Sadly, the festival is over til' next year. All of my clothes are covered in mud, I have giant blisters on my feet, and back pains are coming back to me again. However, the memories and great shows are still outweighing the cons and I have a full day off today to recover!! I slept until 11 today which might be my record!!
Day 3 was the best day yet in my opinion. Erin and I had a late start getting to the show and parking was a little harder to find, but we made it just in time to catch the Arctic Monkeys play on the main stage. I really like these guys a lot and love their new album "Humbug" which was produced by Josh Homme. The new songs sounded incredible live and all the older punkier songs seemed to be played faster than the originals. (This worked well most of the time). I was surprised how good a guitar player Alex Turner was and at times, I felt like he was channeling Morrisey on his vocals.
After quickly downing a few large kegs of Heineken, me and Erin headed over to support some Boston kids known as Passion Pit! We were looking for an excuse to dance and from listening to a few of their tracks online, it sounded like the best option of the day. They sounded pretty promising and drew a huge crowd of people (mostly young high school kids). Their music is electronic/dancy/rock and for some reason their lead singer (who I swear I've seen walking around Boston before) kinda sounds like Jameraqui (<--- misspelled word). Anyway after seeing them, I don't really like or dislike them anymore, I still love their singles though. But I don't plan picking up their album anytime soon.
Next, it was 2 hours until the big Pearl Jam show, so we took a piss break, grabbed a couple more brews, and had Wahoo's Fish Tacos (which were bitchin' by the way, dudes!). Then we headed into the abyss of thousands and thousands of people for the Dead Weather show (who were playing on the same stage as Pearl Jam). We inched our way up as far as we possibly could and by the time Pearl Jam came onstage, I would say "We Were In It!". By the way, The Dead Weather were great and put on a highly energetic show that featured most of the songs from the new album and a couple of covers. One was a Bob Dylan song called "New Pony" and the other was their closing song - "Cool Water" (which I can't remember who did the original). Anyway, the music was dark, bluesy, and rockin...... The lead singer of the band is Allison Mosshart (who also plays in a band called the Kills) and was eye candy. The way that she moved onstage reminded me of a young Patti Smith except Allison would occasionally pull out a Bo Diddley rectangle shaped guitar. Towards the end, she laid spread out across the stage dripping in sweat and smoking a cigarette while Jack White played a sick solo on his Falcon guitar. ("If Allison was president she'd be Babeahram Lincoln!")..... Jack White was also great and played drums for the entire set minus 1 or 2 songs, but it was rare appearances on guitar that stole the show....... The rest of the band was also solid!
When the show ended, surprisingly a good amount of people left to see other shows at other stages. This gave us an opportunity to get even closer to the front to see one of my all time favorite bands - The Oak Ridge Boys!!!! (just kidding Pearl Jam). It was hot, uncomfortable, tight, muddy, and crowded where we were There was hardly any room to move for the next three hours. From this point on, there would be no more pee breaks, and no more beer runs. We sold a bottle of water for $10 to a guy behind us. And then there were quite a few people trying to cut through the crowd insisting that they had friends up in the front row. One of which, who I will call "Mr. Macho Fist Pumping Elbow throwing "I will use up all possible space and will not apologize if I accidentally hit peoples faces" Psycho #1 Fan" happened to land a spot right in front of us!! Many times throughout the show, I would consider knocking this guy out with a hard swift elbow to the face, but decided not to. I would think about the consequences like missing what could be the greatest gig of my life. This fan never did make contact with me and his fist pumping but came close many times. It wasn't until after the show that i guess he had accidentally hit two guys behind us and my girlfriend. Somehow I missed all this?!?! Luckily noone was hurt though.
Anyway enough about that guy, Pearl Jam came onstage and rocked my face off for 2 hours! The set was their typical festival show, where they play lots of hits, and don't jam too long on certain songs. But it was amazing! Just to hear 80,000 people sing along to "Alive" and Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" was worth the price of admission alone. And to make the night even more special, Ben Harper came out onstage to play lap steel on "Red Mosquito" and Perry Farrell from Jane's Addiction came out and sang my favorite JA song - "Mountain Song"! It was the type of show that fans go online and try to find bootlegs of right away. I will definitely be one of them. Eddie Vedder is probably my all time favorite rock and roll frontman. He's always very appreciative to his crowd onstage and very humble. And listening to him over the years, his voice gets better and better every tour! The whole band was phenomenal and I think I'm finally warming up to Matt Cameron on drums. The set list was as follows:
Why Go/ Inteersellar Overdrive (Pink Floyd) --> Corduroy/ Got Some/ Not for You/ Elderly Woman Behind the Counter.../ Given to Fly/ World Wide Suicide/ Even Flow/ Unthought Unknown/ Daughter/ Hail Hail/ Insignificance/ Present Tense/ State of Love and Trust/ The Fixer/ Go/ Red Mosquito/ Do the Evolution/ The Real Me (The Who)/ Alive/ Mountain Song (Janes Addiction)/ Rockin in the Free World (Neil Young)
So that was the end of a great weekend in Zilker Park. We slowly walked through miles of muck to get back to the car and drove home.
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