Pearl Jam Tribute at the Blue Frog

First things first, if you’re going to Blue Frog after a long time, you should probably realise that the sign outside says ‘Todi & Co.’ NOT ‘Todi Industries’. That being said, after running/sprinting/jogging a good 1.5 Km, I finally made it to the aforementioned destination only to reach a good one hour early! To be honest, I came to Half Step Down’s Pearl Jam tribute with ridiculously high expectations. After all, I have been worshiping one of grunge’s great four for the better part of the last six years. Initially, the crowd seemed a bit sparse, but as the night wore on, the crowd picked up and were genuinely rocking to the tunes. Now, I know absolutely nothing about HSD, but that’s not the reason why I attended this gig. I was more interested in hearing their interpretation of one my favourite bands of all time. I can’t say that I was wholly satisfied but it wasn’t a dud either.

From the outset, I couldn’t help but notice that lead singer Dhaval seemed a bit nervous, but I couldn’t blame him. Channelling one’s inner Eddie Vedder is no mean task! He even cracked a joke about not having a bottle of wine with him, but sadly only a handful of people seemed to get the reference. HSD kicked off their set with Vitalogy’s ‘Better Man’.  It’s no doubt one of PJs classics but an odd way to begin. Rather than go into an in-depth song by song review of the gig, ill just highlight the good and the bad. The sound was extremely crisp. Each instrument got its due and the guys in the sound booth did a very good job. The rhythm section of HSD was solid, not too many mistakes were to be heard and drummer Srijan was very impressive. But the real show stealer was lead guitarist Rohan. His solos really pumped up the crowd and infused a lot of energy into the songs especially on ‘Even Flow’ and ‘Alive’. I could see many people in the crowd air-guitaring along with him. Dhaval kept crowd interaction to a minimum, mostly rejecting requests and but occasionally giving in and granting them as well. He urged the crowd to sing along to the more popular songs, thrusting the mike towards them. But unfortunately he couldn’t quite hit all the right notes. Now i agree, imitating Eddie Vedder’s voice is no mean feat, but isn’t that the point of a PJ tribute? There were moments when he was woefully off or simply couldn’t go high at all on songs like ‘Nothingman’ and ‘Release’. Hear the studio versions; you’ll know what I’m talking about. Also I found the setlist to be particularly odd. Granted, the hits had to be included; ‘Alive’, ‘Even Flow’, ‘Black’ etc.  But isn’t a tribute gig supposed to pay tribute to a bands entire career?  I was disappointed to see that they didn’t cover anything from 2006’s self-titled or from ‘Backspacer’. They could’ve at least covered ‘The Fixer’!  Even though they did cover some obscure songs like ‘MFC’ and ‘No Way’, that was the problem, they’re too obscure, even amongst diehard fans.

Maybe I’m in the minority, maybe I expected too much. Looking at the majority of the crowd, they seemed to love every minute of it. But the inner fanboy within couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that night.

Set List

• Better Man

• Porch

• MFC

• I Am Mine

• No way

• Daughter

• Yellow Ledbetter

• Even Flow

• Light Years

• Garden

• Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town

• Go

• Black

• Why Go

• Release

• Last Kiss

• Jeremy

• Alive