No. 618 – Breakerfall

Performer: Pearl Jam

Songwriter: Eddie Vedder

Original Release: Binaural

Year: 2000

Definitive Version: None, although the version from the 8-21-00 bootleg is pretty close. Why? Because I was there.

After I crack off a long entry, like yesterday’s, I want to follow up with something shorter. It all depends on the song, and fortunately, this one cooperates a bit. I could relate another story my trip to Alaska, but I’ve already told the best two, and who really wants to hear about me buying a set of nesting dolls that were made in Russia (which I couldn’t see from Juneau, by the way)?

So, yes, when Pearl Jam decided to release their bootleg series of live albums from every one of their 2000 shows, I couldn’t wait to get the one from Columbus, which I attended. It was, save for one song on Rush’s Different Stages, the first time I found a live recording from a show I saw.

The concert was at the late, great Polaris Amphitheater, in August, of course. It would be my third Pearl Jam show and Debbie’s first, so she was as geeked to see them as I was. I had pretty good tickets, which is to say we were in the pavilion.

One benefit of working at The Dispatch was that it had a superhigh-speed LAN connection to the Internet. I always went in on the weekends when concert tickets went on sale, and I never had any problems getting in and getting decent seats.

The day of the concert was a great summer day, not too hot, and, better, no rain in the forecast. They started with this song, which was a bit surprising, because 8 times out of 10, Pearl Jam starts with something slow to warm themselves up. But there was no warmup that day, just blast off and shoot into the sky. Laurie said later that this song sounds like a great call to arms, and I can’t disagree.

(By the way, for what it’s worth, I think Binaural is their best album after Ten and Vs., and I think I’m probably the only one in the world who holds that opinion.)

The concert was fairly choppy. Eddie must have botched the lyrics to a half-dozen songs, which was interesting, because if you look on the back of the Bootleg, it has the Binaural Evolution Symbol, which indicates that the band thought it was a great show. I asked Doug when I learned he was going to interview someone connected with the band to ask why they thought it was great, given Eddie’s performance. I was just curious, but I never heard back on that.

Anyway, what probably was my favorite part of the show was that it was a Pearl Jam fan’s show. They played a lot of obscure (but not too obscure, alas) material with the notable absence of any songs from a particularly famous album until the very end.

This, as you can imagine, vexed the drunk d bags in the crowd, several of whom were right behind us. Apparently they showed up ONLY to hear songs from the said album. And their plaintive cries were heard after every song from, well, pretty much this one on: “Bring out the Ten!”

Finally at the end, Pearl Jam did, and the best part was that the only Ten songs they played were Once and Porch, two of the lesser ones. In other words, no Alive, no Even Flow, no Black and certainly no Jeremy. Undoubtedly the said d bags staggered off grumbing into the night, but that’s the way it goes with Pearl Jam. They never play the same set twice. You pays your money; you takes your chances.