22/6/00 - Fila Forum, Milan, Italy
Pearl Jam's unprecedented documentation of their Europe 2000 tour has  done more than offer their fans an affordable alternative to music pirates; it  effectively ensures their stature as one of rock's greatest live acts. Recorded  before an unusually ecstatic audience at Milan's Fila Forum, the album finds the  band playing off the crowd's good vibe with wild, sometimes antic abandon.  Building from one of the tour's favored openers,Binaural's "Of the Girl," with  the crowd hanging on every word, the vibe grows as the crowd joins in on "Small  Town" and a number of others. The band seems unusually energetic, with Mike  Mcready repeatedly giving in to the temptation to make like a soaring guitar  god. Eddie Vedder introduces a driving version of "MFC" fromYieldby telling the crowd that  he wrote it in Italy after falling in love there. "But," he notes, "she had four  wheels and was called a Mini." A great feel-good show from a band once notorious  for its dour shoe gazing--maybe it really is the dawn of a new millennium.--Jerry McCulley