All Podcast Episodes

The 2024 tour keeps rolling forward for the next week with our next stop in Baltimore, Maryland. Four years ago, the plan was to return to Baltimore before Covid happened, and then when it came time to reschedule the tour, the arena was under construction. So now they return for the first time in eleven years, which happens to be the only time they’ve played Baltimore as of this writing. This episode will feature the 2013 show, a show which is centrally focused on the loss of a music industry titan, Lou Reed.

The band set the mood from the early going here as the local crowd would get a show that features songs they were hoping to hear along with a little bit of the unexpected. The idea of the setlist and lyrical content can certainly be traced to how they were handling the recently announced death of the Velvet Underground front man. Songs like Hard To Imagine and Given To Fly can be considered choices that reflect this, plus an inclusion of Take A Walk On The Wild Side as a Daughter tag, and more direct dedications like Man Of The Hour and a cover of Waiting For The Man. We’ll also get into a little bit of a mystery as to what happened to Jeff at the end of this show, and a yellow shirt guy that had the time of his life.

Keep in mind that this episode was recorded prior to the Philadelphia shows, so any conversation that you’re begging to hear on Brain Of J will have to either wait for next week or is available to our on our Patreon reaction episode. We will however talk about MSG night 2 and how incredible that night was, plus a rating on how well Randy sang It’s The End Of The World As We Know It on karaoke!

Welcome to Live On 4 Legs’ officially unofficial 300th podcast episode! The timing worked out perfectly on this because in order to hit a milestone, you have to do something special. It just so happens that the band is in Madison Square Garden this week, and that’s a pretty special venue to go back to. Since we covered every Garden show from 1998-2016 back in 2019, the only one left to do was from two years ago on the Gigaton tour.

The show took place on the 21st anniversary of 9/11, which you couldn’t have asked for a more important stage and city to play on. The weight of the tragedy was on everyone’s minds and many of the song choices were picked to reflect the emotion that this date naturally brings. Songs like Release, Come Back and Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns were just a few that captured the moment of what that night was. We’ll get into some emotional Ed’s speeches where he hares stories from first responders and calls for unity in America.

Also, Randy happened to be at this show and had a very lofty goal he was looking to accomplish to bring back a former Garden moment from their history. He’ll gush over his favorite performances such as Present Tense, Porch, Sonic Reducer and how Rockin’ In The Free World almost made him need a hearing aid.

As Pearl Jam is preparing for another memorable weekend at Wrigley Field this week, we were put in a somewhat difficult spot as to what we should cover to get you guys excited for the show. The dilemma was that we had already covered all five Wrigley shows back in the summer of 2020, so what would we do? Well, there’s a little show that took place in Chicago in 2005 that doesn’t get discussed as much as it should. To raise money for Hurricane Katrina relief funds, Robert Plant and Pearl Jam combined forces to create an out of this world all-star show. Our friend Jason Brown was lucky enough to be there that night, and he’ll join us to tell the stories of how it all went down.

To get into this show that took place in an intimate venue that has a capacity of less than 2,000, you had to make a $1,000 donation in order to get in. Jason made that donation, but you’ll want to hear the wild story of how it happened. As legendary Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant and his band The Strange Sensation opened up the night, the place was abuzz of whether the two rock ‘n’ roll titans would combine forces. Lo and behold, they did! The set they played with Plant was pretty remarkable, a combination of Given To Fly and Going To California as a wink wink to the song’s influence kicked things off, followed by a few standard 1960s songs such as Little Sister and Money (That’s What I Want). And then the band truly breaks out the Zeppelin heavy hitters – Fool In The Rain and Thank You. We’ll have a very interesting discussion on Fool In The Rain featuring facts that may surprise you.

The Gear Guru also joins us for this show and while we spend some time talking Zeppelin with him, we’ll dig into Save You, Porch and Rearviewmirror that may or may not have sounded like other Pearl Jam songs.

With the new tour firing up this week in Montana, on Monday Pearl Jam will be heading to Indianapolis to take care of some unfinished business. Last year was set to be the band’s first appearance in the city in 13 years until illness took over and caused a postponement. As they make good on their promise to return, this episode covers the last instance where they visited Indiana’s capital back in 2010. We’ll get you hyped up for the return of the tour and answer some of the questions that you guys posed to us via social media!

With a new show on the horizon, is it fair to say that Indianapolis doesn’t have a Pearl Jam show that’s considered an all-timer? While neighboring places like Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Milwaukee have all laid claim to have hosted shows that people hold in very high regard, this year may be Indianapolis’s year. 2010 is not by any means a bad show, but does it stand out among a very good slate from that US run that year? With the conditions not going the way of a typical concert, marred with a 90 minute delay due to thunderstorms, the band came out and played a very efficient set that took two hours and ten minutes to play an impressive 29 songs. Most of these songs are of the shorter, pop-rock variety to keep the mood of what may have been an anxious crowd after a rain delay lighthearted and fun. The positive outlook of the Backspacer era tunes helped that cause with songs like Unthought Known and Supersonic flourishing in this spotlight.

We’ll spend our time talking about some big moments that include a fantastic rendition of Off He Goes, Force Of Nature, Wishlist and a nod to hometown heroes, the Jackson 5.

We’re getting you prepped up for Pearl Jam’s second North American leg of the Dark Matter tour by once again featuring shows in the locations that they’ll be playing. First up is a hometown show for Mr. Jeff Ament as we cover the Missoula show from 1995. This is the beginning of the Vitalogy era and is the send off show before they embarked on a trip through the Pacific Rim.

As always with this era, this show is all about Jack Irons leading the charge. His time in the band was still in its infancy, but you can see the direction that the band wanted to go with him. While the brand new Vitalogy songs were squarely in the forefront, it pushed aside songs from Ten that had been extremely popular only three years prior. There’s only two songs from Ten in this show (feel free to include State Of Love And Trust from the time period) and the way those songs were attacked was in a way to trying something different to make them feel fresh. Porch was lifted from it’s normal closing role to the fifth spot in the set that saw it’s typically iconic live solo abridged, Even Flow experimented with a new intro and pieces of the song that strayed from the radio version, and SOLAT is a completely different monster that they did not continue moving forward with. This show also has killer versions of Spin The Black Circle, Immortality and one of three full versions of W.M.A. that Jack has played on. Also, we have a song that’s a Live On 4 Legs first at this show!

Javier’s segment will focus on that incredibly insane version of W.M.A. and we invite one half of the Hallucinogenic Recipe podcast, Patrick Boegel, to break down the circulation of the bootleg tape from this show.

This episode takes us back to a time when Pearl Jam’s popularity was skyrocketing. MTV Unplugged had took place, the Jeremy music video was out and the band garnered a lot of attention traveling on the Lollapalooza tour as one of the afternoon openers. This episode covers a Lollapalooza show from Fairfax County, Virginia where the band were in their prime and “all the rage”. The episode will cover not just Pearl Jam’s impact on the festival, but also the festival’s impact on the culture of the early 90’s.

This show is seen as somewhat of a pillar moment for the band this summer because as they were rising up the charts, so were their Seattle brethren Soundgarden traveling on the same tour. Right around this time as both Vedder and Cornell became the defacto faces of the grunge scene, people were starting to pick up on the collaboration that they did for Temple Of The Dog a year prior. Hunger Strike was blossoming into a massive hit and wasn’t something that was played often until they decided to join forces at this show. From there, it became one of those rare moments that people salivated for. They’d continue to bust it out on occasion during this tour, including during a random side stage performance in Phoenix.

This episode is produced a little bit differently since we are only working with eight songs. You’ll get the rare experience of listening to an entire show on this podcast! Of course we stop and chat in between, but every song will be played in full with Even Flow as a lone exception. This episode also features a conversation about the newly retired Aerosmith and how that happening this past week tied in perfectly with this episode.

It’s Olympics week, and since we’ve been following heavily on some of Pearl Jam’s past European shows lately, why not add one more into the fold to keep the theme alive? This show from Vienna is like running a marathon as the band treats us to nearly 3 hours of an excellent 35-song set. Everything was on the table here as they dipped into songs from nearly every album, including many of the check list songs for all of the serious collectors.

The theme for this show? Less talk, more rock. The band wasted no time at the beginning of the show going on a run of eight straight songs to start the show. This was not necessarily a night for chatting, it was a night for amazing bass grooves and solos ala Gossard. We’ll talk about how great they both sound at this one and highlight songs such as Hail, Hail and Brain Of J where they both thrived. But the rarities also dominate the night as it’s the last time to date that they’ve played Can’t Keep, Rats and the deep Backspacer cut Speed Of Sound is also featured at this show. We also hear some rare covers involved including Rain, Public Image and Needle And The Damage Done.

We’ll also get into a deep conversation about how meaningful encore 2 sets are outside of creating the party atmosphere to close your night.