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It’s been a rare occurance throughout Pearl Jam’s history to see them as the opening act on a tour. They toured in support of Neil Young in the early 90’s, and famously for a set of shows for the Rolling Stones in 1997, but for six shows in 2006, Pearl Jam appeared as the opening act for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Pretty good company to cede the headline to, right? This episode covers the second night of Milwaukee’s Summerfest from that run.

A majority of this episode is dedicated to talking about what Tom Petty means to not only us personally, but music and pop culture as a whole. We’ll share stories of our favorite memories getting acquainted with his music, and what he meant to the band as an influence. For a 17-song set, this could have been seen as a typical festival set, but they took advantage of the opportunity and cranked out some special moments. Last Kiss was played as the opener at this show, an occasion that’s only happened two other times, we get rarities such as Sad and Around The Bend and Smile with a little dedication to how the story of the song came to be.

We’ll also discuss the performances of The Waiting and American Girl from the Heartbreakers set that Eddie got to help out with, and the Javier segment is a little bit different this week, so stay tuned for what’s in store!

As we plan to bid farewell to a rocky European tour this week, we’re prepping for the final show of the run in Lisbon, Portugal by covering their performance at the NOS Alive Festival from 2018. This is the same festival that they’ll play this week that they’ve played two other times in previous years. We’ll get to talk about a very special guest who appeared on this show to partake in Rockin’ In The Free World, the legendary Jack White!

The theme of this episode will circle around the stigma that festival shows get for being way too run of the mill setlist wise and too casual crowd wise. For a crowd in Portugal who goes through extended stretches without seeing this band, this show absolutely bucks the trend of being what some may consider a more generic set. This crowd has a few big moments that transpire here like Low Light being used as an opener with Better Man as the follow up, big crowd participation moments on Daughter, Black and Rearviewmirror, a few deeper cuts thrown in like Rats and In My Tree, and a song that we barely get to talk about on this podcast, Can’t Deny Me.

Check out the usual rundown of the setlist, but at the top of the episode we’ll do a quick reaction to the recent shows that took place in Barcelona!

Well. Originally this episode was slated to get you guys excited for the shows taking place in Berlin this week, but while the band was forced to cancel their plans, we’ve decided to stick with ours. Berlin is one of Pearl Jam’s best cities to play in that perhaps nobody ever talks about. This crowd comes into every show ready to bring their a-game, and at this show in 2014, nothing was spared. From waving their arms in the air to clapping in rhythm, bouncing up and down and singing every lyric and guitar melody, the fans in Germany absolutely know how to give this band the best they got.

This Lightning Bolt era show went for nearly 3 hours and featured 34 songs from every variety of rarities to the radio hits. This show will have plenty of great crowd moments, including on songs like Do The Evolution and Sirens where the band is greeted with post-performance melodies. Checklist songs galore here that include God’s Dice, Sleight Of Hand, You Are, Who You Are, All Those Yesterdays, Bee Girl and one of the rarest songs in the Pearl Jam catalog, Hold On played for only the fourth of a total of five times. But that’s not all! Find out why this crowd needed to hear the dulcet tones of the voice of their favorite guitar player, and the hilarious ensuing result.

We’ll of course start the show reacting once again to the news of cancelations, and once again bring more context to the situation.

Pearl Jam loves to play in legendary venues. They’ve conquered the two oldest baseball parks in America, massive stadium venues in South America and plenty of the most famous arenas throughout the world. In London, the absolute cream of the crop when it comes to concert venues is Hyde Park. Back in 2020, Pearl Jam was scheduled to play Hyde Park alongside the Pixies, but after Covid cancelled all plans, they decided to add an extra date due to the demand. This episode covers the first night of a memorable two-night stay.

With massive screens erected for the 65k people to all witness this band from far and near, they came out firing right away. Better Man as an opener sets and amazing tone, Breath was a big surprise played early, Quick Escape featured a little Sex Pistols on the backend and a heartfelt dedication to a fan for Light Years really built up this show to feel as massive as the park. We’ll talk about all of the big moments, as well as focusing on the ticket situation which is currently going happening for the show in London this coming weekend.

It’s time for Pearl Jam to take the Dark Matter tour over to Europe! For the next month, we’ll be doing the same thing as we did in May – focusing on past shows from locations they’re about to embark on. First stop is Dublin, Ireland. It’s been 14 years since the band has been back there, and strangely enough, they’ve only played there six times in total! This episode covers a show from Dublin in 1996 during the No Code tour that marks first of three appearances at The Point Theatre.

This episode will lean heavily on the coverage of No Code tracks as we get in depth with Hail, Hail, In My Tree, Mankind and Who You Are. Of course with this being a Jack Irons show, he’ll dominate much of the conversation. We’ll dig into why some of the Ten songs may not have been his specialty as we touch up on tracks such as Release, Even Flow and Alive. We’ll also spend some time preparing you for the upcoming tour leg and try our hand at coming up with some ideas that could end up being huge surprises this month!

There are countless Pearl Jam shows where all you need to do is mention a location by name and the majority of Pearl Jam fans know exactly what you’re talking about. For one lone night at a chocolate factory, when you mention this Hershey show from 2003, everyone knows that it’s remembered for one thing – mosquito bites! No, this outdoor venue wasn’t invested with mosquitos. The band was greeted by a flasher at this show who had taken her top off in order for the band to recognize her. But what she didn’t realize was that they were coming off of one of the longest shows in their history in Mansfield, MA, meaning a six hour drive to Pennsylvania in the same night potentially left Ed a little sleep deprived. It leads to an all-time rant where he comments on the size of her breasts, a quote that has gone down as one of the most memorable things he’s ever said.

With that being said, the band faced the challenge of following up the experiment by putting together a fun show with a lot of energy. They made up for two songs that were left out of the experiment in Last Exit and Glorified G, dug into some of the deeper Riot Act cuts with Help Help and one of the last versions of Get Right to date, and we get a random appearance of a harmonica on… State Of Love And Trust? Yeah, you read that right. Also, we’ll uncover the true story about a friend of Stone’s who guested on Rockin In The Free World at this show. Where is he now? The answer may surprise you… really surprise you.

Javier makes his return in this episode and will talk about the unique tuning of Daughter, and how that helps transforms the song to make it sound acoustic, even on an electric guitar.

As the west coast leg of the Dark Matter tour has come to a close, now is a great opportunity for us to dig into a few great Pearl Jam shows without covering upcoming tour locations. That takes us to November of 1995. A five-show run featuring shows that were postponed from earlier in the tour year that have gone down in history as some of the best of the era. After being forced to postpone a June Salt Lake City show due to weather conditions, the promise Ed had made was that the band would come back and play twice as long. Which means they came back and played two shows instead of one for their make up. This run will always be most known as hosting the live debuts for both Red Mosquito and Brain Of J, the former of which we’ll talk about in this episode.

Ed would make a quip on night two that it was like the crowd’s parents came to night one. While this show may not reach the excitement of night two, that quote has given this show an undeserved stigma that we’re out to prove is inaccurate. Some great performances go down on this night including ones from Corduroy, Deep, RVM, Immortality and what amounts to probably the longest version of Blood in the catalog. We’ll also dig into an improv titled Seven Years Waiting and a Porch closer that got a little bit weird in the solo.

We’re also only a week out from the Seattle shows, so we’ll chat about the experience and some of the best performances that held up from that night.