Courtney Love put in her first live performance in two years during a surprise appearance with former Lemonheads singer Evan Dando at a Vancouver nightclub Saturday night.

Love, dressed in a black halter top, gray swing skirt and striped black nylons, first jumped onstage guitarless for Dando's encore rendition of the Lemonheads tune "Into Your Arms," according to fans in attendance. The singer complained that she couldn't play thanks to her "movie nails," but she soon took care of that problem by leaving the stage to chew them off. That allowed Love to borrow an instrument and return for an acoustic version of the Hole hit "Doll Parts." The evening's highlight was an improvised song that offered up lyrics about her life. The tune asked listeners if they wanted to be like her, and touched on topics ranging from being strung out on drugs to walking the red carpets of Hollywood. In the song she asked the audience if they wanted to know if she slept with "Gladiator" star Russell Crowe, and talked about hanging out with Oasis' Liam Gallagher. It also covered her early days in Vancouver, where she pretended to work on the set of the TV series "21 Jump Street" while dancing at a nearby strip club. Also referenced was her appearance at the "Pearl Harbor" premiere, which she said she attended because she couldn't resist the Versace gown being offered to her.

"She sounded great and she looked great," house sound technician Rob Foort said. "I'm kicking myself for not having a tape running — it was classic." Unfortunately, the club's management wasn't quite as impressed. According to a club employee, the Dando show, which had started at 8 p.m., was supposed to wrap up by 9:30 in order to turn the small house (estimated at just 100 or so fans) for the club's regular disco night. By 10 p.m., with Dando and Love still onstage, the staff aggressively tried to wrap up the performance. Love offered to buy the house a beer with actress Charlize Theron's platinum credit card, fans in attendance said, and offered to recap her sexual history (prompting a retort from Dando that it would take way too long). But what ended up buying the duo another 10 minutes was Love pulling up her halter top and flashing her breasts for the benefit of the staffers who were trying to evict them. The Hole frontwoman is in Vancouver shooting the movie "24 Hours" with co-stars Theron and Kevin Bacon. Oddly enough, her last live performance was also in Vancouver when Hole played the final date of the Edgefest Festival tour in July 1999 (see "Hole Ends Touring Year; New Album Planned").

Love is scheduled to perform a set of jazz and blues standards that she's recording for another movie, "Hello Suckers," at the Russian Tea Room in New York on June 11, according to movie director Scott Elliott's theater company, the New Group (see "Courtney Love Sings The Blues").

(This story was updated at 3:29 p.m. ET Tuesday, May 29, 2001.)