Search - Pearl Jam :: Live On Two Legs

Not a good represntation of Pearl Jam live

kireviewer | Sunnyvale, Ca United States | 05/31/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Released in 1998, this is a selection of songs pulled from different concerts during the tour to support the CD, Yield. It is 71 minutes long.



The sound quality is good but the mix is poor. The sound quality is not excellent, or on par with a studio album, but it is still better than many live CD's. The mix is bad in that many parts, the audience noise is cranked up way too high. You end up getting whistling and whoops over powering the music in most parts where an acoustic guitar is played.



I don't think this is a very good representation of how good Pearl Jam could be in concert. I think the song selection is poor.



Pearl Jam typically plays for over 2 hours. They would play some songs straight up, close to the studio versions. On other songs, the group would really open up, playing them much differently than the studio version. And it would change every night.



On this CD, most of the songs chosen were played very close to the original studio album. There is not enough difference between many of these live versions form the studio version that would make them note worthy. Many are just a short run through of the song (under three minutes). So, you just end up noisy versions of the songs with poorer sound quality and lots of annoying audience noise mixed in.



There are only a few songs where the group opens up and plays them differently than the studio versions, like an excellent Daughter, Do the Evolution and Black. It is not necessary that the group jams, or stretches the songs out to 10 minutes (as Pearl Jam does a lot), it is only necessary that the group does something different with the songs.



I am not one of those that prefer whole concert albums. I like the concept of taking songs from several different concerts, but you have to pick the best songs and best performances from the tour. I have a recording of a radio broadcast from one of the shows during this tour. Half of the songs from the broadcast are better than anything on this CD."