Pearl Jam was the musical guest on last night’s Saturday Night Live, hosted by Jude Law, and now video from their performance is online.

The band played two songs — “Just Breathe” and “Unthought Known” — and also appeared in one of the skits. All three videos are here below.

I was hoping the writers would find a way to fit Pearl Jam into one of their sketches, like they’ve done with so many musical guests before. While their appearance was cool and definitely worth watching, I wish they could have gotten more screen time. The skit they were in was a take on the classic monster on the wing episode of The Twilight Zone.

While I love Pearl Jam and the two songs they performed, I think they were poor choices to play on SNL. They were very Eddie Vedder centric and are some of their slower, quieter sections. I’m not that that’s a bad thing, but with only two selections I’d expect them to perform something where every band member had plenty to do and where at least one song was more hard rock. It was still good, though, I’m just saying I thought it strange. Both tunes are from their latest album Backspacer.

The band toured in support of Backspacer from August through November 2009 and will return to the States for shows beginning in May. Check out their tour dates here below.

By the way, I got to see Pearl Jam perform on Halloween last year at the Spectrum in Philly on the arena’s closing night. The band totally brought the house down, playing for three and a half hours!!! It was amazing, which is why I feel their SNL stint poorly represented them. We shot a ton of video from that lengthy show in Philly, so check out the Geeks of Doom YouTube channel (browse through the listings in the right column) to see it.

Tour Dates

These are the North American Tour Dates.

May 1, 2010 New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans Jazz Festival
May 3, 2010 Kansas City, Missouri Sprint Center
May 4, 2010 St. Louis, Missouri Scottrade Center
May 6, 2010 Columbus, Ohio Nationwide Arena
May 7, 2010 Noblesville, Indiana Verizon Wireless Music Center
May 9, 2010 Cleveland, Ohio Quicken Loans Arena
May 10, 2010 Buffalo, New York HSBC Arena
May 13, 2010 Bristow, Virginia Jiffy Lube Live
May 15, 2010 Hartford, Connecticut XL Center
May 17, 2010 Boston, Massachusetts TD Garden
May 18, 2010 TBD
May 20, 2010 New York, New York Madison Square Garden
May 21, 2010 New York, New York Madison Square Garden

Video

Pearl Jam: “Just Breathe”

Pearl Jam: “Unthought Known”

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (Twilight Zone)