It's Up to Us to Transmit

At Cincinnati Gardens

The night before, the band had played Normal, Illinois, told in Primed the Crowd. The advertisement the chronology reproduces runs under a Budweiser Concert Series mark: Wed, Nov 27th, 7:30PM, Cincinnati Gardens, with special guests the Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam. It is cut off below the venue line. The arena, by Wikipedia's account, opened in 1949, a brick and limestone building whose entrance was decorated with six carved athletic figures.

The Performance

The set, the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's alone, was seven songs: "Release," "Even Flow," "Why Go," "Alive," "Jeremy," "Once," and "Porch." Five Horizons prints no set. The same seven titles, each time in a different order, stand in the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's lists for DeKalb on October 17 and for the first Detroit night on November 22.

Before the first song Eddie Vedder, it says, remarked on the security in a room with seats on its floor. "Good evening, hey you guys... hey hey, look... everybody's wearing blue," he said, the colour glossed by the chronology as the security's. "OK guys get ready, the pit's gonna get started any minute," he went on, a remark the chronology marks as not meant straight. "We're just gonna play something slow," he said, for the people still outside; then "Release."

Then he explained the arrangement. What he would have liked, he said, was "to have you all up front up here"; what they had instead was an arrangement made before any of the bands went on. The rule, in his words: "we're not allowed to let you do anything but stand in your seats, so it's up to us to transmit." He wanted the room to come apart, he said, and knew it would have to stay orderly; then "Even Flow."

Later he asked whether the room was warming up: "So I guess we are the warmup band, are you guys warmin' up? Just wanna make sure you're still alive," which led into "Alive." In "Once" he changed the spoken line to address the city's fire marshal, in words the chronology prints and this telling does not. Before the last song he thanked the crowd and named the two bands to come. "And there might be a really good chance that I'm gonna join you" in the crowd, he said, because "it's no fun being so far away from you." He began "Porch" with an opening changed to protest that distance, as the chronology notes.

The set had begun, the chronology says, with little to no reaction. It closed to a strong ovation.

The Next Step

Thanksgiving fell the next day, with no entry in either chronology; the next in both is Friday, November 29, at the Aragon Ballroom, in A Sea of Helpful Hands.