Pearl Jam play 3-hour MTSC marathon

It’s pretty tough to drown out 360 degrees of speakers and a veteran Seattle rock band, but Winnipeggers are a tough bunch. Need proof? Well you should have been at the MTS Centre Thursday night.

For nearly half an hour before Pearl Jam took to the stage, 15,748 MTS Centre patrons—a record crowd for the 10-month-old building—stomped, screamed, and generally begged for their rock idols to grace the stage and start to play.

When Pearl Jam finally did, the roar was so intense that the first few chords of “Better Man” were nearly indecipherable—in a good way.

The warm—okay, sizzling—reception didn’t go unnoticed by the Gods of Grunge, and the boys of Pearl Jam reciprocated big time with a very long, very thorough rock show for the record books.

“The pre-show crowd was insane out here,” frontman Eddie Vedder said a few songs in. “We didn’t know what the **** was going on.”

Well, the crowd sure seemed to know what was going on, as they were on their feet with eyes glued to the stage for the entire three-hour show.

In true Pearl Jam fashion, Vedder and the boys delivered a unique and unpredictable set for their die-hard fans. With plenty of lesser-known tunes on the agenda, Eddie and the Jammers made sure to pepper the set-list with some of their biggest hits like “Jeremy,” “Evenflow,” “Given to Fly,” and “Daughter.”

With a wide-open stage and a 360-degree concert configuration, Pearl Jam also made sure to regularly crank up the lights and let the crowd take in their sold-out surroundings. For the grand finale, the boys delivered Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” under full house lights for an unforgettable festival-like atmosphere.

By the end of the show—and I mean the very end: two encores in, at 11:30—Vedder was reduced to a head-banging, arm-flailing, tambourine-smashing mess. Fighting those tough Winnipeggers for audio supremacy must be tiring, even for the most seasoned stage superstar.

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In the same vein as Seattle’s grunge gods, the Supersuckers warmed up the MTS Centre crowd with a straight ahead, stand-and-deliver rock show.

Sporting slick sunglasses and spotless white sneakers, bald-headed frontman Eddie Spaghetti out-styled his fellow ‘Suckers but kept the casual vibe alive with plenty of improv bass-playing and expletive-filled lyrics.

With a nice mix of punk-y tunes and alt-rock rock-outs, the Supersuckers drew the crowd out of their seats and on their feet. As great as they were, however, the highlight of their set was an appearance by a masked spaceman—Eddie Vedder perhaps?—who led the band on a set-closing cover of “Poor Girl” by 80’s punk band X.

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