Passing Him Along

At Peony Park

The night before, the band had played Ames; that night is told in Basketball in Ames. The two chronologies name the room differently, the Royal Terrace Ballroom at Peony Park in one and the Peony Park Ballroom in the other, and the band's own tour book for the run, reproduced by the first of them, has Omaha on this Sunday under the name Peony Park.

What the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology carries beyond the list is a recollection it prints by the fan, who, by his own account, went with his older brother, who had an extra ticket, and arrived shortly after Pearl Jam had started.

The Performance

The set as the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology gives it was seven songs: "Wash," "Once," "Even Flow," "Alive," "Jeremy," "Deep," and "Release." Five Horizons prints no set.

Against Ames the night before, the list keeps the first three titles, moves "Alive" up to fourth, and ends with three the Ames list did not have, "Jeremy," "Deep," and "Release," in place of "Garden," "Why Go," and "Porch." "Release," which had opened the DeKalb list three nights earlier, closes this one; the only earlier 1991 set list the same chronology prints with "Release" last is the Cathouse in Los Angeles on October 1, where an encore followed it.

Between songs, the fan recalls in the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology, Eddie Vedder took a moment to ask everyone to back up a little and give the people at the front some space, and made some mention, as the fan remembers it, of its being good to be alive, or of not wanting anyone to get crushed. Then, as he tells it, the band launched into "Alive." Vedder jumped into the crowd during one song, the fan says, and crowd-surfed across it; the fan remembers passing him along, and a Red Hot Chili Peppers logo sticker on the back of his shorts. After Pearl Jam finished, the fan says in the same entry, he spent much of the Smashing Pumpkins' set at the very back, outside the ballroom, still able to hear the music but overheated from the Pearl Jam set and needing to cool down, a choice he calls sad in retrospect.

The Next Step

Neither lists a show on October 21. The next entry in both is Tuesday, October 22, at the Central Park Ballroom in Milwaukee; that night is told in The First Flower.