Randy and John are live outside Bridgestone Arena minutes after tonight’s Nashville show ended to talk about everything that happened, including sooo much Vitalogy, an early Black, and much much more…some of our patrons were on hand and we talk to them as well. See you in Louisville tomorrow!
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Randy, Matt and a host of friends chime in from the parking lot on what just went down along the Delaware River. Pearl Jam cranked out a stunner of a 27 song set as we pass the half way mark on the final leg of 2022 Gigaton Tour.
Believe it or not, this is episode 199! We’re one away from our 200th episode! So for this one we are going to celebrate the birthday of one John Farrar by going back in time all the way to the first show he ever attended back in 1998 on the Yield tour. To everyone’s surprise, yes… it’s an Atlanta show. John has a good story as he’ll talk about Pearl Jam being in sort of the downswing of his life after joining a punk band and moving on to other influences. Going to this show was essentially a way for him to say that he went and got to witness it, but it wouldn’t be for another 14 years that he’d see them again.
This show marked some semi-notable moments for the Yield album which, as we’ll discuss, did not give enough love to it’s deeper cuts on this tour. A soundcheck was played before this show that would have certainly been the stuff of legends had we owned a recording. They played Low Light, a song that they never played on this tour, Parting Ways, which was two years away from being on an album, Dead Man with drums and a slowed down version of Blood. The band opted to play No Way for only the 2nd time out of 12 overall in the 24 years since thanks to a guy who kept bringing a sign to every show. They also tagged All Those Yesterdays off of Daughter which saw just a marginal amount more of playing time. It’s a small sample size, but this show incorporated a side of Yield that went untouched for most of the early time that Cameron was in this band.
Oh yeah, there’s also the Yeastie Girlz! We’ll talk about how Ed’s extremely obscure rap was something that John actually knew about and made him super excited both at the show, and during the episode.
We’re back with another live instant reaction from outside MSG minutes after the show ended with Randy and Patrick from Hallucinogenic Recipe to break down everything that happened at another epic show on this tour. Opening with Release into Garden, an early Porch, and some beloved cover songs (Sonic Reducer! Chloe/Crown!), hope you’re enjoying these and thanks for continuing to support the show! Our Breath campaign didn’t come to fruition but we really appreciate everyone’s support…on to Camden!
Straight from under the marquee after one of the most unique and specialized shows in the history of Pearl Jam at the legendary Apollo Theater, we get to react live to everything that happened inside. While Randy could not find his way inside the building, our good friend and Hallucinogenic Recipe host, Brian Horwitz, was lucky enough to get in and be able to tell the story. We discuss the atmosphere of the 1,500 theater, the technical difficulties that transpired, the unbearable heat inside, and some of the great stories told throughout the night. Enjoy this one!
Going old-school Patreon here to give you guys the instant reaction from outside the venue in Toronto with Randy and some friends. The show had just ended and we jumped in to record our thoughts on another great night. We got a cover we’ve never heard before, the Beatles’ Her Majesty, Rearviewmirror makes another appearance, along with a couple of Neil Young hat-tips (including a Cinnamon Girl tag not done since 2011), an aborted take on Leash, and lots of super performances. Enjoy Randy and friends LIVE from Toronto!
Welp. We ended the last episode with a plea to get Sad to be played in Toronto after being scratched off the first two shows. However, I guess the band has better plans for my birthday present on Thursday, because Sad finally made the set tonight. It was an excellent performance, but yeah the first ten minutes of this episode is basically addressing that situation. But after I get all of my personal gripes out of the way, I have nothing but glowing things to say about this show and I’ll go out of my way to call it a top 5 show so far this year. The top 5 as far as the setlist goes was dynamite. Yellow Moon and Man Of The Hour were excellent, and Oceans was a good indication that the rules were kind of out the window on this night. We get to talk about the impressive set, a concern for Stone and any and all plans for a birthday celebration in Toronto! Hope to see you there!
It’s the final week of tour preparation as Pearl Jam finishes up the last of the Canadian dates, and I guess because the 2022 Hamilton show took place a day before this was released, it’s not quite a part of the preparation? But as you’ll hear many times in this spectacular Hamilton show from 2005, there is a lot to celebrate with this one.
We couldn’t do another Canadian show and not talk about 2005. This was the first time that the band got to experience Canada from end to end, hitting up all of the big towns like Toronto and Montreal, but also making pit stops in places like Thunder Bay, Kitchener and Halifax. The band expresses their admiration for the country, and they do it by raising a toast nearly every time that Ed speaks. It’ll be a running theme that all culminates in Go sounding like he did one too many.
This setlist on paper is mind blowing, and on stage it absolutely meets that expectation. We get the very rare appearance of Porch as the opening song in the set that kicks off some of the craziness, then an injection of Lost Dogs such as Sad and U. But there are so many show stealers in this that it’s hard to pick just one from Present Tense, Untitled/MFC, Harvest Moon and a hybrid of the normal and alternative takes from In My Tree.
Show number 2 in Canada here, and now we have a good idea of what we might be expecting this month. This was a really good show in Ottawa on a Saturday night, we got to see the top 5 in the same fashion as Quebec and then we got a mix of the expected hits and a few nice additions. We have a lot to talk about, mainly the set still being an early tour set and we’re still kind of waiting for a breakout (Toronto!) but still great to hear songs like Garden and Throw Your Hatred Down. I’ll also make a plea for you all to help me get something played for my birthday in Toronto! …please? And also, what the hell is this band doing with Corduroy that makes very little sense? Enjoy the show!
Here we go! The third and final leg of the 2022 tour year is under way, and we got a nice kick off in Quebec City last night. As we saw at the end of Amsterdam, the band went back to that five-song sit down open, with five songs that I don’t think anyone would have expected to be in that part of the set. Daughter was opened with for only the fourth time in history, and speaking of four, we heard the fourth performance of extremely rare Lost Dog, Other Side. We’ll talk about those cool moments, Ed’s voice, some of the changes in the encore, a great Off He Goes, some dedications and something completely irrelevant to anything that happened in the set. Strap in, the first of 12 is in the books!
Ahh, we’re finally at tour week! Quebec City is going to kick off the September run, and that’s exactly what we’ve decided to cover this week – the show from the last time that they were there in 2016. In preparation of the Toronto Binaural album show, they ended up playing four songs off of that record, and a nice array of rarities alongside them as well. The Binaural representation featured Of The Girl, God’s Dice, Light Years and Nothing As It Seems, while the other rare stuff spliced in included Pilate, I’m Open, Thumbing My Way and Wash.
But this show has a pretty unforgettable moment that exceeds everything above. Ed invites a ten-year old kid named Noah onto the stage to play Sad after seeing a video of him and his father playing it. It’s one of those once in a lifetime moments, something that every kid dreams of, but is nearly an impossibility to actually happen. Pearl Jam made it possible, and we’ll talk all about it in this episode!
It’s time to get back into the Evolution Series! We’ve been promising this for months and we’re glad to have held off on it, because the story of the song has changed within this past year. The song we’re talking about is Nothingman and of course that moment that changed the perception of the song was this year back in Oakland. With Richard Stuverud subbing in for Cameron, Ed told the story of how and when the song was written with Stuverud and Jeff helping out on the demo. That makes for a great tie-in to the whole story, but it only scratches the surface of what we’ll discuss. The song was left off of setlists for the majority of the Vitalogy and No Code tours, but got a nice little bump once a certain trilogy came into play in 1998. The song would gradually turn into a fan favorite and become one of their best live sing-alongs. Tune in to hear the best renditions, and some of the stories that make this song special.
Check out the end of the episode to find out which song we’ll cover next in the Evolution Series!
The final show of the 2022 (unless additional shows are added later) will emanate from Denver, CO, the same place where they closed out a tour the last time they were there in 2014. This episode will focus on being in Denver at the beginning of a tour, and that happened by in 1994. The third show of a three night stint in 1993 playing CU Boulder was canceled due to security issues. So vowing to never play the university again and wanting to make it up to those kids who missed out, the band played two shows in Denver to kick off the 1994 run.
Both nights were filled with surprises, mostly involving never before heard Vitalogy songs. As night one featured the Spin The Black Circle live debut, we’re going to talk about the debut of Not For You that took place on night 2. This was the beginning of a relationship with the song that would define a lot of what they were going through in 1994 and 1995. We’ll discuss it’s origin and inspiration for writing it. We’ll also cover the live debut of Street Fighting Man, a W.M.A. tag off of Porch, a Rats tag off of Daughter, and not one, but TWO band members losing their pants!
It has been nearly EIGHT months since we have properly covered a show from 1991 for Patreon, so now is the time to head back in that direction. All that being said, this show might be the best possible choice to select from the bunch. JC Dobbs in Philadelphia marks their first ever show in Philly, and there’s a lot of history that comes with this. For a long time, this stood as the earliest boot that you could get your hands on where the band was using the name Pearl Jam instead of Mookie Blaylock. Along with that, it was the earliest boot where you could hear songs like Oceans, Jeremy and State Of Love And Trust. That all kind of changed when the Citi show from Boston was unearthed in the last decade. However, this is one of very few shows where we have Matt Chamberlain making an appearance on drums, so there’s a lot of eye opening conversations that we get to have here. Enjoy the episode and let us know what you want us to cover as an exclusive episode next!
Let’s focus on more September show locations for this episode! In this one, we’re gonna discuss a St. Louis show that happened on the 2014 US tour leg thanks to a Patreon requested episode from David Ruthman. This show’s story centers around a few themes. This night happened to be the same night that the playoffs started for the Cardinals that year, so we receive many scoreboard updates and references. We also get to see a lot of dedications and mentions of fans who made it out to see them, some against all odds. That will bring us into a good conversation about how the band’s propensity to acknowledge fans who are going through a rough patch draws this community closer together.
It being a Lightning Bolt tour show, we’ll get a few songs from the record, some heavily played and others rarely. It’s mostly a greatest hits set with a few nice surprises including the live debut of Imagine, great versions of Not For You, Footsteps, Given To Fly, Better Man and a chilling version of Daughter performed in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, MO.
With September right around the corner, we’re back to covering cities that Pearl Jam will be visiting on tour this year! First stop is Camden, a city that the band had never planned to be in back in 2020, but it just so happens to be on of the most frequent venues that Pearl Jam has ever played. This show we’re covering is the second night of the two show run in 2006.
Lots of good performances to discuss here, from the brand new at the time Avocado tracks, Gone and Severed Hand are two that stand out from this one. Most of this set features songs with blazing speed such as Save You, Grievance and Whipping, but on the flip side the first encore was a complete change of pace bringing in the more emotional tracks such as Man Of The Hour, Black and the second all-time performance of Parachutes. But this show we’ll also have a big finish on encore 2 as well!
Tune in to check out the set, some discussion on Ed singing with The Strokes and a New Jersey tailgate fit for kings!
We’re now approaching act three of Pearl Jam’s slate of shows for the 2022 tour. There has been discussion about all that has happened – the great performances, the surprises and the unfortunate cancelations, but in this episode, we get the privilege to speak with Variety and SPIN contributor, as well as the author of PJ20, Jonathan Cohen. Cohen has had his eye on the band throughout the year giving him a unique perspective on the band’s approach. We speak to him about the ins and outs of it all, as well as get a little information on what to possibly expect in September, as well as a little bit of info on how Pearl Jam has been proceeding with the new album they’ve been working in studio on. Great insight as always, lots to sink your teeth into!
Moosejaw, Broadview, Moosamin too! We’re running back to Saskatoon! After covering the 2005 show in Saskatchewan over a year and a half ago, just like The Guess Who, we’re running back. This time thanks to a request from long time Patron, Danielle Tatlow, who lives up near those parts in a town of 350. We’ll tell her story on this episode to prep you for the last show they’ve played up in these parts up north. While this song has a great mix of album representation and rare songs such as God’s Dice, In My Tree, Untitled/MFC, In The Moonlight and more, it’s primarily remembered for one big moment. In 2005, the band did a rough take on Running Back To Saskatoon by The Guess Who, and while the results pleased the locals, it did not go over smoothly. Take two, and yet again the rendition is filled with flubs and forgotten lyrics. Ed doesn’t like how the performance went, so he invites a fan on stage to help them sing it and finally, the song gets played properly.
We’ll also talk about the 2011 tour and how it sometimes gets lost in the mix within the other tour years, especially 2005 which is a very similar, albeit longer Canadian leg.
This Horizon Profile episode is all about long time Patron Jenni Gee! A Colorado resident who selected Telluride as her episode request gets to tell various fun stories about her fandom. Hear how it wasn’t necessarily the music that drew her into this community, her experience with her daughter at Telluride which was shared on the pod this week, her sizable Pearl Jam collection and how she once tried to prank her husband on the Ten Club forums. And she’ll talk about the one song she’s been chasing over the years that would make a major difference if she gets to hear it.
Red Rocks, Mansfield, Santa Barbara, The Gorge, Telluride… and now Amsterdam. These six shows have something special in common that no other Pearl Jam show can claim. The band walks out and takes a seat to start the show, warming up with a collection of slower tracks and easing into a set more than the typical night. In the beautiful, mountainous evening sky up in a ski resort town in Colorado, the band took their seats in a fantastic mood thanks to these surroundings and started the night with 10 tracks played acoustically.
All of the shows mentioned above have a few things in common. They’ve been to go to spot for the band to break out debuts, rarities or songs that went completely into hiding. Take Angel for example. A Dave Abbruzzese song that was released as an A-side on the 1994 fan club Xmas Singles that had only been played four prior times in their history. Not once since 1994. It took them a record setting 699 times in between shows before they’d play it again at this show! Also, for all of the Into The Wild fans, Society was debuted directly after Angel and it was one of two performances of it in their history. Later in the show, we’d receive another Xmas Single rarity from 2008, Santa Cruz, which lyrics were changed to fit their current location.
A great show with lots of memorable speeches from Ed, and a cameo from a young woman standing stage side who wanted her 15 second of fame. Joining us to tell her stories is Horizon Leg Patron Jenni Gee!