That may seem a tad over-dramatic in print, but after catching Pearl Jam's first public appearance since taking on Ticketmaster last summer, it's easy to see what Vedder meant. With Irons in the rhythm section, Pearl Jam didn't sound better than they had with Abbruzzese - they sounded better than almost any other band on earth. In fact, by the time Neil Young ambled on-stage to join in on the final encore, it was hard to shake the sense that we were witnessing a singular evening.

The circumstance probably helped. Pearl Jam were there to support Voters for Pro-Choice political committee founded by feminist Gloria Steinman, and had invited Young, L7 and Lisa Geramano to join in the staging a pair of benefits. Because the concerts were not for profit, Pearl Jam were able to bypass Ticketmaster and sell tickets by post card lottery; some 170,000 requests were received for 6,000 seats available.

Naturally, reproductive rights was a recurrent theme throughout the evening. Vedder brought topicality to "Daughter" by ending it with the refrain "My body's nobody's but mine/You have your own body/Let me have mine." Jennifer Finch put it more bluntly during L7's set, at one point instructing the audience to "Stick your hand down your pants. And Remember," she said, "that's yours, and no body can fucking tell you what to do with it."

That sort of gesture was par for the course for L7, whose energy level was so high that night that it made Young's performance with Crazy horse seem almost sporadic by comparison. But unlike L7, for whom the volume was just another component in their aural juggernaught, Young seemed to turn the implicit aggression of overdriven amps inside out to reveal the soothing core of that ear-searing sound. Although Young's set ranged from the acoustic beauty of "I am a Child" to the surly crunch of "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)," its most affecting moments came when he and Crazy Horse stretched out and let the amplifiers roar, as with the great, roiling swirls of sound in "Cortez the Killer" or the ambling solos and oddly soothing feedback that fueled "Change Your Mind."

Good as Young was, though, this was clearly Pearl Jam's night. From the slow building intensity of "Release" to the breath taking abandon of "Blood," Pearl Jam performed with an almost uncanny degree of unity, at times playing as if the five of had become a singular organism. "Deep" found the band playing with such freedom and power that the audience couldn't help getting swept in it's wake, while "Go" surged along with such vigor that the guitar hook seemed to leap from the speakers like a 3-D picture. Even better, Pearl Jam were wholly convincing regardless of what musical effect they attempted, be it the live fade at the end of "Corduroy," the unrelenting drive of "Rearviewmirror" to the hushed intensity of "Indifference."

Vedder sang beautifully throughout the evening, bringing out a vivid sense of narrative and character to "Daughter" and bracing abandon to "Blood." But as usual the band's real strength built from the bottom up. Inspired by Iron's supple pulse, bassist Jeff Ament contributed a surprising soulfullness to "Not For You," bringing a sly sense of funk to it's otherwise static riff. "Tremor Christ," by contrast, pulled most of it's drama from the relationship between the liquid momentum of the bass and drums and the angularity of Stone Gossard's and Mike McCready's guitar lines. Add in the giddy overdrive of "Spin the Black Circle", and Pearl Jam represented a sound so complete, so compelling, and so intoxicating that it could turn any fan into a fanatic.