Jay Meydad's Life Mashup

The bootlegs for the two Pearl Jam concerts that I saw in LA were released a few days ago and today I finally got them.

What I find cool about them is the way the look and sound. They concerts were recorded and manufactured by a company called Kufala based in Paso Robles. Their unique eco-friendly chipboard packaging was the first thing I noticed. Their turn around time from purchase to delivery was super fast (less than 48 hours!). No wonder the band selected them to manufacture all the bootlegs of the tour, and If you are a Los Angeles base  artists who is looking for a bootleg recording service you should check them out.

Moving on to the sound quality of the bootleg. Although I was pretty surprised from the audio quality of my videos that I captured using the Ultra Flip HD , the bootlegs sound fantastic which makes it a completely different experience.

Now I am starting a long project of mixing my HD video setlists with this audio. I have a little over 50 songs to work on and hopefully Final Cut Express will make this a fun experience. The biggest pain would be syncing audio and video without a clapper. I will probably master video editing techniques once this project will be completed around the end of the year.

Only 6 days ago I  saw Pearl Jam performing an excellent show at the Gibson Amphitheater. However, last night is by far the best rock concert I have ever seen and one that will probably become one of the most memorized and mentioned shows in Pearl Jam’s 2009 tour.

Reasons:

1. Set: plenty of non-hits you don’t hear often – Faithful, Unemployable, Footsteps are just a few example. Between yesterday’s show and last week’s show I saw them perform 35 different songs. Only 9 songs were played in both shows, 5 of them are from Backspacer (Got Some, The Fixer, the fantastic Unthought Unknown, Just Breathe and The End) so they still sound fresh, new and very exciting.

2. Fans: The fans energy level was a lot higher than last week’s first show and the band reacted well to this. When the special guest (see below) came on stage the roof exploded off.

2. Gibson Amphitheater Acoustic: I said it in my previous post but must say it again. The sound quality in this venue is fantastic. During the first encore opened with Eddie team with a string quartet and performed Just Breathe, The End and Lukin (you got to see the video). Unlike last week’s show, last night you could actually hear the strings providing incredible cover to Eddie’s voice.

3. Special guests: the highlight of they evening. Into the 2nd encore Eddie said something like “what makes certain nights special is the presence of one person in the room…” and then he surprised/shocked everyone and invited Chris Cornell to join the band. Their performance of Temple Of The Dog’s Hunger Strike was fantastic. Chris’s voice sounded so good and the band performed it so well.

And finally, right before we thought we have seen everything, in the middle of the final song, Alive, as the song’s guitar solo started, Mike McCready handed his guitar over to Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains) who made my ears bleed…

What an epic performance that I am so happy I captured on my Flip HD (all songs except for two). It was difficult not to sing & jump and luckily my battery lasted all the way to the end. When the bootleg will be released I plan to get it and mix the video with high quality audio.

BTW, looks like my Hunger Strike video was picked by the RollingStone. Nice.

Here’s the entire playlist embedded in this page. Just hit the play button, expand the video to a full screen mode and turn on the volume.

Update (10/8/09): My buddy Bill went to the last Pearl Jam concert in LA last night. He was gracious enough to take my camera and shot the entire show. After you are done watching LA3, you might also want to check out LA4 playlist. It was a fantastic night as well.

Let’s rock!

Wow!

Pearl Jam put together a spectacular show last night in front of a full Gibson Amp (~6100 seats) in LA.

The concert opened really strong with Why Go, Animal, World Wide Suicide and Got Some which were just the beginning to a well performed, top-notch rock concert. Other than those four songs, the set list included 6 other songs from Backspacer (which is fantastic album), a mix of old songs from the all of their previous albums, including a few non-hits they normally don’t play like Rats.

Ben Harper who did the opening show, joined the band in the middle of the first encore and played Red Mosquito (video is from the Portland show) and his sliding guitar sounded fantastic and added plenty of depth to the song. The show ended, after almost 2.5 hours and two encores, with Neil Young’s classic Rockin’ in the free world.

The sound and acoustic the Gibson Amp provides is world class, and the stage & lightning design were extraordinary (pictures here). My only regret is that I left my Digital SLR at home and only had my iPhone with me to document it. At the seats I had those could have been amazing pictures.

Bottom line — The way Pearl Jam plays together, the way they interact with the fans, the way the fans participate in every song and sing all the lyrics, is what makes Pearl Jam the best (live) rock band in our generation.

Here’s a video another fan took last night of my favorite tracks from the new album, Unthought Known.

I am only now starting to recover from the Smashing Pumpkins concert I saw last week at the Gibson Amphitheater. It was one I am going to remember for years:

• The sound was great.
• The lighting was electrifying – check out this amazing flickr set.
• Diversified crowd – it was fun to see folks who grew up on the pumpkins 20 years ago next to youngsters who grow up on their music today. I wish that in 20 years I will get to take my sons to watch the 40 years anniversary.
• The set – the band played so well together and demonstrated their unique talent to play hard code alternative rock/punk, psychedelia and delicate ballads, and even an A Capella of “We only come out at night…”
• These should not be news to anyone, but Jimmy Chamberlin is a hell of a drummer.
• Billy was in a great mood, joked with the fans and shared some stories from the past. What can I say, even rock stars are as they grow up.

One last thing – If you are a fan like I am, treat yourself for the new year with a live recording of one of this tour’s performances. These are now for sale on LiveSmashingPumpkins ; If you are not sure whether you like the band or not, listen to the 30 seconds previews. You might change your mind.