Experience Pearl Jam Performing ‘Angel’ For The First Time In 22 Years


Pearl Jam headlined the first day of the Ride Festival in Telluride, Co. on Saturday and as a part of their whopping 29-song set, the Seattle legends dusted off one of the rarest chestnuts in their entire catalog.

Eight songs into the gig, front man Eddie Vedder pulled up a chair near the edge of the stage and launched into “Angel”, from the band’s 1993 Christmas single. Pearl Jam has only played Angel live four times before busting it out on Saturday, and that performance was the first time they’d played it since March 13, 1994. That’s a really long time and a lot of gigs in between.

Vedder shouted out the band’s original drummer, Dave Abruzzese, before he began singing. Abruzzese who drummed on Pearl Jam’s breakout record Ten as well as its follow-up, Vs., before leaving the band, wrote Angel and Vedder told the crowd, “Some of you may know that this next song doesn’t get played much and some of you may not. It was written by the guy who was our drummer Dave Abruzzese, we wish him well.”

“Angel” wasn’t the only super deep cut of the night. The set also included the first full band performance of “Society,” a tune Vedder performed solo for the soundtrack to the 2007 Sean Penn movie Into the Wild. Sounds like it was a pretty beautiful show in a pretty beautiful locale.

(via Consequence of Sound & JamBase)

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