Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ Turns 25: Live Spotify Playlist

Seattle-based rock band Pearl Jam released their landmark debut album Ten 25 years ago today. A key artifact of the early 1990s grunge scene, Ten eventually rose to massive mainstream success, turning frontman Eddie Vedder and his mates into household names.

Released by Epic Records on August 21, 1991 and named after the uniform number of the band’s former namesake, NBA player Mookie Blaylock, the 11-track debut was recorded at Seattle’s London Bridge Studios and produced by Rick Parashar. Bolstered by captivating and even notorious music videos for eventual hit singles “Even Flow,” “Alive” and “Jeremy” most of the beloved tracks such as “Release,” “Black,” and “Porch” became staples of the band’s live shows.

Currently 10 of the 11 songs released 25 years ago on Ten have live renditions available on Spotify. For this week’s installment of Saturday Stream, below is a Spotify Playlist featuring a complete re-creation of Ten using those live versions – plus an alternate studio mix of “Deep” – spanning the group’s career.

A 1994 recording of Pearl Jam’s concert at The Orpheum Theater in Boston supplies the live editions of the Ten opening track “Once” and closing cut “Release” as well as “Oceans.” Pearl Jam’s retrospective compilation album Live On Ten Legs reportedly features a 2005 performance of “Jeremy” from London, Canada as well as “Porch” from that year in Buenos Aires, Argentina and “Alive” from Philadelphia in 2009. Their other live comp Live On Two Legs features a matrix recording of “Even Flow” from a pair of 1998 shows.

An early Mookie Blaylock performance of “Alive” from a hometown show in 1990 comes from the Pearl Jam Twenty Soundtrack. The film’s accompanying album also includes a the band’s MTV Unplugged taping of “Black” in 1992 and a take on “Why Go” from a few day before in Hamburg, Germany. PJ20 also has a version of “Garden” from that same European Tour in 1992 in Switzerland. Finally, though not a live recording, an alternate mix by producer Brendan O’Brien of “Deep” from the Ten Redux LP is included to complete the album (Note: the Ten hidden track “Master/Slave” is absent from the playlist).