Feel Lucky Tonight

At the Oscar Mayer Theater

Two nights earlier the band had played the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina, the last date of its own club run; that night is told in The Van Goes Home. The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's entry for that night says the van the band had toured in was driven back to Seattle after the show, and that for the next few months, on the Red Hot Chili Peppers tour, the band would travel by bus. The night between, Tuesday, October 15, is a divided record: a club date in Washington, D.C., that the band's own tour book had planned, that Five Horizons lists in a bare line, that Wikipedia's table of the tour marks canceled, and that the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology does not list.

The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology opens a new heading at this date, for the Red Hot Chili Peppers tour: the Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam, it says, supported the Chili Peppers on a two-month Blood Sugar Sex Magik tour of North America. Blood Sugar Sex Magik, by Wikipedia's account, was the Red Hot Chili Peppers' fifth studio album, released on September 24, 1991. Wikipedia's account of Pearl Jam's own tour says the band canceled its remaining dates to take the slot opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and its table of that tour has Madison as the first of the dates with the Chili Peppers and the Pumpkins.

The band's own tour book, as the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology reproduces it, had planned a different October: club dates from Washington, D.C., on the 15th through Chicago on the 26th. From the 16th the two listings place the band on the Chili Peppers dates instead, in Madison, DeKalb, Ames, Omaha, and Milwaukee. A second tour book, for the Red Hot Chili Peppers run and reproduced by the same source, has Madison on the 16th in a room it prints as the Civic Center, where both chronologies say the Oscar Mayer Theater and where a ticket the same chronology reproduces prints both names, Madison Civic Center above Oscar Mayer Theatre. The same book lists the drummer as Dave Abbruzzese, where the earlier book had printed Dave alone.

The theater itself, by Wikipedia's account, was originally the Capitol Theater of 1928, a movie palace; restored and downsized, it carries that name again today as part of the Overture Center for the Arts on State Street. Both entries file the show under a supporting line naming the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Smashing Pumpkins, in different orders, and Five Horizons carries one note: that this was the band's first show supporting the Chili Peppers.

The Performance

The set, the same in both entries, was seven songs: "Wash," "Once," "Even Flow," "Why Go," "Deep," "Alive," and "Porch." Between "Alive" and "Porch" both carry "Suggestion," Fugazi's song, as a fragment rather than a song in the set, the first in parentheses and Five Horizons joined to "Porch." Wikipedia's article on Fugazi's 1988 EP, which carries the song, says Pearl Jam covered "Suggestion" at various concerts in the early 1990s, usually as a tag to another song or an improvised jam.

Set beside the Cat's Cradle list of two nights before, the seven are that night's eleven with four titles gone, "State of Love and Trust," "Garden," "Black," and "Jeremy," and no encore printed. Of the seven that remain, "Why Go" has moved up to fourth and "Alive" down to sixth, with "Deep" still between them.

Before "Even Flow," the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology says, Vedder put a question to the crowd: "Do you guys feel lucky tonight? I mean is your blood pumping? This is our first show with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You should feel lucky, and I feel lucky to be playing."

During "Porch," the same entry says, Vedder climbed the amps to the side balcony, then to the outside of the balcony, then around to the other side, and dropped into the pit.

The Next Step

The next entry in both is the following night, Thursday, October 17, at the Duke Ellington Ballroom at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois; that night is told in No Chairs in DeKalb.