Brian Stempeck     The Last Jam If anything, let it be said that the boys had fun out there. In the final performance of their summer tour, Pearl Jam let it all hang out with an incredible show at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Friday night. The problem with many rock concerts is that there's really no way to dance to some of the music. Some songs are too slow, while others are conducive only to mosh pits, and what you end up with is the white boy nod -- thirty thousand people standing around trying to bob their heads to a 4/4 beat. The reason you don't feel stupid doing this at a Pearl Jam concert is because behind the rock is Jeff Ament's bass guitar groove. For the first half of the concert, Ament ran a tight ship, spicing up slower songs like "Daughter" and "Immortality," while going into all-out thrash mode on old standards like "Alive" and "Do the Evolution," a track off of the newest album. The band played mostly songs from Ten, Vs. and Yield, as well as some non-album favorites like "Footsteps," "Crazy Mary," and "State of Love and Trust." Eddie Vedder remained fairly subdued during the first set, softly adding "I wish I was the President, / and I could change my ways," to the end of "Wishlist" with an air of somberness. After that, he put the cynicism on the back burner for the rest of the night, laughing his way through the show, even when he missed a line of "Even Flow," a song the band has been playing for over seven years. Then with the lines, "Cannot find a candle of thought, / to light your name," Vedder dedicated "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town," to all of the residents of Chevy Chase. The highlight of the second set was a cathartic version of "Rearviewmirror" which the band played at a ridiculous tempo, perhaps twice that it was originally recorded at. Vedder donned a guitar for the song as a strobe light matched drummer Matt Cameron's breakneck speed, and the audio-visual assault was breathtaking. The band also played an eerie version of "Black" in the second set, which culminated with a beautiful solo from guitarist Mike McCready. McCready's talents were showcased throughout the show, and having seen Pearl Jam before, I was fascinated by the way his style has progressed. McCready has moved beyond his Hendrix-style fingers-flying solos in favor of more melodic interchanges. Often times during the show, he seemed more introspective than Vedder, who is notorious for his on-stage dramatics. McCready spent quite a bit of the time with his head tilted to the sky, or kneeling down before his amplifier to pick out new melodies within the songs, hitting his prime on "Yellow Ledbetter," a song where he turned his amplifier to 11, and played with a style that has become completely his own. The second set ended with "Porch" and some interesting activities by Vedder. The song is one of the band's jam songs, and as McCready and Stone Gossard went to town, Vedder distributed some flowers to the crowd, throwing handfuls of petals around the stage. He then went offstage and grabbed a mirror, which he used to deflect the spotlight, in a sort of symbolic act. It was a contradiction to watch, McCready calling attention to himself by playing his solo with his guitar behind his back, and Vedder, dodging the spotlight with a laugh. Pearl Jam has always been a band that has had trouble dealing with its fame, and Vedder seemed to take great pleasure from turning the tables, if only for an instant. For the band's final encore, they took all of the crowd's preconceptions and tossed them out the window. They played a song called "Last Kiss," a 1950's doo-wop number that most rock bands in the 90's wouldn't even consider playing. The crowd broke through the security guards to flood the first twenty rows to clap along as McCready and Ament swayed back and forth like they were on the Ed Sullivan Show. Vedder grinned his way through the song, and it was apparent that the band, perhaps for the first time, loved what it was doing.

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