Pearl Jammed
Live at Fenton on Saturday, 10th April 2010
The Fenton tonight is to hold a charity night for supporting a very special guitarist's main cause. Pearl Jam's Mike McCready has a dedicated group of likeminded people known as Team McCready who, for this day on the 10th April, put on charity shows all over the world to support the Wishlist Foundation, a Pearl Jam charity, focusing on Advocacy for Patients with Chronic Illness. As we arrive at the Fenton for the closing chords of local band El Camino's last song, we are just in time for the charity auction. There are plenty of high quality goods to bid on, such as a signed Pearl Jam poster, a signed Leeds Utd shirt, a signed Metallica song sheet and hand drawn pictures, along with Team McCready t shirts.
There is a brief set of two songs from the singer of the headlining band and a guitarist performing a couple of Eddie Vedder solo acoustic tracks from his 'Into The Wild' soundtrack, including 'No Ceiling'...
The main band tonight are Pearl Jammed, fittingly enough. The guys are based in London and have travelled up here and given their time for free to support the band they cover so well. Their set list reads like a scrambled setlist of the real Seattle band, with something from all the albums and in no particular order. Starting with 'Immortality' there's newer songs 'World Wide Suicide' and 'Amongst The Waves' before the band unleash a string of hits that the band would be proud of, with 'Evenflow', 'Rearview Mirror', and 'Jeremy' all on the back of each other. My favourite is the 'Ten' track 'Porch', which finishes the first part of their set.
Unsurprisingly the guys need a rest after performing these songs full pelt in the red hot room above the Fenton bar, but it'd not long before they are back with 'Why Go', 'Black' and 'State Of Love And Trust' and a cover within a cover with Neil Young's 'Rockin' in the Free World', finishing with 'Yellow Ledbetter' (how singer Jim knows the words I'll never know as the real PJ have no idea what Eddie's singing about!).
The band are called back on for one more song and give us 'Once'. I will not say that the guys are note perfect and a few of the lyrics are slightly wrong but when you're singing along yourself who cares?! It's Pearl Jam all the same but at a fraction of the cost and all for charity. The guitarist in McCready's role made everyone proud, with too many pedals to count and pulling off some reet solos! An appreciative guy looking like Billy Idol kept on pointing at the poor soul, then grabbing his toes! All in all the crowd really loved the show (the lad shouting 'Release' all the time may have been disappointed but no one else was). A great night, great songs and great atmosphere, roll on the events for Team McCready 2011!
