Posters on the Balcony

At the Troubadour

Two nights earlier the band had played the I-Beam in San Francisco; that night is told in Monday at the I-Beam. The night between, in the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's listing alone, it had played the Cathouse in Los Angeles, a room the same listing had it in on February 12 as Mookie Blaylock, with I Love You opening, twelve songs, and the same encore as at the I-Beam. The Troubadour, which both entries place in Los Angeles, Wikipedia places in West Hollywood, with a capacity of 500, the figure the first entry prints as sold out.

A listings preview signed Johnny Angel, reproduced by the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology from a publication it does not name, billed the night in advance: Epic recording artists Pearl Jam, an "off-shoot group" of Mother Love Bone "with a new album and a new singer," and a room it expected to be crowded. Its own entry describes the room before the show in its own terms: the venue was crawling with "buzz killers," it says, and "suits" were everywhere, and Epic's publicity people had covered the balcony railings with large Pearl Jam posters before the show. The stiffness of an industry event dissipated, it says, as soon as the lights went down, and the band won over what it calls yet another jaded Los Angeles crowd.

The entry adds two names from the room: a writer for the Hollywood Reporter, impressed, it says, by the singer's climbing but not enough to spell his name right, and Duff McKagan, the bassist of Guns N' Roses and a transplanted Seattleite in its words, who turned up backstage after the set.

The Performance

The set as the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology gives it was eleven songs: "Release," "Once," "Even Flow," "State of Love and Trust," "Alive," "Garden," "Deep," "Black," "Jeremy," "Why Go," and "Porch," with no encore printed. Five Horizons has no set for the night.

Against the I-Beam list two nights before, the eleven are the same titles with "Release" at the top in place of "Wash," and the Beatles song, the encore in the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's lines for each of the three shows before, is not on the list.

Five Horizons' one note is that Vedder climbed up to the lighting rig and then to the balcony; the Hollywood Reporter's writer, the other entry says, was wowed by what it calls his high-wire act.

The Next Step

The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's next entry, for Thursday, October 3, at the Airport Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles for the Foundations Forum, is marked canceled: the band's own set was called off, but its entry and Five Horizons' both record that four of its members, all but the drummer, joined Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron there for "Hunger Strike" as Temple of the Dog. Both list the band at Winter's in San Diego on Saturday, October 5.