Back at the Town Pump

At the Town Pump

Four weeks earlier the band had played the ASCAP showcase at RKCNDY in Seattle, two days after Ten came out; that night is told in The ASCAP Showcase. Between the two, the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology lists one date, marked canceled: The Met in Spokane on September 18, supporting Alice in Chains.

The show falls at the start of a run the same chronology sets under a heading of its own, a fall tour it calls the band's first as a headliner in the United States, in support of Ten, with I Love You opening for the most part. The run had begun the night before, by the same listing, at Harpo's in Victoria, a date Five Horizons also lists; the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology names The Colour out of Space as the opener there and prints no set list. The band's own tour book for the run, which the same source reproduces, lays out the same start, Harpo's on the 25th and the Town Pump on the 26th, and names the drummer only as Dave.

The band had been in the room before, by the same listing: on January 11, under the name Mookie Blaylock, it had opened for Alice in Chains at the Town Pump before a crowd the entry put at 160. Five Horizons has no Town Pump listing in either month.

The Performance

The set list is marked incomplete and gives four titles: "Once," "Even Flow," "Alive," and "I've Got a Feeling"; what else was played, and in what order, is not recorded. The three Pearl Jam songs are the first three on Ten, in the album's order.

The fourth is a Beatles song, and the entry calls it the band's debut of "I've Got a Feeling"; neither chronology lists the title at any earlier show. The same entry says the band's studio version of the song appears on the Japanese release of Ten and on an early promotional release of "Alive"; Wikipedia's article on the album lists "I've Got a Feeling" among the bonus tracks of a Japanese edition, credited there to Lennon and McCartney.

The review the entry links, by Steve Newton in The Georgia Straight of October 3, 1991, as transcribed there, fills in some of what the list leaves out. Newton had been warned that the band was "extremely loud," he wrote, and came into a busy club around midnight; the band opened with "Once"; during "Alive" Vedder climbed onto the ledge behind the stage and hung from the light fixtures over the drum kit before jumping down; part-way through he changed a U2 T-shirt for a Pigface one; and the set ended, in Newton's words, with "a severe version" of the Beatles song. The review names the drummer as Dave Krusen; both chronologies and Wikipedia have Dave Abbruzzese on drums from August 23.

The Next Step

The next show in both listings was two nights later, on Saturday, September 28, at Satyricon in Portland, Oregon; that night is told in Saturday Night at Satyricon.