The Battle of the Band

The sellout crowd at the Sovereign Center erupted Friday night when Pearl Jam ripped into "Animal," the second song of their concert to kick off the Vote for Change tour in Reading, Pennsylvania. After rocking through the first few songs with the intensity the band has sustained for well over a decade, front man Eddie Vedder told the enthusiastic crowd, "If you're gonna participate in the vote as well as you participate in the singing, then we don't have to talk about politics at all."

But politics were hard to avoid. Sponsored by MoveOn Pac, the tour features 20 artists rallying to play 37 shows in 12 battleground states during the next two weeks. Proceeds will go to America Coming Together, a growing grassroots organization that has been registering voters and garnering support for progressive candidates.

In fact, the idea of "America coming together" was the recurrent theme throughout the evening. "This election and any election is not about hate and opposition, but finding a better way for all of us, and by all of us, I mean the whole earth!" Vedder declared after the band covered John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth," in which Vedder substituted "Georgie Porgie" for "Tricky Dicky." Vedder also paused to eulogize Johnny Ramone, a close friend despite being an ardent Republican.

Bi-partisanship was the perfect message to deliver to the slightly unusual crowd, which was also there to see indie-rock superstars Death Cab for Cutie. Of course, there were the college students, like a couple of fans from West Chester University, who agreed, "It's nice to see bands that are together on the same issue get out and play together." There were also some local concertgoers like Debbie Moyer, who stood out.

Moyer was a Nurse Administrator from nearby Auburn until recently, when she was forced to stop working in order to care for her mother-in-law and her daughter, who suffers from a muscular disorder, and had rested all week to come to the concert. Brought up in a Republican household, Moyer voted for Bush in 2000. But she disagreed with the President about the Iraq War, and has been horrified by the exorbitant cost of medications for her family and the paltry Social Security check she will soon receive. "I try to keep an open mind." Moyer said. "I'm a fan of Pearl Jam, and I'm really interested in what they have to say."

Prior to the show, Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard sat down with AlterNet to talk about the band's participation in politics, the confluence of art and activism, and what makes the band happy.

Zack Pelta-Heller: What are some of the goals that you hope to accomplish with your involvement in this tour?

Stone Gossard: My personal goal is to help John Kerry get elected. And I think that's probably almost universal within this group; we felt that by going out, and raising money for America Coming Together, that we were going to get people registered to vote, and we were going to raise awareness about the fact that maybe George Bush had had his shot at the presidency. We'd seen what we'd gotten with George Bush, and maybe it's time for something new. We're not going to say who it is (John Kerry), but we'll go out, and run it up the flagpole.

...Ralph [Nader] was proven wrong, in terms of 'There's no difference between the candidates.' I don't think we'd be in Iraq if Al Gore was president. I think we had signed on to the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty, we would have done a lot of things differently in terms of being engaged in the world community in a proactive, positive way that would inspire connectivity, inspire our allies to work with us in figuring out things like terrorism, global warming, environmental degradation, genocide in the Sudan, all of these issues. I just think that the world community would be much more likely to want to partner with us if they felt like we were respecting them and not sending troops to Iraq before we even had a coalition built.