Pearl Jam: Touring Band 2000

If you are a dyed-in-the-plaid-shorts proto-grunge fan of Pearl Jam then, by all means, plunk down your 25 clams and skate on to the next review. Personally, I've always felt that Seattle's second biggest alternative band veered wildly between headbanger-lite anthems ("Grievance," "Animal") aimed squarely at the 13-24 male adolescent set and surprisingly sensitive power ballads ("Daughter," "Better Man"), with a handful of undeniable classic rock songs ("Evenflow," "Jeremy") thrown in to cement their future place in the rock 'n roll hall of fame. All of which may be another way of saying that a 28 song compilation (drawn from live sets coast to coast on their 2000 North American tour) is perhaps more Pearl Jam than most casual listeners are going to want to hear. Visually, the combination of grainy "bootleg"-like footage (remember, this is the visual equivalent of the two dozen plus "bootleg" CDs Pearl Jam released of the concerts themselves) and a less than kinetic performance (if you've seen a clip of Pearl Jam and Neil Young performing the latter's "Rockin' in the Free World," with Young bouncing all over the stage like a not-quite-graceful buffalo on a pogo stick, you'll find the Pearl Jam-only version here rather staid) make this no great shakes to watch. Aurally, the fidelity ranges from medium-to-lo-fi (with the PCM stereo option a better way to go than the Dolby Digital 5.1, where frontman Eddie Vedder's liner note injunction to "turn it up" only increases the distortion on the guitar-driven tunes). Still, the lure of 28 songs performed live and 50-plus minutes of extras (video montages from their European tour, along with a few extra songs and a pair of music videos) make this a no-brainer for pop music collections. Recommended. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)