Joey Ramone on Sonic Reducer in New Orleans
The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's note says "Sonic Reducer" was played with Joey Ramone, naming it the show stopper, and Five Horizons' note tells it the same way. Both notes put Brendan O'Brien at the organ on "Better Man."
On Sunday, September 17, 1995, Pearl Jam played Tad Gormley Stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's opening act line names Ramones, and Five Horizons' support act line names The Ramones. The chronology prints twenty entries in its setlist, three in a first encore and one in a second, twenty-four in all, and Five Horizons gives the same counts on its set line and its two encore lines. The two soundcheck fields differ in one entry: the chronology's gives "Habit," Improv, and "Naked Eye," and Five Horizons' gives "Habit," Mad Season riffs, and "Naked Eye." Both notes call the band's mood great and say its members were having a blast, in their words.
The show
Tad Gormley Stadium
Both chronologies head the night at Tad Gormley Stadium in New Orleans, LA, and the Pearl Jam Concert Chronology's heading also gives USA after the state. The house's information file gives Tad Gormley Stadium on its third line and New Orleans, LA on its fourth. Five Horizons brackets 130m after its heading without stating what it measures, and the chronology's heading carries no figure. Neither chronology's entry gives a capacity, a door or stage time, a ticket price, or a promoter.
The Performance
The chronology's setlist runs "Animal," "Go," "Last Exit," "Tremor Christ," "Even Flow," "Corduroy," "Elderly Woman," "Whipping," "Not For You," "Why Go," "Deep," "Jeremy," "Dissident," "Daughter," "Rats," "Voodoo Chile," "Immortality," "Rearviewmirror," "Alive," and "Blood." Its first encore holds "Better Man," "Sonic Reducer," and "Rockin' In The Free World," and its second "Yellow Ledbetter." Five Horizons' set line gives twenty entries from "Animal" to "Blood," spelling "Not for You" and giving "Elderly Woman" without the three dots that follow it in the chronology, and its encore lines give "Better Man," "Sonic Reducer," and "Rockin' in the Free World," then "Yellow Ledbetter." The chronology's note says that during "Tremor Christ" Eddie brought the show to a halt: a person was down in the pit, and he said the band would not start again until that person had been helped, and when the fan had been tended to, Pearl Jam picked the song up exactly where it had broken off. Once "Rats" was over, both notes say, Eddie left the stage, and the band played a jam, Mike taking over the vocals. Brendan O'Brien, both notes say, sat in and played organ on "Better Man." Both notes say "Sonic Reducer" was played with Joey Ramone, call it the show stopper, and say it later came out on the fan club's discs of '95, in their words. In "Sonic Reducer," both notes say, Eddie poked fun at the difference in height between himself and Joey. The chronology's note ends by naming three songs that the setlist it mentions carried and the band did not play: "Habit," "Spin The Black Circle," and "I Got Id."
The Next Step
Austin, the night before, at South Park Meadows, is told in A Heavy Jacket in the Austin Heat.
Recording & sound
What the Record Preserves
The chronology's entry ends with a remaster series line that names the band, the date and New Orleans, with v2 in parentheses, and carries the label info-file. Eleven objects hang under the night's heading on the chronology's page. Seven are images: two whose markup titles read Setlist, one whose markup title reads Ticket, one whose markup title reads Eddie Vedder, and three more. The other four are two links to PDF files and two links into the chronology's remaster series, one to a zip file and one to a text file. The house holds four files for the night: the remaster series' information file and its fingerprint list, each in two identical copies. The information file opens with four lines naming the band, the date, the stadium and its city. Its source line ends with DAT, and its lineage line starts from CDR and ends with FLAC, as the file prints that line. Its notes line says that fluctuations in volume were smoothed, that a cut was spliced, and that an EQ balanced the frequencies, and it calls the result Version 2, with the tonal balance improved. The information file's twenty-six numbered labels give twenty for the set, from "Animal" to "Blood"; an Encore Break 1 label then opens a group with "Better Man," "Sonic Reducer," followed by the words with Joey Ramone in parentheses, and "Rockin' in the Free World," and an Encore Break 2 label comes before "Yellow Ledbetter." The fingerprint list gives each of twenty-six FLAC file names a value; its names are the labels, the twenty-third without the words in parentheses. The information file and the fingerprint list name no recordist and give no generation for the DAT and no length for the recording. New Orleans on September 17 comes down to one stadium named alike in both chronologies, 130m that Five Horizons brackets without saying what it measures, the Ramones on both bill lines, twenty-four entries in each chronology, two soundchecks that differ in one entry, two notes that share Joey Ramone on "Sonic Reducer" and Brendan O'Brien on "Better Man," eleven objects, and four house files.
Other Media (7)
Other accounts
No further accounts of this show have been added.
Sources & thanks (4)
- Pearl Jam Concert Chronology — 1995 page
- Five Horizons — Concert chronology 1995, entries for 09/16/95 and 09/17/95
- Pearl Jam Concert Chronology — 1995 page, the entry for the date
- The house archive — Information file and fingerprint file (remaster series) in the 1995-09-17 folders