Pearl Jam + Miles Kane + Florence & the Machine @ Main Square Festival in Arras, June 30 2012

Updated July 03 with links to videos

Pearl Jam + Miles Kane + Florence & The Machine @ Main Square Festival in Arras, June 30 2012

Miles Kane

Sunshine in Paris, Rain in Arras, What the Fuck ?
Just as we're driving into the city of Arras, it's raining cats & dogs, Then it stopped and as we're making our way onto the festival Site the rain is back again, we're soaked and we haven't seen a band yet.
We are walking past the main stage where The Kooks are playing to go to the second stage to see Miles Kane.
Today there are only crap bands and the only two good bands on the bill are playing at the same time on different stages.
What a fucking brilliant idea!
We chose Miles Kane even though we saw him many times these year, he's always putting on a great show and his solo record is one of our favorite.
Despite the fact that there's literally no one to see him he's rocking like mad too bad we were so late that we only saw the last 25 min.

Charming Waitress at the bar (far right)

The sun is out now, well sort of... for Florence & The Machine on the main stage.
We know that' she's very popular specially in England, she's invited to fashion shows by Karl lagerfeld for Chanel and all... and we're still wondering why after seeing her on that stage.
She has a good "lyrical" voice and she seems very nice but the music sucks badly.
How can people listen to that crap ?

Florence & the Machine

Lots of foreigners tonight for Pearl Jam, mainly from Italy and lots of girls down the front for Florence machin.
all Pearl jams fans are trying to get the closer possible to the stage while we're waiting, the band is getting on stage at 9:45pm.
The first song as often is very quiet "Release" then for the second "Go" things are starting getting serious, all the Florence girls are making a quick exit to the back to the delight of Pearl Jam fans as the pressure in the first rows is getting harder but very manageable for real rockers.lol
Impossible to get disappointed with pearl jam, they have some great songs, the band is as tight as ever and Eddie Vedder is always making you feel confortable as if we were seeing friends playing in your backyard even though there's 20 000 people behind you.
The band is not running & acting crazy on stage as they did many years ago but they don't need to.
Mike almost fell on his ass at the beginning of the set as the floor was still wet from the rain, everybody's talking about Eddie Vedder but the real driving force behind PJ, at least on stage, is Mike Mc Ready, what a brilliant guitar player.
Florence and her keyboard player are watching the show from the wings of the stage and are having a good time dancing like mad.

SETLIST (from Official site):

01. Release
02. Go
Ed-"Before we play another note we just want to thank Florence and the Machine for bringing the sunshine, both literally and figuratively. She also spoke very beautiful French, which I won't even try. We are just going to play."
03. Severed Hand
04. Do The Evolution
05. Better Man
Ed-"This is just the perfect time of the evening for this song"
06. Low Light
07. Amongst The Waves
08. Even Flow
09. Wishlist
10. Lukin
11. Corduroy
Between songs Ed notices the band on the neighboring stage is so loud that he wonders if they should skip playing a quiet song. They decide to play one anyway.
12. Nothing Man
Ed-"I know you know the great Joe Strummer, mostly from The Clash but he was in another band called the Mescaleros. Joe has been gone for a long time know but we have been thinking of him a lot and listening to his music. This song is from The Mescaleros it is called 'Arms Aloft'"
13. Arms Aloft (Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros)
14. Unthought Known
15. The Fixer
16. Rearviewmirror

Encore Break 1
17. Given To Fly
Ed talks about the history of the band members previous projects and how long they have been together. All of this leads up to talking about the the next song being one of the first things they wrote.
18. Breath
19. Just Breathe
20. Black
21. Jeremy
22. Alive
23. Yellow Ledbetter
As the band are saying goodnight they thank the band playing next door and and then dance to their music

PJ is playing different shows every night with different setlists, I haven't seen what they played on the other shows but we had a couple of gems tonight including a cover of Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros (here on video) far from being the best song of the night but I guess they're not playing this one too often.
Mike Cameron is back with PJ just a month after playing in Paris with his other band: Soundgarden, don't know what will be the future for Soundgarden but we hope he'll stick with PJ.

Eddie's in good spirit tonight maybe is it the Bordeaux wine that he's drinking straight from the bottle all along the show. I mean, only a American can drink Bordeaux from the bottle...He ended the set a bit drunk it seems.
Terrific version of "Rearviewmirror" and the band is out after just over 75 min, ugh !!!
Too bad some part of the audience (on the right) and PJ, they mentioned it on stage, could hear the band that was playing some dance music on the second stage, on the quieter songs.

Luckily the encore with PJ are quite long and the band is ending their set with powerful versions of "Black" "jeremy" "Alive" and leaving us on a quiet note : "Yellow Ledbetter" with great guitar work by Mike.
Another Fantastic 2 hour set by PJ

Stone Gossard looking at Mike during "Yellow Ledbetter" (far left)

see ya guys

Merchandising & Pass sheet

"Arms Aloft"

Also in Paris on saturday:
Alanis Morissette @ zénith
Red Hot Chili Peppers @ Stade de France

Sheila E & George Clinton @ Enghien les Bains (free show by the lake) [20 km north of Paris]

Reminder:
Pearl Jam (& Ben Harper) @ Arras in 2010