PJ Music Factory

Five Hundred or Fourteen Hundred

· Alaska · Oslo

The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology puts fourteen hundred people in the room and marks the night sold out; Five Horizons puts five hundred there and prints nothing else at all. Two objects the chronology publishes disagree about the price, and one of them names a room neither chronology gives.

On Saturday, February 8, 1992, Pearl Jam played Alaska in Oslo, a room and a city both documents give in the same words. The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology puts the attendance at 1,400 and marks the night sold out; Five Horizons puts it at 500. That figure is the whole of the Five Horizons entry, which runs to two lines: a heading and an attendance, with no set list, no note and no running time. The chronology gives the night seven lines, with an opening act, a soundcheck, two lists it marks incomplete, and a note. Everything beyond the room, the city and the two figures is the chronology's, and is marked as such.

The show

The Two Figures

The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's 1,400 and Five Horizons' 500 are two documents' own figures for the same room on the same night, and both stand, neither settled. Neither document says where its figure came from, and neither mentions the other. Only the chronology marks the night sold out, and the phrase is its own. Neither chronology prints a capacity; the band's own production sheet for the night gives the room's capacity as 1,400, and neither chronology's figure is confirmed by it.

The Performance

The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology names The Swamp Babies as the opening act and lists a soundcheck of one song, "Once." It marks both the set list and the encore incomplete, in those words, in the labels themselves. The incomplete set is "Wash," "Once," "Even Flow," "Alive" and "Porch"; the incomplete encore is "I've Got A Feeling," "Baba O'Riley" and "(Jinx)."

The Crown Prince of Norway, Haakon Magnus, was in the crowd, the chronology says, with people it calls friends inside quotation marks and glosses as lifeguards. Morten Kristiansen, of the Norwegian band Hedge Hog, sang with the singer through one chorus of "Even Flow." The Swamp Babies came back on in the encore and jammed with the band on "Jinx," a song by Tad. Five Horizons carries none of it.

The Next Step

Stockholm, the night before, is told in Galaxy on Fridays. Both documents put the next night in Copenhagen, where the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology and Five Horizons divide the same order differently; it is told in Where the Encore Began.

Recording & sound

What the Record Preserves

Twenty-two links hang under this date on the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's page: a tour itinerary, an advertisement its markup titles Ad, a ticket, a review, fourteen photographs, and four further documents whose file names read freakscene, theswampbabies, fjordfiestas and interview. The production sheet gives the address, Alaska, Slemdalsveien 7; the advertisement gives the building it stands in, the cellar of Chateau Neuf, which neither chronology carries, and prints the price as BILL. KR. 100,-, where the ticket prints PRIS 90,00. Both figures are printed on primary objects and they are not reconciled here: an advance price, a door price, a concession, a change of printing and a plain error are all available and none of them is documented. None of the twenty-two has been opened here and no person's name is taken from a markup title: the production itinerary, the advertisement and the ticket were read by Main, the other nineteen are unopened, and unopened is not absent. The sheet also gives get-in at three, soundcheck at five, doors at nine and the band on at half past eleven, and after the show 396 miles and eight hours, without naming where to. Five Horizons hangs nothing under this night and prints no note for it, and no recording of it is in this house.

Oslo comes down to a prince in the crowd, a singer from another band on one chorus, a cellar that neither chronology names, and two documents that cannot agree how full the room was.

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Sources & thanks (7)
  1. Pearl Jam Concert Chronology — 1992 page
  2. Five Horizons — Concert chronology 1992, entries for 02/07/92, 02/08/92 and 02/09/92
  3. Pearl Jam Concert Chronology — 1992 page
  4. Pearl Jam Concert Chronology — Advertisement for February 8, 1992 (image linked from the February 8, 1992 entry)
  5. The house archive — Folder contents
  6. Pearl Jam Concert Chronology — Ticket for February 8, 1992 (image linked from the February 8, 1992 entry)
  7. Pearl Jam Concert Chronology — The band's production itinerary for this night, posted by the chronology