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This episode keeps the Chronology Series train moving while also digging into current events surrounding the world of Pearl Jam. 2009 was a fresh year for the band. It was a renewed start as they brought back long time producer Brendan O’Brien into the studio to produce their 9th album, Backspacer. It was a more positive outlook for a band that spent the last three records exhausting frustration over war and other tragic moments, and that outlook was presented as such on stage. While we cover a hometown San Diego show for this episode, you can’t talk 2009 without mentioning the impact that the final shows from The Spectrum had on this fanbase.

This episode is a culmination of weeks of Javi dreading his least favorite era of Pearl Jam live. However, we put a challenge to the test to see if he could make it through the entire show without being irritated by the sonic staleness of the guitars from this tour, and you’ll have to tune in to see how well he acquitted himself. It helps that this is a hometown show with some great stories that more than make up for the sounds not being up to par. We get to see music instructors of Ed and Matt join stage for Little Wing, and an outstanding cover of So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star where Ed shares a fun story about his time trying to play music in San Diego.

Oh, and I suppose it needs to be mentioned here that we have a show announcement! We’ll react to the lineup announcement at Ohana and the questions that still remain after knowing that Pearl Jam will headline the third night.

***This episode is simulcast from a video episode that was posted to our YouTube channel. Please subscribe there to watch to get the best out of the episode!***

Pearl Jam’s 2008 tour was a short, but memorable run in between album releases that took them along the entirety of the U.S. East Coast. After shows at Bonnaroo, Madison Square Garden and Mansfield among many more, they finished the run by playing a benefit show at the famed Beacon Theater in New York City. The band helped raise $3 million for the Robin Hood Foundation to fight poverty within the city limits. 2,500 lucky fans were able to witness what happened on this night, help raise funds and awareness while getting a great show out of it.

2008 has a few major storylines for the band that mostly center around songs returning from long absences. This was the first time in 13 years that they brought W.M.A. to the table as a full performance, the first time in the Matt Cameron era that Who You Are was played, and it was the debut year for Lost Dog opening track, All Night. All three of these songs help define the time period, and if you happened to witness the band in New York that year, these songs were accompanied live by three local backing singers. We’ll go into depth on how these songs benefitted from a different feel for the band at the time, and how the singers blended in soul with rock ‘n’ roll to create memorable performances. Especially of Harvest Moon.

We’ll also talk about Randy’s first year getting a chance to see a show and how that changed the trajectory of… his life? And on Javi’s side, he’ll go into depth on what displeases him about the sound in this era and why he thinks it holds the band back from being able to expand their pallet.

Pearl Jam’s 2008 tour was a short, but memorable run in between album releases that took them along the entirety of the U.S. East Coast. After shows at Bonnaroo, Madison Square Garden and Mansfield among many more, they finished the run by playing a benefit show at the famed Beacon Theater in New York City. The band helped raise $3 million for the Robin Hood Foundation to fight poverty within the city limits. 2,500 lucky fans were able to witness what happened on this night, help raise funds and awareness while getting a great show out of it.

2008 has a few major storylines for the band that mostly center around songs returning from long absences. This was the first time in 13 years that they brought W.M.A. to the table as a full performance, the first time in the Matt Cameron era that Who You Are was played, and it was the debut year for Lost Dog opening track, All Night. All three of these songs help define the time period, and if you happened to witness the band in New York that year, these songs were accompanied live by three local backing singers. We’ll go into depth on how these songs benefitted from a different feel for the band at the time, and how the singers blended in soul with rock ‘n’ roll to create memorable performances. Especially of Harvest Moon.

We’ll also talk about Randy’s first year getting a chance to see a show and how that changed the trajectory of… his life? And on Javi’s side, he’ll go into depth on what displeases him about the sound in this era and why he thinks it holds the band back from being able to expand their pallet.

After a massive tour in 2006, Pearl Jam’s 2007 was a lot less chaotic than the 79-show tour that spanned three continents. They went back to Europe for 12 shows, half of them being festivals in places they’ve barely visited, and then two memorable shows in Chicago – Vic Theatre and Lollapalooza. This episode covers the Munich show from this run, one of their few arena headlining gigs from the tour. It was their first to back since 1992, a memorable night where they performed the Ten album in full.

After heavily supporting the Avocado record the year prior, this show specifically doesn’t feature the same plethora of songs from the album. When supporting the record, they’d begin most of their shows with some kind of combination of World Wide Suicide, Life Wasted, Severed Hand and Marker In The Sand with around a total of eight songs from the record played, but in Munich they significantly reduced that album’s representation opting for only three songs. However, Severed Hand is a major highlight from this show, and Unemployable will take us to a conversation where we connect it to a random 70’s song that has nothing to do with Pearl Jam. Other highlights include the return of Sometimes after a long absence, a killer version of Sad, Matt Cameron’s patented Even Flow solo for the era and how some of the gear Mike was using impacted songs like Given To Fly and Present Tense.

We’ll also share the story of Ed’s #5 guitar, how it relates back to Pete Townshend, and how it further relates to both Johnny Marr and Noel Gallagher in a wild tale that all gear and music nerds will enjoy.

2006 was a massive tour year for Pearl Jam. With their Self Titled, or Avocado, record released, they set forth to travel the world on four big legs. Two legs of North America, a European and Australian leg took from May until early December to finish up. They starting doing more media again, they started doing festivals for the first time in six years, and the setlists were unforgettable.

This episode looks into their Auburn Hills show from the May leg. Sonically, this is considered one of the band’s best tour runs. We’ll spend time talking about how the big powerful guitar sounds from the record made an impact when transitioned live. Catch us talking about the original Severed Hand intro, Marker In The Sand aging gracefully, the background of Army Reserve and the double neck guitar usage on Inside Job as we breakdown all of the Avocado songs in their prime.

Not only that, but we’ll dig deep into depths of conversation stemming from the 2006 rendition of Garden and how that song’s evolution is similar to human growth. If you ever wanted to know what kind of humans Pearl Jam songs would be if Gepetto turned them real, this is probably the episode for you… but also probably not!

Without an album to tour for, 2005 was an adventurous year for Pearl Jam taking them to places they’d never been before, and some they haven’t been to since. It was their first time venturing coast to coast to tour the entirety of Canada and the first visit and experience down to South America playing for some of their most passionate fans. This week’s episode in the Chronology takes us to Kitchener, one of the small towns in Canada that was only played on this tour.

There is something special about when Pearl Jam plays a smaller city and venue, they feel very comfortable playing for these crowds in a more intimate setting. As Ed would mention in this show, it felt like playing in a small bar. So when the crowd is invested in that kind of environment, you feel the power of every voice in that arena. Songs like Animal, Jeremy, Even Flow and Small Town make this crowd feel like there’s 50,000 in the room instead of 7,000.

We’ll also talk about a red hot start to this show, more political discourse at the time that can be relatable today, and a conversation about a cult classic movie from the era.

2004 was an important Presidential election year following all of the political storylines that took place on the prior year’s tour. Sprouting from multiple artists’ displeasure with the Iraq War and other important issues that Americans faced, the Vote For Change tour was created and ran through early October leading up to the election. It featured headlining acts such Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Dave Matthews Band, The Chicks and more alongside Pearl Jam. Every location played was a city in a key swing state such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri. Prior to those shows, the band played two warm up shows in Boston to prepare them for the run.

This night in Boston that we’ll cover in this episode features a handful of songs that you would never see come anywhere near a Pearl Jam show nowadays. Shows in 2004 included a lot of cover songs from the political spectrum that addressed the climate of the country at that point in time, songs like American In Me by Avengers, Lion’s Share from The Germs and X’s classic The New World. This show also features two songs from the early 90’s returning to the stage for the first time in ten years – Alone and a cover of The Beatles I’ve Got A Feeling.

Our discussions in this episode will stem from what was happening in America that time and why it was important for them to do this tour, how the death of Johnny Ramone shortly before this tour effected the band and the awkward setlist structure that may have some elements that the band can implement today. We’ll also discuss our successful EB fundraiser and the Matter Of Time documentary.

2003 Was a huge year for Pearl Jam that set up the template for what their live shows were going to look like moving forward from that point. This included longer shows, multiple surprises per night and a sonic display that kept pushing the boundaries of each and every one of their talents. While shows from State College, Madison Square Garden, Mansfield and Benaroya Hall dominate the conversation from this tour year, the show that we’ll be covering for our Chronology Series is from the famed Budokan venue in Tokyo. The band is re-releasing this bootleg in tandem with Eddie’s upcoming solo tour of Japan, so it was the perfect time to get back and investigate a pretty unique show and crowd from the far east.

We’ve become so accustomed to Pearl Jam crowds from South America, Europe and the United States bringing their a-game every night, singing and bouncing along to every song in the pit that any time where this doesn’t happen at a show can seem like an outlier. The Japanese crowds intake their concerts a little differently. The respectful crowd is engaged with the show, but are much more reserved than the normal concert goer. We’ll analyze it in this episode as two major Pearl Jam singalongs, Better Man and Elderly Woman, do not have the same kind of flair as they normally do.

We’ll also get into 2003 being a heavily political year for Pearl Jam and how the satire of the Bu$hleaguer performances that mocked the former President were their way of expressing art, and we get to hear perhaps the most perfect attempt at Lukin that exists in the band’s catalog!

Following the tumultuous 2000 tour, Pearl Jam took a year off to recalibrate their energy for 2001. After clearing their heads and writing new music, they were ready to release a brand new album with a different outlook on their personal journeys and the world around them. Riot Act has two centralized themes. One of them deals with the aftermath of Roskilde directly with songs such as Love Boat Captain, I Am Mine, Thumbing My Way and Arc. The other theme is a scathing critique of the United States decision to go to war after the attacks on 9/11. They were extremely critical of President George W. Bush, as well as the corporations that profited from the war.

While the album released in November of 2002, the band didn’t spend a lot of time focusing on touring as it was 2003 that would get the massive exposure for the record. The show we’re covering is the first night at famed Seattle club, The Showbox, that would be followed up by a highly regarded show that turned into a DVD release. This show featured seven live debuts of Riot Act album songs and b-sides, and would be a great indication on how this material would end up working on the live stage during the ensuing tour. The band also hired their beloved B3 organist, Boom Gaspar, around this time, so the crowd gets their first experience of his sound for songs such as Love Boat Captain, Black and others.

We’ll also take time in this episode to chat about life after Matt Cameron and how some of these Riot Act songs that were written by him may not be played moving forward.

The Chronology Series takes us to the turn of the century as Pearl Jam hit the new millennium with a new album, Binaural. As the landscape of the music industry was changing and cater to a larger pop, hip hop and nu metal fan contingent, Pearl Jam decided to stray as far away from the mainstream as possible. Binaural didn’t sound like a typical record of theirs, but the live shows and performances continued to get stronger and the fanbase was as dedicated as the previous decade. In this episode we dig into an early show from their European run in San Sebastian, Spain. This lighthearted show took place before the incident at Roskilde that changed everything for the band later that tour.

One of the big stories from 2000 was the release of an official bootleg for every show that was played, and we’ll dig into that discussion to talk about the distribution in Javi’s home country of Chile and how he came across this boot. This show has early seeds planted for the tour where they were still trying to figure out what to do with the new songs. We get a rare non-opener version of Of The Girl in this show, and Breakerfall is used in a spot before Rearviewmirror that hinders it’s impact. But with structure changing, we’ll also get to spotlight things like Last Exit and Hail, Hail opening up the first encore, and Smile played as the penultimate song of the night.

We’ll also get into some hiccups that the band had during songs like Immortality and Alive and how miscues failed to phase them, and we’ll discuss Pearl Jam’s connection with The Doors and how it might not resonate as well as other band’s they’ve taken influence from in that era. And find out which nu metal band Randy has a huge gripe with in this fun episode!

As the 90’s were nearing the end, so was Pearl Jam’s time in the limelight. But if you asked them, it was exactly what they wanted. Without the pressure bestowed upon them in the previous years, in 1998, Pearl Jam released their fifth studio album Yield. The record was a collaborative effort with Stone and Jeff digging into more songwriting and it displayed growth and maturity compared to their four previous attempts. Along with a new album came a new tour, and as we saw with every year of the 90’s, more major changes were implemented. The Ticketmaster boycott was halted in order to have an opportunity to play more venues and locations, and drummer Jack Irons left the band for mental health reasons, entering the mighty Matt Cameron into play.

This episode brings us to the second leg of the North American tour where things were started to heat up, and the shows became stuff of legends. After Cameron performed on an interim basis on the first leg, he was a full time member once August came around, and his impact on the sound and style was immeasurable. We’ll spend a lot of time in the episode talking about how great a fit Matt was, and we’ll get to hear some of his nasty fills on songs like Corduroy, Hail, Hail, Brain Of J, Better Man and more. A huge storyline in this show that we’ll talk about is the return of Hard To Imagine after it’s four year absence and how a moment like that led way to even bigger moments of bringing back rarities, such as Breath at MSG on the same tour.

We’ll talk ad nauseum about Pearl Jam in this episode, but you’ll have to indulge us first. Randy has a story to share from a recent Jason Isbell concert that most concert fans would be able to relate to.

Pearl Jam found time after No Code to take a bit of a breather during 1997 to get out of the spotlight, recalibrate and record their next record Yield. The tours that had been utilized without the usage of Ticketmaster were put on pause for the year, but they found a way to get a couple shows in with the help of rock ‘n’ roll titans, The Rolling Stones. For four dates in November, Pearl Jam opened for the Stones in Oakland playing hour-long sets and showcasing some brand new songs from the Yield record.

This episode is a watch along episode, so if you planned just to listen, take a stroll over to our YouTube channel so you can watch us watch the entire show in full. This show was recently brought to light by band archivist, Kevin Schuss, on their social media Rearviewmirror lookback video series. He shares a story about how it was pouring rain on the third night of this run and how he ran out to a golf pro shop in order to grab some rain suits for the band to wear on stage. Even though they looked like a hip hop dance troop, the band puts on a great performance in the rain as the warm up for the Stones. There is an OTOTO opener that we’ll get into at this show, and we’ll talk about top flight versions of Hail, Hail, Corduroy, Brain Of J, Immortality and more.

We’ll also get into a discussion about the Stones and why Pearl Jam and other popular bands of the era were opening for them on that tour, and how Yield set the band up for their writing process on future records.