January
2001
At the beggining of January, Pearl
Jam announced that they were going to release a DVD documenting their 2000
road trip. They've decided to congeal the best footage from all of the North
American shows into one DVD (or VHS). On January 29th, the
first leg of official boot recordings from Pearl Jam's North American tour
became available to fan club members via tenclub.net
at a special discounted price of $10.98. Other retail outlets had only the
boots available for preorder (they became available in stores on February
27th). Six of the 23 discs, carry a symbol - a crouching man and a
standing man - that brand performances the band thought were particularly good.
Originally, the band was going to grade all the CDs but,
"Then you start bumming out the person who may have seen what they
thought was the greatest show ever and then they find out that the band didn't
like it at all", Kelly Curtis (Pearl Jam Manager).
"We've been kicking the idea around for a few years. It was more of a
consumer thing than anything else. We kept buying our own bootlegs and were
surprised at how kind of poor they were and how expensive they were at the same
time, and we thought, `Why don't we just release them for the people that want
them at a cheap price that sounds really good? We got to master these so they
sound a little better. It wasn't like it was fixing things or overdubs, It was
like bringing the vocal up a bit more or giving the guitars a kick", Kelly
Curtis (Pearl Jam Manager).
"Compared to the recordings made in Europe
using the traditional system, the tracks are fuller, punchier and warmer. The
differences are not subtle and everyone who has listened to the new tracks has
been very impressed… there is more real low end and smoother high end. It
has eliminated the mid-range ‘honk’ of the house PA", Brett
Eliason (Pearl Jam Sound engineer).
