Pearl Jam makes history in Greenville

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

It’s hard to believe, but Pearl Jam’s 2016 tour marks 25 years since the Seattle group released their debut album, “Ten.”

Few bands even survived the Grunge era. Pearl Jam, in sharp contrast, has not only flourished, but aged a lot more gracefully than the “slacker” culture they helped define.

There was a buzz in the air that sunny April afternoon I picked up my “Ten Club” tickets at Bon Secours Wellness Arena. A man in line next to me named Gus said he’d come from South America and had spent the last three hours waiting just to get a concert poster. By the time we started chatting, he was doing back stretches.

As the countdown to showtime ticked away, fans from all continents were gabbing like old hippies. But this is no hippie band. This is one of the last bastions of the Grunge era. A band that never wanted to be famous. A band who takes a stand of human issues and goes at the establishment with the full throttle force of a stage dive.

There’s been an inescapable bond between fans and the band that’s developed since Pearl Jam was at the top of the radio and sales world. There’s an unwritten contract and embedded guarantee: You may not get all the hits on any given night, but you’re never going to get a lackluster performance. And similar to the Grateful Dead, it’s impossible to know what they’re going to play from their bottomless catalog.

What comes across at a Pearl Jam concert—even through the murky subject matter of those early days—is the sense of joy and solidarity the band gets from playing in front of an unusually loyal fan base.

Holding up a bottle of red wine as he took the stage, singer Eddie Vedder counted the band into “Corduroy,” the hard-rocking hit from 1994’s “Vitology” album. The next song was “Go,” followed by “Animal,” after which the acoustic anthem “Daughter” rocked the arena.

I felt like I had Deja vu. Was I in the flow? Then it hit me. They were all from the classic “Vs.” album from 1993. They just all happened to be in order, just like the CD I’d played to the point of disintegration over two decades ago. Each riff and note was ingrained in my mind from the time when Generation X was still the lost generation without a purpose. By now the people around me were starting to wonder if PJ was going to do something very rare -- play an album in its entirety. It was soon clear to all. Pearl Jam was making history at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, SC.

During the encore, Vedder recalled that the first performance in the arena (then the BI-LO center) in 1998 was Janet Jackson. Pearl Jam was the second.

“No disrespect to Miss Jackson, but we were the first BAND.” Vedder, explained, before launching into a soul-stirring rendition of “Nothingman.”

The iconic singer also had a heartfelt conversation with the crowd about current affairs in America and the world. There’s no question he has a God-given talent for comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comforted. He lectured especially on the subject of NC’s recently debated bathroom bill, which led the group to cancel their concert in Raleigh earlier that week.

Moments later, my wife Victoria squealed like a schoolgirl whose wish had come true. How could I have missed the opening notes? Her all time favorite band is Pink Floyd and Pearl Jam was doing a cover of “Comfortably Numb” that would make Gilmore and Waters proud. I thought of Moyra, my wife’s mother who had died gracefully months ago of pancreatic cancer. This was also her favorite song and she wanted it played at her funeral. Vedder made the song all his own and the audience crooned for more. When this band does a cover, they do a cover.

Maybe years from now I will overhear a few PJ songs on my kid’s stereo and wonder if I should brag about the 2016 Greenville show when they played “Vs.” straight through better than the studio album. She may not believe me because I’m wearing black dress socks with white tennis shoes and the earring and goatee are a distant memory. At that point, I will say “go ask Momma,” who will produce the ticket and wink.

That is Pearl Jam’s goal – to make every show a part of someone’s personal story.

The band’s musicianship on this night was so astonishing that the concert is sure to be talked about within the Pearl Jam community for a long time to come. It’s easy to play the same set every night, but Vedder and crew aren’t shooting for any safe bets. They gave the Greenville crowd three hours and six minutes of grunge rock bliss.

The next morning, I slept until 11 for the first time in years. Finally, I awoke, arose and tried to shake that old Gen X slackness back out of my bones.