A Real Band

At the Blind Pig

The night before, the band had played Kalamazoo, a show moved from one room to another; it is told in It Simply Has Been Moved. The plan had been a day of rest: the run's tour book, reproduced by the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology, has Thursday the 21st as a day off in Detroit, ahead of the Detroit dates.

An orange handbill the same source reproduces, with the mark of Prism Productions, bills the night as a Special Club Appearance. Its lines run: from Seattle, Epic recording artists Pearl Jam, former members of Mother Love Bone and Green River, November 21, Blind Pig, Ann Arbor, advance tickets $7.50. The ticket it reproduces prints Prism Presents Pearl Jam, Thursday, November 21, 1991, with 9:30 PM in its door code, general admission at $7.50, and a rule that one must be 19 to enter. A newspaper feature the same source files under the day before ends on a listing box that has Pearl Jam performing tonight at the Blind Pig, with special guests the Zoo Gods, tickets $7.50 in advance.

The Blind Pig, by Wikipedia's account, was established as a home for blues musicians and opened in 1971.

The Performance

The list, the same in both entries, is ten songs, "Wash," "Once," "Even Flow," "State of Love and Trust," "Alive," "Black," "Deep," "Jeremy," "Why Go," and "Porch," with "I've Got a Feeling," the Beatles song, as the encore. By a count of the printed titles that is ten songs and an encore, eleven in all, where the complete support lists nearest it, Columbus and the first Detroit night, print six and seven. Before "Porch" both print a double fragment, "Funky Crime" and "Window Paine"; the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology sets the pair off as one item between commas, and Five Horizons runs the pair and "Porch" together with slashes. It is the pair both print for the third Roseland night, November 15, told in The Michael Jackson Video. The first is a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, by both chronologies' notes for November 15, and the second a Smashing Pumpkins song, by the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's note for November 13. On its own night, the band borrowed from both of the bands it had been touring with.

Both entries open their notes with a remark to the crowd. "There's nothing better in the whole world than a sea of people," Vedder told the room, and then asked the tide to go out a bit. He asked the crowd to take a step back and give a little breath, and asked, in rougher words than these, that nobody climb up and jump without knowing how. He ended, as both print it: "Let's just enjoy the experience."

An exchange follows in both, about a member of the crew whose name the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology spells Skully and Five Horizons spells Scully. Jeff Ament asked Stone Gossard whether that crew member gets "paid double," and Gossard answered, "I dunno... can we?" Vedder's response, in both: "We're not doing this for us... it's for them." The personnel page of the run's tour book, as the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology reproduces it, lists a guitar tech under that chronology's spelling of the nickname.

The rest is the same in both entries. He thanked the Chili Peppers for giving the band the night off so that it could, in the words both print, "... be a real band." He introduced "State of Love and Trust," in the entries' phrase, as from the movie they are going to be in. The remark names no film; the song, by Wikipedia's account, first appeared on the soundtrack to the 1992 film Singles, in which Vedder, Gossard, and Ament play a fictional band. During "Deep" he changed a line to name the town, and during "Porch" he asked the crowd to pass him to the back. In the encore, "Outshined," Soundgarden's song, and "Oceans" were intermingled in the jam during "I've Got a Feeling."

The Next Step

The next entry in both is Friday, November 22, the first of two nights at the State Theatre in Detroit, with the Chili Peppers and the Pumpkins again; it is told in For the Pistons.