Cut Short

At Club DV8

The night before, at the Denver Coliseum, the tour the three bands had been making together had ended, by the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's account and not the other's; that night is told in After the Word And. Neither chronology gives a figure for this room or a word about the building. Neither reproduces a ticket, an advertisement or a photograph for the night either: of the nights in this stretch, this is the one that left no printing at all.

The two notes are one account twice over, down to the order of the sentences. They part in three ways only: the form of the singer's first name, the side of a closing quotation mark on which three punctuation marks fall, and a possessive on one band's name in one of them. In the encore field, one marks the song a solo in brackets and the other gives the title alone.

The Performance

The set was eleven songs: "Once," "Even Flow," "State of Love and Trust," "Alive," "Black," "Deep," "Garden," "Jeremy," "Leash," "Why Go" and "Porch." After "Garden" Eddie Vedder told the room, "We didn't put Jeremy on the list!" and asked it to choose between that song and another one the entries do not name. Neither of them says which the room called for. What followed, both entries say, was a snatch of a Ramones song they name as "Blitzkrieg Bop." Then a few riffs of a song both entries print as "Smell Like Teen Spirit," a line sung to its tune, and two lines of a song both name as "Outshined," as a lead-in to "Leash." What was sung in each of the three is in both entries.

At the end of "Porch," the last song of the set, Jeff Ament broke his ankle. The show was cut short there. Eddie Vedder came back out alone and sang "Suggestion" as a brief encore. Both chronologies carry the injury, in the same place in the same account, and neither says anything more about it.

Where the Listing Picks Up

Neither chronology lists another Pearl Jam show until December 27, and both put that one in Los Angeles. Between the two dates Five Horizons carries one entry, a radio interview on December 23, and the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology carries none. The last line either of them writes about this night is about a song sung alone.