Review: Pearl Jam plays one too many

Pearl Jam should have quit while they were ahead. Less than halfway into their 25-minute encore that began at 12:10 a.m. Sunday morning, the band, who along with Nirvana embodied the spirit of the so-called grunge movement of the early 1990s, had lost its energy and its audience.

Had Eddie Vedder appreciated the spirit of showmanship, he would have taken Pearl Jam out of the Thomas & Mack Center after the performance of "Alive," culled from the 1991 debut album, "Ten." It was then, following 75-minutes of rote exercise in sound checking, that the band finally gave the capacity crowd what it wanted. It should have ducked out, turned up the lights and left them wanting more. Instead, it turned them away at almost 1 a.m, tired, irritable and left to wonder if their favorite band could survive another year like this one, let alone another eight.

It did not help that the music started at 9 p.m., late by most standards, or that the two opening acts were coldly received by the oddly composed crowd of young post-grungers and mid-thirties alternative-types, with every conceivable rock music lover filling the few gaps.

Seattle band Zeke's 25-minute opening set was a painfully retro display of early American punk, including the confusing indecisiveness: Did they want to sing 45-second slam dance ditties or 90-second speed metal songs about sex and motorbikes? The audience, many of them restlessly holding their general admission seats since 7:30 p.m. and already fueled by more beer than should have been sold all night, greeted each song with a chorus of boos, to which Zeke, in true punk fashion, would respond by flipping the bird.

Even X, one of the most important rock bands of the 1980s and influential to most of today's now-dying breed of commercial-alternative music, was offered little more than courtesy applause from the anxious audience. After 40 minutes of enthusiastically stomping out a list of classics (including "Johnny Hit & Run Paulene," "Nausea" and "Los Angeles") to an apathetic ear, frustrated lead vocalist Exene Cervenka told a "Pearl Jam"-chanting audience member, "They can't hear you. They're not even here."

When the band finally was there, the clock read 10:50 p.m. and the audience, cooped up for three hours and ten minutes, exploded. The main floor of the Thomas & Mack Center, filled to capacity with people who seemingly would mosh to anything played by anyone, turned into a liquid sea of humanity, ebbing and flowing like a tide of turmoil with every stroke of Mike McCready's guitar strings.

Performing in a minimalist setting (a white cloth backdrop fronted by five 10-feet tall candle holders that looked like scaled-down replicas of the Eiffel Tower), Pearl Jam had disposed of two of its hits ("Dissident" from 1993's "VS." and "Given To Fly," the first single from the latest release - "Yield") within the first quarter hour, leaving the audience to wonder how many of the favorites they would hear.

The set list did not disappoint, surprisingly containing every hit single in the band's history, including three additional songs found on "Ten" as well as all the best from their four other releases. Startling, considering the band's past unwillingness to pander to the desires of the masses and its prevalent anti-establishment attitude towards the music business. It was this attitude which kept the band from taking a 1994 summer tour; instead, they were in Washington, D.C. testifying in a Justice Department case brought against Ticketmaster for alleged unfair business practices. Ticketmaster was absolved of any wrongdoing.

And here it was, four years later. Ticketmaster had undoubtedly sold many of the seats filled this evening and Pearl Jam was uncharacteristically performing a "greatest hits" concert. Certainly, the audience was superficially pleased, but when the cracks began to show -- as on a completely effortless, listless rendition of one of modern rock's most powerful songs, "Jeremy" -- one could not help but wonder if Pearl Jam had finally lost its way.

During what has become a requisite mid-set acoustic slow down, Vedder addressed the band's inability to sell large numbers of tickets in Las Vegas (the concert was initially and overenthusiastically booked for Sam Boyd Stadium) by saying, "We were supposed to be outside tonight, but we didn't sell enough tickets...thank God!"

Vedder could have been referring to the unbearable stuffy heat which penetrated even the Thomas & Mack and made it smell like a cheap motel room. Or he could have been subtly pleased that Pearl Jam had survived the onslaught of mega-stardom in the early 1990s and emerged in a manner which pleased him.

Regardless, this was certainly not the Pearl Jam that turned a mid-afternoon slot in the 1992 Lollapalooza tour into a multi-platinum success story. Nor was it the same band that sold out two Aladdin Theater shows in December of 1993 and frightened the management into prohibiting the sale of alcohol.

Striking a balance between who Pearl Jam is and who their audience thinks they are is a challenge far greater than those ever presented by Ticketmaster or any other member of the music establishment. Pearl Jam's ability to meet this challenge will determine whether their legacy will rise to the levels of expectations generated by those early years, or, instead, they will be stuck playing "greatest hits" concerts to an ever-aging fan base.

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