Pearl Jam’s Ten Club is hosting its third annual Rock and Art Poster Convention at Showbox at the Market on Sunday. As previously reported, the event will be more than just a poster show as it will also feature the first ever Pearl Jam pop-up shop. This means along with getting to check out and purchase art from the likes of Ames Bros., Frida Clements and other talented artists you’ll also get a chance to pick up some rare Pearl Jam merchandise including items from previous tours, vinyl and some limited-edition goodies. Earlier this week I caught up with Tim Bierman, the manager of Ten Club, and asked him what fans can expect from the pop-up shop and poster con.
The rare items will be priced like they are rare items
One of the things about the pop-up shop that caught the attention of Pearl Jam fans was when Bierman mentioned that the rare Benaroya Hall vinyl set will be for sale. The set was limited to a pressing of only 2,000 and is selling online for between $800 and $3,000. It’s a collector’s item every Pearl Jam fan drools over and its rarity will be reflected in its price at the pop-up shop.
“We have a limited number of them but they’re not going to be cheap. They’re going to be lower priced than what you’ll see on eBay but we aren’t going to sell them at a price where people will be going right back and selling them on eBay. The purpose of this pop-up shop and sale isn’t to stock people’s eBay accounts. That’s not what we’re doing,” Bierman said. “We’d like to come up with a fair price for some of these items so that people who really want them, and who make an effort to get out here for this show, would be happy to pay a good price to have what they would consider a prized possession.”
Bierman wouldn’t disclose the price point for the Benaroya Hall vinyl or how many would be available. He also didn’t want to reveal specifics on what other rare items would be for sale and emphasized that the pop-up shop is for the fans.
“It’s an opportunity for us to take some items we have been sitting on and make them available to serious collectors in a face-to-face, non-eBay, non-online kind of way,” said Bierman. “We’re going to have some rare posters for sale but I’m not going to say which ones and we’ll also have some tour merchandise available. Stuff that hasn’t been available anywhere except for when the band is on the road. There will be some recent stuff and some older stuff. It’s going to be a nice mix of things. The band places a premium on the live experience and fans being able to feel like they are a part of that with their tour merch. So there’s a lot of tour merch that will just never see the light of day again. But that being said, there’s going to be a lot of items for sale that we think the fans will really, really like.”
It’s about the community
The first Ten Club poster con happened in 2010 at the Showbox. It was so successful that it paved the way for the second poster con to happen at the PJ 20 festival in Wisconsin last year.
“We noticed the lines to get into the poster con were as long as the lines for beer, or food, or even the museum. There was a real community of fans who wanted to see and collect posters. It’s another way for the fans to connect to the artists and to the band as well,” Bierman said.
“I think that Pearl Jam, as much as any artist out there, has been instrumental in developing this culture of making individual posters for events. … The way the culture of Pearl Jam has worked over the years has been that all of the creative forces that go into making what happens with Pearl Jam creatively — be it the people in the crew, the management, the members of the band, the fans, or these poster artists — they’re all connected somehow. This is a really good way for the artists who create these amazing pieces of art to get to showcase their work and connect with the fans.”
There won’t be a Pearl Jam museum on display
A post on the Pearl Jam forums earlier this month accidentally revealed the poster con and pop-up shop before it was officially announced and it contained inaccurate information about the show featuring a Pearl Jam museum similar to the one that was on display at the band’s PJ 20 music festival. Bierman said that the museum pieces will not be on display.
Ten Club’s third annual Rock and Art Poster Convention happens Sunday at Showbox at the Market between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. Admission is free. More information about the poster con can be found here.
