Primed the Crowd

At Braden Auditorium

Two days earlier the band had played Indianapolis; that night is told in No Cameras or Recorders. The hall is Braden Auditorium in both chronologies, and Five Horizons adds the campus to its heading: IL State Univ. Illinois State University, by Wikipedia's account, is a public research university in Normal, founded in 1857 as Illinois State Normal University. Of the hall inside it the encyclopedia says nothing.

The advertisement sets the two guest bands side by side on one line, in type of one size, under the words special guests. It gives November 26 and 7:30PM, tickets at TicketMaster Ticket Centers and the hall's box office, and a number to charge by phone. It carries no year, no price and no promoter. The tour book the chronology reproduces has no Normal date at all: its row for that Tuesday reads Indianapolis, with the venue column blank, and the row before marks the Monday a day off there.

The Performance

Both chronologies print the same three titles, in the same order, and both say the list is not the whole of it: "Why Go," "Deep" and "Alive." Three titles are all either chronology keeps, not the set.

The review the chronology reproduces is headed "Peppers, Pearls and Pumpkins rock music's newest ingredients" and signed by Brian Phipps, Pantagraph staff. That byline block is on the clipping, so the paper comes with it: The Pantagraph, by Wikipedia's account a daily serving Bloomington and Normal. No issue date is on the clipping; its first paragraph says last night, which dates the show against the issue and not the issue against a calendar. Phipps has the hall hot-wired for over three hours in all, and gives the headliners his line about it: from the moment they hit the stage, all three levels of Braden looked like a human popcorn popper.

Of the opening acts he writes two sentences: there were two of them, he says, and Seattle-based Pearl Jam "primed the crowd" with cuts from the band's debut record; the Smashing Pumpkins, he adds, were the second band. That last clause is what settles the running order: Pearl Jam went on first, by his account. The three he names are the three the chronologies print, "Alive," "Why Go" and "Deep" in his order and "Why Go," "Deep" and "Alive" in theirs. He offers them as examples rather than a list, and where either account got them the record does not say. The stage invasion that ended the headliners' own set belongs to their story.

The Next Step

Both chronologies go next to Wednesday, November 27, at Cincinnati Gardens; it is told in It's Up to Us to Transmit.