Pearl Jam At The Fox, 3-14-94
15 Years Ago today was a monumental gig in the world of the Mixmaster.
Pearl Jam, at the Fox.
They were touring on their second album, Vs., and their was a lot of attention on the band. For me, I was in full fledged obsession. I bought every single regardless of what country released it and picked up every magazine that Eddie Vedder or the band was in as a whole. I’ve written before about when the album came out, but this quick tidbit is about the concert (the ticket experience will come later).
This was probably the first show that I completely absorbed and paid attention to in detail. There were gigs before this that I loved and could talk about semi-intelligently but truth of the matter is before this I would drift off during a song I didn’t particularly care for or would just lose track. I don’t think I appreciated gigs from a musical standpoint until this one. On this day, I was stoked enough to forego the mental meanderings to watch the show and for the first time I was able to really appreciate the band as a complete unit. The band was rockin’ and just as cool live as they were every time I saw them on TV or VHS bootleg concerts. I suppose it also served as an exception to the notion that a band could be as good in person as on MTV.
They played solidly. Dave Abbruzese was on fire, total limb independence it seemed. The guitars/bass played with much skill and energy. Every song was freaking awesome. They didn’t have any mediocre ones yet. Sure some made you air guitar more enthusiastically than others, but no song was getting skipped because I didn’t like it (that didn’t happen until two albums later with ‘No Code’*). They debuted a song from Vitalogy and demonstrated why they were the biggest band in USA at the time. If there was a bigger band I can’t remember them. Bigger selling singles? Well, yeah, (Boyz II Men, bloody Ace Of Base, probably Gin N Juice) and while Nirvana was probably as big, they toured far far less.
Every ‘Seattle sound’ fan I knew had a copy of the ‘Singles’ soundtrack. You should if you don’t, it’s a great record. Anyway, Pearl Jam had 2 amazing songs on it, State Of Love & Trust and Breath. The former was being played regularly, the latter, only half a dozen times up to that point as far as I knew** and it was at the top of my wishlist for the night. So Stone Gossard starts doing this little riff on his gee-tar that I recognized from a recently acquired bootleg as leading into State Of Love & Trust. Ahhh…when spending $30 for a one disc bootleg made sense… I told that to Shag, very cocky probably. But that wasn’t so. Instead they break into Breath and I my mental marbles roll. Still one my favourites PJ songs I was beside myself. It was a high water mark moment where I wanted to call everyone I knew to tell them how awesome my night was, and how there’s must certainly be sucking donkey by comparison.
Some other highlights were Dissident, Rearviewmirror, Why Go?, Glorified G, and the song starting the show, Release.
Speaking of the opening, there were 2 opening acts. First band was a favourite of bass player Jeff Ament, a band from Minneapolis called ‘The Frogs’ who were quite a hoot. Grant Lee Buffalo was second but I took a cat nap because they weren’t Pearl Jam. Nothing against them, but they weren’t Pearl Jam. The Frogs came with credentials.
Alex’s sister was ushering that night with a bunch of other youngsters because hype about these crazy flannel wearing long hairs frightened off the regulars. Maybe the GNR riot was still alive and well in peoples minds. When PJ was here for Lollapalooza in 1992 they were rowdier than the crowd (but had they played later in the day who knows).
As far as I can tell, this was also the start of me writing down set list. That’s 15 years of poor penmanship penned in awful light. Some culture will dig up my notebooks in 900 years and bass a religion around the hieroglyphs.
It took me 14 years, I finally found a bootleg of this show. It’s an audio rip from a VHS tape but hey, I’ll take it. So download Breath and State Of Love & Trust. Oh yeah, what kind of post would this be without a set list?
Release
Go
Animal
Dissident
Evenflow
Why Go?
Jeremy
improv
Glorified G
Daughter (w/ bits of Beginning To See The Light (Velvet Underground cover, 1st time played) and W.M.A.)
Blood
improv
Breath
State of Love and Trust
Black
Alive
Not For You
Rearviewmirror
Elderly Woman…
Porch
*Though the song ‘Bugs’ on Vitalogy was way over my head at the time. Maybe bands you like should be a little ahead of you.
**Turns out it was actually the 32nd time. Oh well. It’s still a rare tune overall, being performed 57 times since October 1990. For comparison purposes: some originals haven’t been played that much, they’ve played The Who song Baba O’Riley twice as much, Evenflow has been played 622 times, Alive has 544 knotches on it’s guitar neck.
Jake and some of his friends and Stereo Steve saw the second night, and here’s the set list for that gig.
Why Go
Deep
Animal
Once
Rats (played even less that Breath!)
Blood
Glorified G
Daughter (w/ bit of The Real Me by The Who)
Alive
Go
Even Flow
Spin the Black Circle
Porch/Beginning to See the Light
Corduroy
Rearviewmirror
Black
Leash/Improv
I’m One (The Who cover)
Baba O’Riley (The Who cover)
Peace out dawgs.