October 19, 2013 – Barclays Center, Brookyln, NY, USA

Pearl Jam Show Notes 10/19/2013:

Saturday night in Brooklyn starts with the band flying out of the gate, playing the first NINE songs in a row without a break. Ed howls and screams through Wash, an early indicator that absolutely anything is on the table. Lightning Bolt is introduced with “…live from Brooklyn, it’s Saturday night!” After Down, he tells the crowd

“…if I was a surfer, which I am, and you were the ocean, which in a way you are, this would be good surfing…right here…”

He continues, adding that the prior night they tied a record for amount of fist fights at a show with one, and pleads to not to come close to that record tonight. Even Flow features a showstopping Matt Cameron solo reminiscent of the ones he’d consistently bang out on the Avocado tour. Rats is dedicated to the nice people from the financial district, and with NBA Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman in attendance, Ed changes the line to “Dennis, the two of us need look no more.” Unthought Known and Immortality transition flawlessly into one another with the latter featuring a screeching McCready solo. Ed makes this poignant speech prior to Better Man:

“You know, a lot of us have maybe something in common. I know the thing that bonds my friends and us together usually is the fact that at one point we were probably pretty broken. Sometimes people steer away from broken people, and those are the people that usually have never been broken. There’s nothing wrong with being broken. You can get fixed! You fix yourself. Things break and then they get fixed. Usually with the help of other people. I just want to say that this part of the country, all of the northeast, NJ, NY, Brooklyn…you’ve always been really really good to this group and have been there when we needed you, and I hope, fully, we’ve been able to return the favor. In China, if a vase breaks, they repair it and they draw a gold leaf where the crack was. They celebrate the cracks. We should celebrate what we’ve been through. It’s the people without the scars, those are the ones you have to worry about.”

After a whopping 20-song main set, they jump back into the encore with a powerful, soaring rendition of Footsteps. All Those Yesterdays appears for only the 14th time in the 15 years since Yield. During Porch, Ed channels his early 90’s antics and hops on a green orb hanging from the top of the stage and goes swinging back and forth over the crowd. Ed starts the second encore by saying

“you look fuckin’ great…we have some friends here tonight, people that we’ve known for many many many many years, from all over…you make us look really good in front of our friends…you guys make us look so good that if we had enemies they couldn’t be enemies anymore because they’d want to be our friends because they’d want to be your friends…”

He jokes that Whipping is called “Bad Boys Get Spanked.” Following Blood, he sees a shirt in the crowd for a non-profit called Every Mother Counts and makes a setlist change on the fly to play Leaving Here in honor of all the women in the crowd. The night ends with the classic ‘bread ‘n’ butter’ tracks, including the Hendrix-style Star-Spangled Banner tag off of Yellow Ledbetter. Ed finishes off the night with “New York, Brooklyn, you’ve been very very very good to us” in a thick New York accent.