Pearl Jam, Manchester Evening News Arena, 17th August 2009.

Motivated by a totally amazing gig, and in an attempt to actually remember what I get up to, I've decided to write about a few gigs I've been to over the years. It'll probably take forever, and I'm sure that there are plenty that I can't remember anything about, but hey ho, it's something to do that has nothing to do with metalwork! :-)

So, Pearl Jam, 17th August 2009, the perfect place to start. It was refreshing, and comforting, to see a gig that was just the band, no confetti falling from the ceiling, no fireworks, no graphics, no floating spacemen (but I'll forgive Roger Waters for that one) and no giant bouncy balls, just the band. And what a band, they didn't need anything else.

The first couple of songs ('Long Road', 'Last Exit') were brilliant, but when they did 'Why Go' it all went up a gear and my excitement levels rocketed. Then followed 'All night', 'The Fixer', 'Low Light', 'In Hiding', 'World Wide Suicide' and 'Not For You'. The band seemed to take a little while to warm up, and had a few technical problems, but after a short break they came back with 'Even Flow' which was amazing, probably the highlight of the gig for me. Eddie was like his old self on stage, dancing and leaping around, and at one point he hung from the mik stand - wish I had a photo of that! Then came 'Present Tense', 'Save You', 'Grievance', 'Sleight Of Hand' and 'Got Some', Then 'Given To Fly' came in and it was absolutely perfect, that song really takes me away, and followed by 'Rearviewmirror' I was sky high!

The first encore just flew from there - 'Go', 'Daughter', 'Do The Evolution', and 'Alive', the whole place was wild and the band were lapping it up, the energy was fantastic. The second encore was the icing on the cake really - 'Smile', 'Black' (wow), 'Leash', 'The Real Me' (Eddie became Roger Daltry), and 'Indifference' (the perfect song to finish with).

It was brilliant to be in a crowd that actually cared about the band.

Gomez supported, they were good but there wasn't anything that grabbed me, apart from Ben Ottewell's voice that filled the arena.