V37 2003 State College Pennsy [Best of, Live]

Pearl Jam has almost 80 live albums released. If you read the reviews about each one of them, everyone says that they are the best and they deserve 5 stars. Well, they can't all be the best, and probably none of them deserves 5 stars. Each show has it's ups and downs. What would deserve 5 stars would be a box set that features the best performances from one concert tour. People listen to one show and say how it is the greatest, but they really don't listen with a critical ear and they haven't heard the 76 other albums, so they don't know how it compares.

I admit that I have only heard a few of the Pearl Jam shows. This one is the best one I have heard. It has a lot going for it. But it also has a few downsides.

This is a three plus hour show, from the last concert in the US from the 2003 tour. It is highly energetic, and the band seems to enjoy playing. Since it is near the end of the tour, the band is highly polished, but they don't seem fatigued. Maybe because it is the last show, they really open up. They also seem to keep on playing well beyond what they originally planned. Pearl Jam typcially does two encores and plays a couple of songs at each encore. But here, they extend the encores so they end up playing more than an hour beyond the end of the official show.

The band really opens up on a number of songs. There are 9 songs that are over 7 minutes long. There is a lot of inspired jamming on both guitar and keyboards.

My only complaints are that they do too many old songs and that the sound quality is not great. They do 5 songs from the first album, Ten. For the most part, the old songs are just quickly run through. If you already have other, older live albums from Pearl Jam, then you really don't need to hear these songs again. But, if this is the only Pearl Jam live CD you have, it is nice to have the old hits. One exception is that they do a really nice job on Alive.

The sound quality is mediocre. It's kind of mushy and muted. Also, Vedder's voice seems out of place and too up front.

The only other problem is that almost the whole concert is included. That includes the chearing between songs and all of Vedder's chatter. It is good to hear once, but it gets annoying if you listen to the album more than once. You can go up to 3 minutes between songs. Fortunately, much of the audience cheering was edited out, especially between the encores.