Pearl Jam: Alive In Atlanta 1994 [CULT LEGENDS]

Why you'll love it

This LP captures Pearl Jam's 1994 Atlanta radio broadcast, with nine songs from Ten and Vs. plus "Better Man" months before it turned up on Vitalogy. It catches the band at full tilt between their second and third albums.

About the album

In the spring of 1994 Pearl Jam were between records, with Vs. still fresh and Vitalogy taking shape, and they were out on the road playing the new songs with real ferocity. This radio broadcast from Atlanta finds Eddie Vedder in full voice and Mike McCready's guitar all over everything, from a band confident enough to slip a song they hadn't yet put on record into a show going out over the air.

The Vs. songs come thick and fast, "Dissident," "Daughter," "W.M.A.," "Rearview Mirror" and a furious "Blood," with "Even Flow," "Alive," "Jeremy" and "Black" from Ten in between. The real prize is "Better Man," a song Vedder wrote as a teenager in San Diego that the band had held back from Vs. The version that ended up on Vitalogy was built largely from their April 3, 1994 performance at Atlanta's Fox Theatre, with studio overdubs on top.

Without ever being a commercial single, "Better Man" went on to spend eight weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart. Producer Brendan O'Brien told the band it was a hit at one of the first rehearsals and got a groan from Vedder for his trouble, proof that being right early is rarely appreciated.

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Tracklist

Listen

On Cult Legends (cat# CL88594), a reissue of the 1994 live album.