Rock Report: Pearl Jam Launches ‘Instant Classics’

Pearl Jam is launching a new series of live "bootleg" recordings called "Instant Classic," according to Spin, starting with a recording of the band's September 30th show in Missoula, Montana. That event was part of a campaign fundraiser for Democratic Senator Jon Tester's ultimately successful re-election campaign and included a cover of The MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" joined by members of Mudhoney.

The show is on sale through Tuesday (November 13th) in MP3 format for $4.99, with proceeds benefiting Missoula's Poverello Center, a nonprofit dedicated to helping the homeless. After Tuesday, the show will be available for the usual price of $9.99, as an MP3, on CD or in high-quality FLAC and FLAC-HD formats.

A statement about the "Instant Classic" series posted on Pearl Jam's website read, "Every so often, performances like this stand out immediately as 'one for the books' in the band's eyes. When they do, these 'Instant Classics' will continue to be made available with this special offer."
Starting in 2000, Pearl Jam has made hundreds of high-quality "official bootlegs" available for purchase. The practice has continued through this year, with several recent European shows the latest to surface.
As for the next Pearl Jam studio effort, which the band has slowly been working on for the past year, bassist Jeff Ament recently told Guerilla Candy: "We still don't really know exactly when we will finish it so it's hard to talk about it. It really could be anything at this point. Even though we have seven or eight songs recorded it's still sort of a blank slate and that's exciting."