Grapes for My Good Friends

At the Memorial Auditorium

Three nights earlier the band had played the second Toronto night; that night is told in Tonight It Lives. Thursday, October 31, is the tour book's day off in Boston, and Friday, November 1, its Boston date at the Walter Brown Arena; the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology gives 3,806 for that night and marks it sold out, Five Horizons places the arena at Boston University, and both say, in the same words, that Vedder dove into the audience and surfed out to the soundboard and back. Neither prints a set list for it. An ad the first reproduces for Boston bills the Red Hot Chili Peppers, all ages, with special guests the Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam, at 7:30, $19.50 general admission, at the B.U. Walter Brown Arena, 285 Babcock Street.

Both chronologies call the room the Memorial Auditorium; Five Horizons adds "Univ. of VT" to the name, a label the ticket does not carry. The hall itself, by Wikipedia's account, is the city of Burlington's own, built in 1927 and 1928 at Main and South Union Streets and run by the city's parks and recreation department. The ticket the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology reproduces prints the Memorial Auditorium, Burlington, VT, with no university, for Saturday, November 2, 1991, at 7:00 PM, general admission, presented by Metropolitan/APB, with the Chili Peppers and the Pumpkins on it and not Pearl Jam; the tour book has the date in Burlington at the Memorial Auditorium.

The Performance

The set, the same in both entries, was seven songs: "Wash," "Once," "Even Flow," "Alive," "Jeremy," "Why Go," and "Porch." Between "Alive" and "Jeremy" both carry "Suggestion," Fugazi's song: the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology in parentheses, its notation for a fragment, and Five Horizons as a plain title in its list of eight.

The line the first prints is the one it printed for Milwaukee on October 22, title for title, fragment and all; against Toronto three nights before, "Wash" is back at the top and "Once" second, and "Oceans" is gone.

After "Why Go," both entries say, Vedder told the crowd he had a gift: "I have a gift for you. I know you guys get hungry up in front. No band's ever paid any attention to this. Don't ever tell 'em that Pearl Jam forgot about you. Some grapes for all my good friends," and a banana for someone whose name both mark unintelligible. Five Horizons prints the same words with the band's name shortened to its initials.

The Next Step

The next entry in both is the following night, Sunday, November 3, at the Springfield Civic Center in Springfield, Massachusetts; that night is told in A Small Club That's Full.