(Copyright Montreal Gazette 2003)

Once you recognize the term "classic" rock as derived from Coke Classic, with the same conservative flagship-brand connotations, you will understand everything about Pearl Jam's uneasy alliance with its own business.

If you are Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, you have wrestled with the angel of stardom, and your band has battled the demon Ticketron. You have conducted your career, at times, like a penance. You dedicate your last studio album, Riot Act, to bassists John Entwistle, Dee Dee Ramone and Ray Brown, and invite punk survivors the Buzzcocks (of which more later) to open your umpteenth sellout arena tour.

At times, Pearl Jam have paid for this diligence by sounding like a band trying to rearrange the pieces of something older that was never yours into something newer that has not always sounded like it was yours. Last night, led by their singer, Pearl Jam sounded like a band comfortable in its own volume and standing.

"Thank you for surrounding us this evening," Vedder said to the 360-degree crowd. He and the band had taken the stage with the lights up, eased into the yearning Long Road, a song as simple as it gets - three guitars raggedly strumming, the singer with the most affecting voice of his rock generation (non-Thom Yorke division) emoting for the crowd. Then the lights dropped, Vedder plunged forward and hung off his mic stand, the song was Go, and the crowd did.

So despite or because of the penitential passage, Vedder remains a god.

With Mike McCready on a Flying V, Vedder made humble prayerful gestures in Present Tense. In his cropped hair, he looked more comfortable. After Evenflow set off the leaping in front of the stage, Vedder repaired to stage left to smoke and drink what looked suspiciously like wine while the band jammed.

A cruel deadline meant this reviewer only caught the meditative opening third of the show, but it revealed a singer with a healthy attitude to his stardom, that unhealthiest of superpowers.

As for the Buzzcocks, 25 years after ignition, they made it to rinkdom with harmonies and guitars as tight as a Brit at closing time. Orgasm Addict was offered well before the end of the set. The band's refrain of "There-is-no-love-in-this-world-any-MOOORE" was especially apt, given the crowd was busy putting final touches to its I Love You Eddie signs.

And to paraphrase the Sex Pistols (another '77 crew touring this summer), the Buzzcocks didn't care. A guitar was brutalized with a mic stand, a roadie was given the bum's rush for interfering, and all was unwell with the world.