Global Citizen Festival, Central Park, New York City

[TMG]

​

BIG day today for all us huge Pearl Jam fans here in NYC, so I’m even throwing up an old PJ sig on here to celebrate!! ….Pearl Jam are playing later today here on the Great Lawn in Central Park, which is literally about a 10-15 minutes walk from where I live, in fact I could probably throw open the windows and hear it!! - it's the Global Citizen Festival, and me and a friend managed to get tickets, which were actually FREE, free concerts? – now there’s an idea!!

The trouble is there’s also 3 other acts on the bill ….Coldplay are actually okay, and in fact some of their stuff IMO has been great, and they're due to be first band up on stage at around 4.00 o'clock, but as for the other two....personally I'd rather spend all day sticking needles into my ears, but as it's for such a great cause then I guess I'll put up with it.

The Pope was actually here yesterday - which pretty much shut down the entire midtown area for a few hours, and drew huge crowds, though I really don't know whether The Pope is bigger here than Eddie Vedder.

 

[JimJam]

Never thought i'd see Pearl Jam and Beyonce on the same bill!

 

[TMG]

Yeah you get a lot of strange bedfellows in music when there's a common cause to support.

But it was a great day out, even Ed Sheeran was okay, who normally does nothing for me.

The show was delayed, but Pearl Jam ended up headlining effectively, coming on last, and predictably blew everybody who came before them off stage – the final song of the night, PJ’s version of Neil Young’s ‘Rockin in the Free World’ when they brought everyone up on stage at the end, was pretty damn great –



Pearl Jam in Central Park under the stars was just a breath-taking experience, even if their set was only 12 songs, which is maybe only a third of their normal set length.

Crowd seemed subdued to me for 50,000, especially since 80% of them were Pearl Jam fans, who are normally nuts, probably had something to do with the ban on the sale of booze available in the park.

Eddie’s duet with Beyonce, doing Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, was very cool too, but all sorts of weird and wonderful people turned up – Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, Richard Branson, Leonardo di Caprio, Hugh Jackman, Bono, Sting - though they had WAY too many speakers, about 45 minutes of speakers was just absurd; okay we get it after the first 10 minutes already, End Global Poverty!!!!

Oh, and Coldplay too I thought are superb on stage, in fact I may even try to see them next time they tour.

 

[JimJam]

Bill Nye The Science Guy with his signature bow-tie rockin' the stage!

 

[Magic]

That whole concert was cool!