Pearl Jam endures

When Pearl Jam performed "Wishlist," a song from its 1998 album Yield during its three-hour sold-out show at the Wells Fargo Center on Monday, Eddie Vedder added some lyrics not in the original version.

"My only wish is to wish for nothing," the 48-year-old leader of the enduring Seattle rock band sang during the meditative song's coda.

"Who could ask for more than that?"

Then, before pushing off on the next tune - "Sirens" from the band's sturdy new album Lightning Bolt, which spends considerable time pondering mortality - Vedder elaborated on his Zen grunge idea. He glanced down at his black guitar and set off on a story about being 15 years old and "just what an idiot I was," when he used to grind up cheap speed pills known as "Black Beauties" on his first Fender Stratocaster.

Which led him to consider how far he and Pearl Jam, who was scheduled to play a second sold-out Wells Fargo show on Tuesday, have come.

"What more could your ask for than what you're doing now?" Vedder asked himself aloud. "Playing loud music with a bunch of your best friends for a bunch of your best friends that you don't really know: What could be better than that? We're just so, so grateful. And thanks for keeping me off the drugs."

That interlude captured Pearl Jam's relationship with its equally grateful audience in a nutshell. It's been a long time - two decades - since the band and heavy rock cohorts like Nirvana stood at the center of popular culture.

But while other contemporaries have faded away, Pearl Jam have stuck and stayed, and continue to command an enormous cult audience, happy to stand throughout an at times gruelingly generous show.

With the core five of sonorous voiced leader Vedder, guitarist Mike McCready and Stone Gossard, bass player Jeff Ament and drummer Matt Cameron augmented by keyboard player Boom Gaspar, Pearl Jam are the gracefully aging classic-rock friendly grunge-era band that keeps on giving.

On Monday, that meant a 34-song set that was finely calibrated through its first third, opening with the ruminating "Pendulum" from Lightning Bolt and also including the punkish title track and "Mind Your Manners" from the new album before capping with the empathetic howl of rage "Animal."

At that point, Vedder who turned out to be wearing a black tee with the word "ROCKY" emblazoned on it under his flannel shirt, stepped back and worked the crowd.

"You were probably here when we tore down the Spectrum, right?" he asked, referring to the bands four night stand that closed the storied venue across the street in 2009. (He also later name dropped South Street club JC. Dobbs, where they band played its first ever Phialdelphia gig.) "Let's tear down this place, too. But we'll do it slowly, brick by brick. Let's make a long evening of it."

He was true to his word, as the band went on to cover mix material from its 20 year ouevre with covers of Pink Floyd's "Mother" during a so-so acoustic segment, and Victoria Williams' "Crazy Mary," which was a showcase for Gaspar on Hammond organ during which Vedder shared a bottle of wine with fans. In the show's most charming off the cuff moment, Vedder spotted a banner behind the stage in the rafters with the words "Gabba Gabba Hey." He then had the fans holding it brought down to sit on side of the stage, and the band bashed through The Ramones' "I Believe In Miracles" in their honor.

Vedder remains a bona fide rock star of a front man with a stentorian, clarion call voice, and his band mates provide him the rough edged but sharply focused support that comes from leaning on each other for a generation.

Over a long night, the music can get leaden, however, particularly in drawn-out pounding assaults from the band's early years, like "Leash" and "Porch," the latter featuring Vedder swinging out over the crowd from on a light fixture hung from the ceiling.

Correctives to those ponderous stretches come from two directions.

There are sweeter, contemplative moments where Vedder lets his rich, grainy voice hang in the air, as with "Indifference" which closed out the show wistfully. And there are tightly compressed jolts of energy, like "Lukin," "Spin The Black Circle" and the cover of the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer" that kick hard with furious energy, letting you know that all all these years, Pearl Jam is very much alive.