Pearl Jam digs deep at Spectrum

If you have tickets to see Pearl Jam at the Spectrum tonight or Saturday, brace yourself.

Eddie Vedder promised that his band is determined to make the Spectrum's final events as special as possible.

"It's an honor this band takes very seriously," Vedder said mid-show Tuesday, the first of Pearl Jam's four-night run at the vaunted arena, slated for demolition at the end of the year. "We plan on playing every song we know."

To meet the goal of performing every song off Pearl Jam's nine studio albums, Vedder and the band dug deep Tuesday for a 2-1/2 hour concert, which included a tribute to The Who's 1973 "Quadrophenia" concert at the Spectrum with "Love, Reign o'er Me" and a raucous closer in Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World."

The show was split in two by an acoustic set in the middle, with Vedder performing with various members of the band, in addition to a string quartet for "Just Breath" and "The End."

Dressed in a flannel shirt over a black Social Distortion T-shirt (a nod to the night's solid opening act), Vedder was in terrific spirits.

He smiled throughout, heaped praise on his host city and took swig after swig from his ever present bottle of wine.

"We've been thinking about these gigs for a long time now," Vedder said of their goodbye to the arena, which has plenty in common with the Seattle rock band: grit, longevity and a strong sense of history.

The career-spanning set of hits, B-sides and covers touched on all nine Pearl Jam albums, with songs from the band's early days like "Black" and "Daughter" alongside several songs from this year's "Backspacer."

B-side "Bee Girl" got the acoustic treatment, silencing the Spectrum, setting a tone more like the one found at the Tower Theater in June, when Vedder was last in our area for a solo gig. But giddy fans could hardly contain themselves when rarely played tunes like "Mankind," with guitarist Stone Gossard on lead vocals, and "All Those Yesterdays," from 1998's "Yield," found their way onto the bulging 31-song setlist.

Sounding like a man with an adopted hometown, Vedder ended the night giving out tambourines to fans in the crowd, leaving with these final words: "Spectrum, we love you."

After the Spectrum's 42 years of hosting most of the biggest names in rock history, Vedder seems determined to honor their ghosts this week.

And that's the way it should be.