Pearl Jam Perform ‘Ten’ in Its Entirety at Philadelphia Concert
Pearl Jam performed their second of two Philadelphia shows Friday night at the city’s Wells Fargo Center, a concert that marked the band’s 10th consecutive sell-out at the venue. To celebrate, not only did the Wells Fargo Center put up a banner commemorating Pearl Jam’s achievement, the band also played their classic 1991 debut Ten in its entirety and in order for the first time at a U.S. concert.
Like Thursday night’s Philadelphia concert, Pearl Jam opened up with Ten‘s first track “Once,” but this time the band followed that up with “Evenflow,” and then “Alive” and then the full album performance of Ten was officially on.
The surprise Ten run-through was the second time this tour Pearl Jam has explored one of their album’s in its entirety – they previously played Vs. at a Greenville, South Carolina concert on April 16th – and their fourth time overall in the U.S., following a No Code performance in Moline, Illinois and a full Yield in Milwaukee in October 2014. Internationally, Pearl Jam played Ten in its entirety once before at a 1992 concert in Munich and their whole self-titled LP at a 2006 gig in Turin.
In March, bassist Jeff Ament admitted to Rolling Stone that he’s “never been a fan” of full album performances. “I saw Cheap Trick do three albums and that was amazing. But for the most part I haven’t been a fan of that,” Ament said. “When we did those albums, we were on the plane going to the show and Ed said, ‘Hey, what do you feel about doing No Code tonight?’ And then we basically scrambled and learned the five songs we hadn’t played in 10 years right before the show. And it created, like, a good tension. By the second or third song, the fans started realizing what we were doing. We could sense that. I think the fact that we did it in Milwaukee and Moline was awesome. That was the greatest thing ever.”
Check out fan-shot footage of the Ten performance as well as the show’s setlist below: