Bill’s Review: Pearl Jam in Greensville, South Carolina

Saturday night (4/16) in Greenville, South Carolina was my 34th time seeing Pearl Jam live. It was a good excuse to meet up with my buddy, Jeff who lives in North Carolina. We've met up in New York City (2010) and Toronto, Ontario (2011) to see Ed and the boys in the past. We had a tremendous weekend this time around... the weather was perfect and Greenville ended up being an awesome city for our pre-show dining/drinking/wandering.

If you aren't familiar, Pearl Jam is a legendary live band... well, a legendary band - period. Their setlist changes dramatically from show to show. Like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get. I heard some crazy statistic before attending the Greenville show that the band had played a total of 96 songs on their first three shows of this tour - including 70+ different songs!

The band opened with the stellar "Corduroy" from Vitalogy. Then they did something they'd done only four other times in their history... they played an entire album in order! On this night it was Vs.! I didn't think too much about it when they played "Go" and "Animal" back-to-back. But when "Daughter" started, I communicated to Jeff that I thought we might be in for something special. I saw No Code get the same treatment in Moline in 2014, so I consider myself very lucky to have seen PJ do the full album treatment twice.

Other show highlights included "Present Tense", "Comfortably Numb" (Pink Floyd cover),and a cool version of the Lightning Bolt closing track, "Future Days". Hell, it was a 3-hour highlight reel. After 25 years in, I think there's a chance this band might do ok for themselves.

Setlist:
Corduroy
(Vs. in its entirety)
Go
Animal
Daughter
Glorified G
Dissident
W.M.A.
Blood
Rearviewmirror
Rats
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
Leash
Indifference (last song from Vs.)
Mind Your Manners
Swallowed Whole
Sirens
Let The Records Play
Spin The Black Circle
Do The Evolution
(encore)
Future Days
Nothingman
Given To Fly
Present Tense
Comfortably Numb
Lightning Bolt
Porch
(encore)
Last Kiss
Breath
Comatose
Better Man
Alive
Baba O'Riley
Yellow Ledbetter

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