Pearl Jam opens final stand at Spectrum

Just before Pearl Jam took the stage of the Spectrum on Tuesday night for the first of four shows that will bring the arena's days to an end, the band treated the crowd to a highlight reel from the venerable venue's past.

Footage of the Flyers and the 76ers clinching championships was mingled with clips of the Grateful Dead and Bruce Springsteen, who bid the Spectrum farewell with his own four-night stand ending last week. The valedictory montage served a dual purpose: It paid tribute to the history of what Springsteen called "one of the last great rock halls," and it inserted the evening's headliners into that history. They wouldn't have evoked the Spectrum's highest highs if they weren't intending to equal them.

Singer Eddie Vedder made it clear that the band intended to create its own slice of history, promising to play "every song we know" over the course of the week's concerts. (After Tuesday's and Wednesday night's shows, the band will take a night off before returning for the weekend.) Over 21/2 hours, Pearl Jam made a sizable dent in its repertoire, tackling 30 songs, coming from its 1991 debut, Ten, through Backspacer, released last month.

In keeping with the new album's sparse approach, the band drew heavily on its catalog of taut and frenzied rockers, steering clear, with a few exceptions, of the angsty mid-tempo sludge that got it lumped in with the first wave of grunge.

The aptly named "Supersonic" raced forward at a blinding pace, while "The Fixer" emulated the clipped guitars of the band's Seattle compatriots Sleater-Kinney. (Vedder acknowledged the debt by tacking a snippet of their song "Modern Girl" onto the end of "Not for You.")

The band underlined the turn toward stripping down and speeding up by choosing the California quartet Social Distortion to open the first two shows. (Fellow SoCal punks Bad Religion will open the latter two.) Drawing on the blistering energy of early rock and rockabilly, Social Distortion's songs were pushed forward by the brassy growl of singer Mike Ness, who, with his slicked-back hair, bulging neck muscles and copious tattoos, looked as though he might be on work release from a minimum-security prison.

Outlaw imagery and the battle against self-destruction figured prominently in songs like "Prison Bound" and "Ball and Chain," both from Social Distortion's early 1990s high-water mark, as well as a snarling version of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire."

More than five years after its last album (a new one is planned for next year), Ness' band seemed a tad ragged at times, as if its rhythm section had not had enough time to settle into a groove. But the best songs, including the vintage "Mommy's Little Monster," drew an enthusiastic response from a crowd that had quite a few Social Distortion fans.

That response couldn't, of course, compare to the crowd's reaction to the headliners, whose determination to stage a classic rock show was matched by the audience's desire to be part of one. Throwing himself backward or dropping into a squat, Vedder threw his weight against his microphone stand as if it were the only thing keeping him upright. Inevitably, during the set-closing "Go," he seemed to lose his balance and tumbled to the stage, but he kept singing, lying flat on his back as though he'd intended to end up there all along.