A Pearl Jam live album taped in Melbourne at the start of the Yield tour in 1998 but scrapped days before its planned release later that year is finally seeing the light of day. Give Way will be released by Legacy Recordings on gatefold black double vinyl and CD as part of Record Store Day on April 22, featuring 17 tracks from the band’s March 5, 1998, show at Melbourne Park.
That performance was broadcast live on radio and the internet by JJJ and was widely bootlegged, but was later planned to be included as a free promotion to fans who purchased the Pearl Jam documentary Single Video Theory at Best Buy upon its early August 1998 release. At the last minute, Pearl Jam’s label Epic Records halted the release for unspecified reasons, prompting the destruction of nearly all of the 50,000 CD copies that had been pressed. One copy is currently selling for nearly $600 on Discogs.
Give Way, which nods to the Australian version of the American “yield” traffic sign, finds Pearl Jam five shows into its first tour in a year-and-a-half and just beginning to incorporate material from the month-old Yield into its set lists. It contains powerful versions of “Faithfull,” “Brain of J,” “MFC,” and “Given To Fly” from that album, plus older cuts such as “Hail, Hail,” “State of Love and Trust,” “Immortality,” “I Got ID,” “Corduroy” (with a country-specific tease of Midnight Oil’s “Beds Are Burning”), and “Animal.”
The full concert featured 25 songs, eight of which are omitted on Give Way. This was drummer Jack Irons’ final tour with Pearl Jam; his last show came 15 days later in Perth. He was replaced by Matt Cameron, who has drummed with Pearl Jam ever since and whose maiden tour with the group that summer was chronicled on another 1998 live album, Live on Two Legs.
In related Pearl Jam / Record Store Day news, guitarist Mike McCready will be involved as well with two releases from his side band the Rockfords: their 2000 self-titled debut and the 2003 Waiting EP, both on vinyl for the first time.
The group, which also includes Chris and Rick Friel, Danny Newcomb, and Carrie Akre, is reuniting for its first show in 10 years on Record Store Day at Seattle’s beloved Easy Street Records.
Pearl Jam’s Give Way tracklisting:
“Release”
“Brain of J.”
“Animal”
“Faithfull”
“In My Tree”
“I Got ID”
“Corduroy”
“Even Flow”
“Spin the Black Circle”
“Given To Fly”
“Hail, Hail”
“MFC”
“State of Love and Trust”
“Do The Evolution”
“Alive”
“Black”
“Immortality”
