Pearl Jam powers through an epic night at the Wells Fargo Center

Pearl Jam | Photo by Josh Pelta-Heller for WXPN | hellerhound.com

It could be argued — say if rock critic and punk purist Greil Marcus were your arts and culture professor — that a gaudy spectacle like last night’s Pearl Jam show at Wells Fargo Center wouldn’t hold much genuine value, for all its pomp, its loathsome corporate sponsorship and overpriced domestic beer, in contrast for example with the intimacy and palpable hunger of a younger band playing a smaller space (which, in Philly, would have a much better tap selection too).

Of course, Pearl Jam were that younger band at one point, sweating all over those smaller rooms through loosely hanging, open-fronted plaid, stomping those stages in scuffed black Doc Marten’s boots. In July of 1991, touring in support of their anthemic debut record Ten, they played to a modest audience at South Street’s JC Dobbs, a local premiere that Eddie Vedder likes to frequently evoke with Philly crowds. And less than a year later, the band played The Trocadero, just a few months before setting a new record for album sales with 1992’s Vs.

The next time Pearl Jam would return to the Philly area would be six years later, following a notable battle with Ticketmaster, waged and lost, that saw their noble-minded boycott of Philly venues in favor of Jones Beach in New York and Meriweather Post Pavilion down by DC. By then, the band was a heavyweight festival headliner, playing almost exclusively at blockbuster concert venues.

Still, despite prime Vitalogy-era Pearl Jam having gone MIA at Philly venues, Vedder noted early on in their nearly three-hour set last night that the band’s played Philly a total of some twenty-two times, at a rate that almost works out to once a year since their inception two-and-a-half decades ago. They seem to have a special affinity for the city, an ongoing mutual love-affair highlighted by four consecutive and largely sold-out marathon shows in October 2009 to close down the Spectrum, in celebration of the building’s 40-year lifetime before it was demolished a year later.

The reception last night at Wells Fargo certainly served as testimony to that relationship. With no opener, no fanfare — without even dimming the house lights — Pearl Jam emerged to the full-throated volume of sold-out crowd, and launched into opener “Once,” the first track of their first record, all those years ago. Their characteristically epic, two-encore setlist featured fan favorites from top to bottom, and where at one time a more dour Vedder seemed to resent playing what he called, 20 years ago, the “human jukebox” part of the show, the frontman (appropriately clad in a Rocky shirt) seems to have since come around to revel and enjoy — even thrive — in the energy the band can garner in response to the opening chords of some of their biggest hits: “Alive,” “Jeremy,” “Evenflow,” “Porch,” “Animal,” and “Given To Fly.”

Pearl Jam dug deep for Philly fans, too, with a rendition of their ode “Oceans,” scrounging for a number of cuts off of 2003’s B-side collection Lost Dogs, and reviving “State Of Love And Trust” from the dusty flannel annals of early-90’s movie soundtrack history. And in a sublime tribute to the late singer and former Seattle contemporary Andrew Wood, the band offered a preciously rare cover of Mother Love Bone’s “Chloe Dancer/Crown Of Thorns,” to the delight of the entire room.

There’s a magical quality of showmanship and charm to a Pearl Jam concert, to the stage presence and chemistry among the six of them that they’re able to confer and share with their fans. It’s communal, interactive in a way that isn’t always characteristic of larger rock shows, as Vedder will purposefully play to spectators not to be neglected to the rear of the stage, slow the show up for a subdued acoustic Tom Waits cover in celebration of two attending fans who had just gotten engaged, or share his trademark bottle of red wine with part of the front row.

And, somewhere along the way, Eddie Vedder learned to loosen up. Call it the mellowing of middle age, but for whatever reason, the iconic and charismatic poster boy of the Seattle scene of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s — a formerly notorious sourpuss, on his better and worse days back then — seems to have managed to figure out how to navigate the trappings and turbulence of his fame and celebrity, and to have negotiated for himself his place as the target of the adulation and adoration of an entire arena. He seems to have managed to learn to enjoy himself.

So overpriced Bud Lite and criticism of arena-rock be damned — if you can find a ticket to the second of Pearl Jam’s sold-out two-night Philly stand tonight at Wells Fargo, you might want to go enjoy yourself too.

Setlist
Once
Animal
Gonna See My Friend
All Night
Mind Your Manners
Low Light
Wishlist
Love Boat Captain
Given to Fly
Even Flow
In the Moonlight
In My Tree
Jeremy
Education
Unthought Known
Do the Evolution
Lightning Bolt
Porch

Encore:
Picture in a Frame (Tom Waits cover)
Oceans
Chloe Dancer (Mother Love Bone cover)
Crown of Thorns (Mother Love Bone cover)
Why Go
Got Some
Rearviewmirror

Encore 2:
Save You
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
Crazy Mary (Victoria Williams cover)
State of Love and Trust
Alive
Fuckin’ Up (Neil Young & Crazy Horse cover)
Indifference