Pearl Jam live in Barcelona, on July 6th, 2024
This was supposed to be a review from a gig I went to, but I bet it'll become "Why is Maiden better band than Pearl Jam" in both a sarcastic and serious manner.
First, this was the third attempt to see Pearl Jam since 2018 and the first successful one. I had tickets for two dates back in 2018 (Rome and Padova). A couple of weeks after I bought them I got the news I was gonna become a father. Tickets sold. Pearl Jam announced another tour for 2020, but we all know what happened. It got postponed to 2021. And then it got postponed to 2022. And then I got the news I was gonna become a father for the second time. Tickets sold.
So, when they announced the 2024 tour, I was immediately looking at the dates. With our budget and free days, there were only two options - Berlin and Barcelona and we opted for Barcelona - luckily. Why? Well, here is one of the "proofs" that Maiden is better than Pearl Jam. The last two Maiden tours in Europe were in 2023 (33 dates, 0 canceled) and 2022 (29 dates, 1 canceled). Pearl Jam toured in 2024 (9 dates, 3 canceled) and 2022 (16 dates, 3 canceled). Also worth noting is that they mostly repeat the countries (the last time Pearl Jam was in Croatia was in 2006. Since 2006 Maiden played in Croatia 4 times). So, let's say Maiden got a win there, kind of.
Barcelona wasn't one of those canceled dates (Berlin was) although when we arrived in Spain we still didn't know if the gig was on. Luckily there were hordes of PJ fans roaming Barcelona and we got info that the band is there and the gig is on (it was a double date). Also,PJ has a huge US following, like, every second person wearing a PJ shirt was from the USA. Palau Saint Jordi, the place of the gig, is a really cool venue. It's located in Olympic Village, and to get there you have to pass the Catalonian Museum of Art (hadn't had time to go inside but the exterior is beautiful), the botanical garden and then you get to the village. The cool thing is that you can see the stage from the moment you enter the arena.
Here's another Maiden "win". Pearl Jam was known to fight the Ticketmaster in the 1990s due to their fees and exorbitant prices of tickets. Last tour, Ticketmaster sold PJ tickets. These were the worst tickets I ever bought for a concert and at the same time - the most expensive tickets I ever bought - 238 euros for two tickets in sector 300. Now, everything got more expensive, including concert tickets and there is no point in barking at the same old tree, but! No way I would pay 300 euros for standing tickets for Iron Maiden, which means there is less chance to do the same for Pearl Jam. There. Yes, tickets will never be 10 bucks again, and yes, inflation and music business and dry years and economic situation and so on but paying 250 euros for a standing ticket in the back of GA in a huge arena like Palau Saint Jordi - that's ridiculous even for 2024 (Maiden charged 99 euros for GA just year before at the same place). And as live experiences go, Maiden takes two wins and the next two go to Pearl Jam.
Merchandise. I love Maiden merchandise, Eddie and all, but damn, Pearl Jam blew them out of the water. First, the quality of the merch is way better (PJ didn't use Gildean which has become worse every year), and second - the choice. Maiden does have gig-specific merchandise but it is nowhere close to what PJ has. Just for the Barcelona gig they had this specific merch: shirt, sticker, jersey, football, keyring, poster, and button. And that is just for the first night. If you went on the second night in Barcelona, you would get all that but with a completely new design. Add to that "classic" tour merch consisting of shirts, caps, hats, scarves, posters, keyrings, bags, backpacks, socks, and so on. I shit you not, if it didn't sell out when I came to the merch booth, I'd probably buy a lot of date-specific merchandise (ended up with a tour shirt, a specific date sticker, and a keyring). The shit isn't even close to the end. After the gig, artists put up several limited editions of posters on sale with several different variants (glow in the dark, mirror variant, etc) which also get sold out pretty quickly. And we are talking about every gig - every single date of the tour has everything I mentioned specific for that date, not a single one skipped (they did release merchandise of canceled dates and there was a huge uproar on the forum). And even if that isn't enough - a few months after the gig you can buy an official bootleg from the mix desk. It can be an audio CD, FLAC, and speaking of that...
Setlist. I "kinda" like Maiden do that one-setlist-per-tour thing, but... Pearl Jam opened the gig in Barcelona with "Footsteps". That's a B-side from a single from a debut album. The equivalent of that would be Maiden opening the gig with Burning Ambition. There was a guy row below us who went berserk from joy and at one moment I thought he was going to jump over the railing down into the pit. IDK, not knowing what's coming and when and what'll hit you - it was an amazing experience. There were still usual suspects like "Even Flow" "Alive" "Jeremy" and so on (Even Flow caught me on my way to the bathroom and it was funny to see how in a moment everybody threw whatever they had and ran back to their seats). Of course, looking at the setlist from the day after we went makes you a bit jealous ("Damn, I wish they play that one on the first night and replaced it with this one I didn't like" etc). We vowed that next time we see Pearl Jam it's definitely gonna be two nights (they only repeated a couple of songs). I bought the MP3 of the gig and even the new album became much better after the gig.
I tried to imagine Maiden doing something like that (different setlist every night, different merchandise every night, etc) and I concluded I would go bankrupt 20 years ago and still couldn't recover financially. So, when you look at it a bit better, that's also a win for Maiden, right? Yeah, fuck Pearl Jam and their awesome merch and rotating setlist! MAIDEN ALL THE WAY!
