Song of the Week #14
June 26th, 2018. Stadio Olimpico, Rome. Thinking about that night still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Amazingly no, in a football stadium during the 2018 World Cup, it had nothing to do with football - despite me having previously visited the Olimpico on 2 other occasions to watch both Roma and Lazio play in the stadium they call their home.
Either through bad luck (or more likely bad timing and laziness), myself and 3 close friends missed out on buying Pearl Jam tickets for any of their London shows in 2018. Then, a bright idea emerged from the superfan in the group, that we should venture out into Europe during summer to catch the 90’s rock kings on their World Jam tour. Through much debating, we settled on Pearl Jam playing Rome for the first time in 22 years (at least that’s what I deduce 22 ani to be from the end segment of the song) deciding that it would be an unforgettable performance, and also give us ample time over a weekend to do our best Anthony Bourdain impression: sampling all the cacio e pepe, roman negronis and local beer that we could muster.
The concert itself was (from what I can remember through my alcohol-blurred recollection) a masterclass from the Seattle behemoth. Eddie Vedder controlled 80,000 people with effortless elegance, rolling through 3 hours of covers and classics in what felt like minutes. A long walk back to the airbnb was accompanied the next morning by a very hungover flight for one of the group, and a realisation that two pairs of sunglasses had been lost by the others. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Had Covid-19 not swept over the globe in March 2020, we had booked to repeat the feat to watch Pearl Jam in Budapest on July 15th of last year.
In my gin-fuelled state, if you had asked me what the setlist consisted of, I wouldn’t have been able to answer with any real conviction, bar a single video taken of the entire Olimpico (and myself, badly) singing along to Better Man, akin to a lullaby for the XV district of the Italian capital. Thankfully for everyone, Pearl Jam fans are (notably) fanatics, and thus my own poor recollection of the concert became irrelevant. Concert posters from the 2018 Olimpico performance still re-sell online in regular excess of the £200-300 mark, and thankfully, almost all of their concerts are recorded by fans who follow them around the world.
The song I am using for this Sinner’s Gin Song of the Week is the live performance of Elderly Woman (…) on that fateful night in Rome. It isn’t the most well known Pearl Jam song, but it was the 2nd in a lengthy setlist by Eddie Vedder & co, and demonstrates the large crowd singing every word back at the band in unison at the first live Rome performance in over 2 decades. Listening back, all the songs individually never fail to give me goosebumps. Hopefully it inspires you (even as a casual fan or superfan alike) to try and catch them on their next outing, and hopefully you can be on the ball to see them somewhere more local to you than we did. Enjoy.