Quite a Sweat

At Rec Hall

The night before, the band had played the last of the run's four Roseland nights in New York; it is told in Four Red Hot Nights. The tour book for the run, as the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology reproduces it, has Sunday the 17th at Penn State University. Both chronologies name the room Rec Hall, and Five Horizons adds the university's full name. Rec Hall, by Wikipedia's account, is the Recreation Building, a field house on the University Park campus of the Pennsylvania State University, opened on January 15, 1929.

The ticket the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology reproduces, credited to a contributor, prints the University Concert Committee presenting the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Penn State Recreation on Sunday, November 17, 1991, at 8:00 PM, for $17.00. It carries a section, a row, and a seat number, and does not name Pearl Jam. The Daily Collegian's review of the night reported that the committee had put no chairs on the floor, but for a few about 75 feet back, and that anyone with a floor ticket was allowed to stand anywhere.

The Performance

The set, by the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology, was seven songs: "Wash," "Even Flow," "Why Go," "Jeremy," "Alive," "Once," and "Porch." A hand-lettered set list the same source reproduces, in joke spellings, has the same seven in the same order, a plan for the night rather than a record of it. Five Horizons prints no list for the night.

The Daily Collegian ran a review of the night and a companion piece on the opening acts, both by Joe Warminsky, a Collegian arts writer, on page 12 on Tuesday, November 19. The review, near its foot, introduced Pearl Jam as a grunge band from Seattle featuring musicians first signed by Sub Pop records, the paper's description, and said it was well received by the crowd. The Pumpkins, it went on, did not receive as much of a welcome. The companion piece, headed Warm-up acts unleash the energy needed for moshing spree, began from the usual lot of warm-up acts, something to be sat through, and found these two a good deal more than that. The crowd at Rec Hall, it reported, began to mosh as soon as Pearl Jam launched into its set.

Vedder, in the companion piece, said the crowds had given the band much support on the tour, and gave Roseland as his example: "one night the crowd passed me all the way to the end of the hall. I was swimming along on top of them and they stole my Air Jordans ... I had to finish the set barefoot." His right hand was bandaged, the paper noted; he said he had smashed a cymbal at a show and had needed 13 stitches, the paper's figure, but that it did not affect his performance. Five Horizons' note has the hand still bandaged from crashing it on a cymbal at one of the Roseland shows. His own account of the injury, given at a record store in Yonkers three days before, is told in Seven Shows in Seven Days.

The band, Vedder said, tries to let out as much energy as it can in its 30-minute show. "It may not look like we're there for long, but we work up quite a sweat," he told the paper. He had one piece of advice, which was to go and see Fugazi, given the chance. He dedicated a song to that band during the show, the piece adds, and Five Horizons' note says the same. Neither says which song, and nothing ties it to the fragment of Fugazi's "Suggestion" that both chronologies list for the second Roseland night, November 12, told in The Biggest Knicks Fan.

The Next Step

Where the run went next, the two sources give different days: Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday, November 19, in the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology, and the same city on 11/18/91 in Five Horizons; it is told in These Seven People.