Each disc is in a brown package with 'Pearl Jam' stamped on with the place and the date/month/year, and the spines are numbered. The band plays more than 80 different songs over the course of the tour, averaging twenty-four a night.Д¬ompiled primarily by Jeff Ament, the bass player, and Eddie Vedder, the artwork is simple and to the point, like Pearl Jam's music. 'Sometimes they don't even go by the set list and they start calling them out to each other,' says band manager Kelly Curtis. The band collectively makes up these sets a half-hour prior to walking on stage.Д®ddie Vedder writes it out and leaves a question mark at the end for the last few songs to be decided during the show. Unlike most touring bands, Pearl Jam prides itself on playing a different set each night. He just wanted to get a different mix than he would get off the board, so it would sound good on the stereo.' Kelley Curtis says of Brett Eliason: 'He kind of knew what he wanted because he mixed the live sound. The performance of the band remains untouched without overdubs or effects. They sound more like live albums, similar to 'Live on Two Legs,' the band's live album released two years ago. The Pearl Jam bootlegs do not have these annoyances. One can hear clapping, yelling, and other concert sounds as if they are right there in the audience. Each disc was recorded and mixed by the band's engineer, Brett Eliason on the same night as the gig.Д«ootlegs are usually created by fans who smuggle into the concert some sort of small recording device to a concert, typically a DAT player or cassette recorder with a pocket microphone. The first thing a bootleg fan would notice about these recordings is their superior sound quality.

But no one has ever done this in such immense proportions as releasing twenty-five concert recordings at one time by such a popular band. The Grateful Dead have their 'From The Vault' bootleg series. Aerosmith released a raucous live album in the same spirit and called it 'Bootleg.' Frank Zappa released a collection of live recordings in the '80's, a 'beat the 'boots' project. Pearl Jam was not the first to bootleg their own records. Pearl Jam has been acquiring a fan base of the same type for this, their 10th anniversary year. These records and CDs remain much sought after items. Big bootleg bands were The Who, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, and more currently, Phish. Listening to these boots one cannot help but think of recordings from other bands (mostly from the '70s) that hard core fans collect.

They are for fanatical listeners who listen to their favorite band's recordings over and over, focusing on minute details. Playing one of these new bootlegs released by Pearl Jam is a modern day equivalent to listening to the Who's 'Live at Leeds.' One enters a world of energy expressed in burning and screaming guitars, wah-wah pedals, tape echoes, feedback, vintage Les Pauls, guitar walls, thumping and pounding drums, intricate bass lines, and the greatest remaining singer from the splintering Seattle scene, Eddie Vedder.Д«ootlegs aren't for everyone.

Pearl jam bootlegs