Drugs, Rock and Politics:
Pearl Jam’s Epic Wake Up Call to the Filthy Masses. Final Version

The hippy-haze air was thick. Night sky and moon were within grabbing distance. Everything fueled by an adrenaline feed straight from the pumping hearts of the drug zombies sparked and lit ablaze when Eddie Vedder’s prophetic pipes echoed off the Tennessee horizon spawning what would become Pearl Jam’s most epic performance. We all saw Christ that night and it wasn’t because of the drugs.
Vedder and the band eased into the three hour long set, which included a shit ton of rarities as well as Pearl Jam staples, with Hard to Imagine. Vedder belted the chorus, “Things were different then”. Ah yes Eddie, things were different; the world loved us and we all left rainbow shits behind in toilet bowls everywhere. Pearl Jam reminded Bonnaroo how fucking sweet the 90’s were and how fucking shitty things are getting. Vedder spoke candidly following shouts of Fuck George Bush, “A lot of fucking emotions flying around the world these days…So you’ve got a Texan in the White House and it (gas) goes from $1.40 to $4.00 a gallon. I’m not good at math, I’m going to let you do that.” Vedder interjected little snippets of politics throughout the show in true Eddie Vedder fashion; unfortunately, the only thing he stirred up was the acid vibrations that moved spontaneously through the crowd. Bonnaroo is a great place to get people together but you have to speak through the drugs first. Reign O’er Me was one of the highlights of the night, Vedder released an atom bomb over the crowd vaporizing everything within 2 miles with his nuclear vocals.
Pearl Jam continued towards the 2nd encore and Vedder, visibly exhausted, wailed and groaned his way from an amazing rendition of Black to a ten minute goliath jam of Porch. The man standing beside me just stared in shock at the stage, I nudged him, “Dude are you ok?” “Yea man, I just forgot where I was for a minute there, this is intense”. It was intense. Anybody who has ever been to one of these monster festivals knows all it takes is a bad batch of mushrooms and one crazy fuck to turn the grounds into a free-for-all of dripping sex and bloody violence.
Encore numero dos highlighted my two personal favorite Pearl Jam songs, Release and Alive. Release was haunting with Vedder’s lulling ooo’s and ahhh’s. Lighter’s sparked and many went inside their heads for the trip. Alive, on the other hand, revved the crowd into a state of frenzy. The man beside me sang at the top of his fucking lungs words that he wasn’t quite sure of, thrusting a closed fist weakly into the humid air. The crowd followed in suit but most knew the words better than my sidekick.
Luckily, Vedder and company stuck around for a third amazing encore. Vedder closed the show with a rocking cover of Dylan’s All Along the Watch Tower. The stage blew open into chaos, Manchester lost control. Eddie Vedder screamed, “Two riders were approachin!” again and again. Mega solo after mega solo, energy, blam, crash and afterglow. Peace. Cheering crowd. It was over. Pearl Jam had played the best show of the weekend. “Dude, that just fucking happened man”, I said to the man drooling beside me. “What happened? Was that Dylan?”, my random concert buddy blankly walked away into the festival still dazed by his overdose of psychedelics and the come down from the ecstasy he found on the ground earlier in the day.