Pearl Jammed (updated)

Pearl Jam was so boring last night (the first of two United Center shows) that I left early, before the encores. And as if Mike McCready's spazzy Rick Nielsen-lite behind-the-head show-off guitar soloing wasn't silly enough, last night there were even lasers. Lasers! Isn't that why grunge supposedly happened in the first place?

Also, the show reaffirmed my belief that at least in the live arena (in this case, literally), Pearl Jam fans are lame, lame, lame, a scary hybrid of party-loving hippies and beefed-up frat boys who sing along to every word yet don't seem to grasp a single thing the band is saying. (At one of the 2004 Vote for Change tours, Pearl Jam fans even booed Eddie Vedder's 'thank you' to the Dixie Chicks, as if their politics were any different from Vedder's own.) Sure, there were some great folks spread throughout the crowd, and the way the band inspires indie-level devotion on a mass scale is endearing, but I had better things to do and better people to do them near.

***THIS JUST IN*** I looked at the second night's setlist, and it was 500x better than the first night's. I like how the band shakes things up night to night, but if one night is going to get a clearly superior mix of material, then that's totally uncool.