Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Long Road
2. Save You
3. Gods' Dice
4. Corduroy
5. Given to Fly
6. Even Flow
7. Get Right
8. Cropduster
9. Jeremy
10. Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
11. I Am Mine
12. Love Boat Captain
13. MFC
14. Improv
15. Habit

Disc 2:

1. You Are
2. Wishlist
3. 1/2 Full
4. Insignificance
5. Go
6. Encore Break
7. Do the Evolution
8. Betterman
9. Daughter
10. Crazy Mary
11. Encore Break
12. Throw Your Arms Around Me
13. Alive
14. Fortunate Son

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #108513 in Music
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2003-06-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Limited Edition, Live

Customer Reviews

Official Bootlegs, The Oxymoron that Makes Pearl Jam Amazing
A few years back, one of the members of Pearl Jam walked into a record store to find one of their concerts on a bootleg that was priced at an atrocious [price]. They then decided, whether it made money or not, that they would release all of their concerts from the 2000 World Tour on CD and price them affordably. This translated to over 70 double CDs and one three disk, "Official Bootleg." They set a Billboard record for having 6 of these sets on the top 100 albums at once.

They have again decided to produce their tour in this way; this time on a much smaller scale. This show in Perth, Australia is one of two set for mass release from the overseas leg of the tour.

They play a lot of new material from "Riot Act" and quite a bit that is off of their previous records. They also drop a few tracks from their "unreleased" catalog, and even a few covers (a pearl jam staple).

The highlights are many. They play the almost forgotten: "Jeremy." It sounded great. The hits are all there save for "Black" & "Dissident." Victoria Williams' "Crazy Mary" is always a treat.

Overall, this is one of the best bootlegs released thus far. They play a healthy mix from all of the albums. . . It is rather amazing trip into the past of this iconic rock group.

epc

Best of Australia, but not the tour
Thanks to iTunes, I have been able to procure most of the 2003 bootlegs. Unfortunately, Neil Young's 'Rockin' in the Free World' is never available, which kinda makes a lot of shows incomplete. But regardless. This is definitely the best of the Australian leg bootlegs. Being that this is only the tenth show, there are still some mistakes. The worst of which is at the beginning of 'Gods' Dice' where Eddie starts way late. Also, another thing that's damaging to the concert is a rather quiet crowd, which fails Eddie in not singing at the end of 'Jeremy'. Not to knock the Australians at all, but one could just imagine Eddie's face showing a little disappointment in the crowd at that point.

I think the highlight of the whole show is actually the opener, 'Long Road'. All other versions I've heard have a strange twang on them that wasn't there during the 2000 Binaural tour, and this is definitely due to Eddie Vedder switching his guitar from the Fender Telecaster to the Gibson SG with its P90 pickups. But here, something is different, and the opening is much darker with the higher strings not really registering. Mike McCready's guitar is also unusually loud on this one, which is actually really great to hear. 'Save You' also sounds good here. A lot of feedback and such in the beginning, with Mike then hitting the intro, which is quite uncommon in any Pearl Jam song, with that job usually being taken by Stone Gossard. 'Get Right', a great song written by Matt Cameron also sounds quite good, and moves well into yet another good Riot Act song, 'Cropduster'. Eddie's vocals on 'Habit' actually sound much better here than most other parts of the entire tour, making this a good closer of the first disc. Ironically, the band seems to do best on their newest songs in this concert, with a great take on the trippy 'You Are' and '1/2 Full'. Now here's where I'm really conflicted. The songs that follow are rather mediocre, which can easily blamed on the fact that it's still early in the tour. But the last few songs of this show are actually some of the best versions of the tour. Eddie's duet with Mark Seymour on 'Throw Your Arms Around Me' is absolutely beautiful, which goes into a rather short rendition of 'Alive'. But surprisingly, this isn't the closer. Instead it is the classic CCR tune 'Fortunate Son' that salutes farewell to Australia, with a rather cool sounding intro from Johnny Mar and the Healers, and a very long goodbye to the continent.

While definitely not being one of the best of the whole tour, this concert definitely has a couple memorable songs, and is a definite buy for any real fans of Pearl Jam. But if someone were looking to buy something to give them a good look at the band performing the hell out of a place, one should definitely try the second New York show, or the mammoth State College bootleg.

Good live show.
As they did in 2000, in 2003, Pearl Jam decided to beat bootleggers by releasing every show they performed, although this time rather than flood the market with 72 releases, they decided only a select few would end up in retail outlets. This show, from Perth, Australia, is the earliest of the commercially available releases, and the only one from the Australian tour (although one from Japan, eight days later is also available).

It feels like on this show that the band saved their best performances for the more recent material-- it works out ok since seven of the songs come from the last album-- take the beginning of the show, after opener "Long Road" (fantastically performed), "Save You" and "Gods' Dice" are powerful, intense, and boiling. The intensity seems to let up a bit for the next few songs, although in there are great readings of "Cropduster" and a fantastic "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" (and if I'm not mistaken the only time Vedder gets the lyrics right on the whole Australian tour) and some fantastic vocals (both lead and harmony) on new song "Cropduster".

The last portion of the first disc sees the intensity rise again with powerful readings of "I Am Mine", "Love Boat Captain" (even if it does funble a bit in the opening strains) and "MFC". The intensity keeps up even as the pieces slow down at the beginning of the second disc, with an unnervingly brilliant performances of "You Are" and "Wishlist".

Pearl Jam is known for their marathon encores, this show being no exception with seven songs performed in two encores-- the first is more hits oriented, with a fumbled "Do the Evolution" joined by "Betterman", "Daughter", and "Crazy Mary". The second encore is a pair of covers around "Alive". Closer "Fortunate Son" is a lot of fun, with one the openers joining in.

Truth to be told, the band put on better shows during this tour, but whats amazing is what a value these sets are-- they're priced rather nicely and are pretty much all worth having. Recommended.