me too.

i went to 8-9 shows back in 2003. Started with Albany and ended with Holmdel. Those were the best pj shows of my life. The Albany to state college run was intense. Just wish I had went to buffalo

I went to the Hershey show because I have social anxiety and I knew the State College venue was much larger and would be a huge bro-fest. I still stand by Hershey as being a very solid show, but it was about half the length of State College. Talk about a bad decision.

I went to one of the 7-8 best shows (Champaign) and one of the 7-8 worst (Chicago) in 2003. I loved that tour. But in terms of how I feel about the tour, I liked the tour before (2000) and the tour after (2006) more.

2005 was better than 2003.

This.

I can't bring myself to say that the 2006 tour was better than 2003. Performance wise, I do think 2006 is a stronger tour, but the setlists aren't as good because of too many shitty new songs.

I feel that the 2003 tour didn't shove Riot Act down your throat like the 2006 shoved Avacado down your throat. 2003 PJ didn't care if you liked RA and they didn't care about album sales. The 2003 tour happened to feature RA songs, but it never felt like the RA tour. This PJ died in 2005.

I can respect this. I like S/T a lot more than most of you, and the in the shows I saw on this tour I only got 5-6 songs from it so I barely noticed it.

They were playing a really nice spread of material in '03 -- as much as the overwhelming barrage of "S/T" material, the '06 tour was marred for me by the relegation of much of the "Binarual" and "Riot Act" material to "rarity" status, along with the chunks of "No Code" and "Yield" that were already not being played or being played very infrequently, not to mention the regular return of songs like "Leash," "Why Go," "Satan's Bed," "Rats," etc. -- this tour more than any one since really feels like PJ trying to black out that middle portion of their career and re-establish their reputation as the rockin' band everyone thought they knew, and doing so by playing virtually all the material from their three acknowledged classics and their new "return to form." Nothing wrong with that, I guess -- a lot of artists have tours that zero in on specific components of their repertoire -- but in terms of personal preference, the fact that so few of my favorite songs got played at those shows knocks them down a few rungs (even though I acknowledge that their performing capacity, especially by the second half of the year, was at a career peak, up there with March/April '94 and October '00). I prefer '03 without much hesitation (and have never understood the dislike for the Chicago show -- I was there too and thought it sounded great in person, if certainly less explosive energy-wise than Champaign, and still think it sounds great on the boot).

what songs? in hiding seems to be pretty universally loved here from that show, and it was the 10th song of a 18 song set. it seems strange that they would have one great performance sandwiched into a terrible show.

I assume he's thinking of "Tremor Christ," "Cropduster," "Habit," maybe a few others. Ed does his usual first-verse blank-out on "Tremor," and both "Habit" and "Cropduster" sound sloppy and underrehearsed (though I think the quality of the bootleg really exacerbates the feeling). Overall, I think the "complete trainwreck" impression of those shows is a little overstated, but I do think the band ambitiously took on a lot of songs that they weren't prepared to perform -- there are a lot of technical errors at those shows. But that's pretty characteristic of the '09 tour in general.

i know they played a few songs they didnt play in a while, so i assumed those werent great performances, but i agree the 'trainwreck' impressions are overstated. eddie vedder saying the band would play their entire catalog probably led to them taking chances they didnt expect to take.

re: 2003 tour. i remember someone saying this is when pearl jam shows turned into a "celebration" bc it was the first huge tour since 2000 and the roskilde tragedy

I don't feel that "celebration" element in '03 at all -- if anything, the pervasive political themes running through those shows kept that component of their persona at bay entirely, though there were a few "big shows" on the tour (State College, MSG) that were forerunners to the 3+ hour marathons that are now a nightly expectation.