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The 2024 election is upon us and there’s no better way to celebrate than to cast your vote early or on this upcoming Tuesday. The second best way to celebrate is by going back and reliving Pearl Jam’s 2004 run on the Vote For Change Tour! Through a run of six swing states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri and Florida as well as North Carolina, which this episode will focus on, the objective for this tour was to get people to register to vote while speaking out against President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. As with their entire history, the democratic process has been incredibly important to Pearl Jam, and this is one of the most important runs that exemplifies that.

Because they were touring with Death Cab For Cutie and Tim Robbins project, GOB Roberts, setlists in 2004 were not quite the marathon shows that we got a glimpse of the prior year. This set is 21 songs long, but only features a 12 song main set. We’ll talk about how this was not the best night for Ed’s health as he was battling illness, which would leave a bit left to be desired on powerful vocal songs like Brain Of J and Grievance. There is also quite a memorable moment in Do The Evolution where an entire portion of the song was completely disregarded. An important one at that! We’ll also talk about some great moments including Long Road opening up the encore and a Blitzkrieg Bop Daughter tag turned into “Hey Ho, Let’s Vote!”

This episode was selected over 2004 shows due to the unfortunate devastation of Hurricane Helene through Asheville. Alongside this episode, we ran a fundraiser to donate to some local organizations helping to rehabilitate the community – Beloved Asheville, Asheville Survival and Pansy Collective. Stay tuned in this episode for our announcement of how much we were able to raise!

Happy 34th birthday, Pearl Jam! This week we are celebrating the anniversary of the band’s debut show from the Off Ramp back in 1990 by covering the show that happened on the last time they played the anniversary date in 2014. There are certain shows that are highly praised in their catalog for being marathon shows playing upwards of nearly 40 songs in a set. State College, Mansfield and The Spectrum are a few by name, but the tour closing show in Denver had a whopping 38 performances that could put this show in the neighborhood of the others previously mentioned.

Does this show belong among the classic marathon shows? That will be a topic for discussion here as we have tons of material to break down. What’s interesting to note is that this show features six of the eight songs that were played in that Off Ramp set, including Release as the opener. While the band may not have recognized the significance of the date prior to the show, they certainly rise to the occasion to make it a special night for their audience. It was a great show for deep cuts such as Ghost, Of The Earth, Don’t Gimme No Lip, My Father’s Son and Sleight Of Hand, and to really give the crowd something unique, Lukin is played with a slow burn intro.

As mentioned, there’s 38 songs at play here so there’s a lot to pack into this episode!

You may not recognize this show by name, but Columbia, Maryland 1998 is a pivotal show in Pearl Jam history due to one moment that was immortalized on a record title Live On Two Legs (yes, it does feel weird to say that sometimes). This is the first instance that a little improv was introduced prior to the performance of MFC that to this day is known to the Pearl Jam Faithfull as Untitled. This episode spends a significant portion of time focusing on the impact that this song has made over time, it’s importance to fans when hearing it on the live album, the meaning of the lyrics at the time of performance and how it ties in to another improv from an earlier era.

While Untitled dominates conversation here, there are plenty of topics that will focus on other stellar performances from this set. Hail, Hail opens this show for the fourth and final time to date and we’ll discuss the dynamic of it kicking off a night. Immortality, State Of Love And Trust, Mankind, Alive, Black and Last Kiss will also big highlights from this show. And what does Charlie Sheen and Chevy Chase have to do with this episode that we’ll need an extended conversation on?

Joining us for this episode is our Patron, Sheehan Perera (IG: @concertpants) who will share his great stories about this being his first show and celebrating it with his friends he grew up with in Malaysia. Also, the Gear Guru chimes in during this version of Do The Evolution to break down how Stone is creating a “washing” sound during the solo.

¡Ole Ole Ole Ole! This week we’re digging into one of the best places to see a Pearl Jam concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina! We all know those South American shows are special whether it be in Brazil, Chile or Peru, but there is something about the Argentinian crowd that makes your hair stand on end. The passion for the band mixed with their natural knack for singing along with the melodies of songs, even singing songs of their own when the band takes a minute to breathe, makes this one of the must see Pearl Jam crowds in the world. Javier was lucky enough to be in attendance for this one in 2011, so we’ll get the scope of what it was like to be a part of that audience.

There’s a cliche used on the show sometimes where we say “you’re only as good as your last bootleg” which means that when fans get their hands on boots from the most recent tour year and hear how it went down, the next time the band comes around to their town, they want to be a part of that. This show in 2011 is the show that everyone went home and listened to, waited for two years in 2013 and absolutely turned the dial on to make that (in my personal opinion) the best Pearl Jam crowd of all time. This crowd sings along with just about everything from Release to Even Flow to Jeremy, Black, Better Man, and hell, even Last Kiss. But as you’ll see with a song like Do The Evolution which is widely known for it’s South American renditions, it wasn’t quite the moment that we know of it to be now. We’ll get into the possible reasons why, and how that continued to grow throughout their future runs down there.

We’ll have fun raving about this crowd, but we’ll also discuss whether or not the band should have been more involved with their celebrations, again as they would do in future years. Also! An old segment is back by popular demand, so don’t miss it!

We’re picking up where we left off last week as this episode focuses on night two of the two show run from Pearl Jam’s shows in Atlantic City in 2005. High octane performances, an intimate crowd and a Bruce Springsteen cover happen in night one, but what could possibly top that? A song debut from an unreleased album, Stone Gossard grabbing the mic and an appearance from a spaceman? Those three things could help the cause.

The band kicked off this show with a dynamite version of Present Tense and from there it just kept getting better and better. Immortality impacts the crowd with an intense ending, Not For You has a fun new section improved, they let Stone sing even though the crowd wanted to drop the Leash and we get the live debut of Avocado track Gone seven months before the album came out. We will spend a lengthy amount of time on the debut due to it’s uniqueness in the catalog. The song was written that weekend in Ed’s hotel room and featured no other band member’s accompanyment. So how was it able to be as impactful as it was considering the elements? You’ll find out in the show!

Also, we see a rock legend join up with the band for Rockin’ In The Free World here, and since we have finished up the North American run of our tour, we’ll spend some time discussing some of the OTOTOs played at Ohana Festival. While we give Whale Song some love here, the episode was recorded before the band broke out Gremmie Out Of Control on night two. So perhaps you’ll hear a voice talk about it real quick at a very opportune time!

This episode begins a two-part series where we dig into the shows at the Borgata in Atlantic City from 2005. These shows were unique for the band because of the small venue size holding a little over 2,500 people, but also due to the general admission area which was something that they had not done very often since the Roskilde tragedy in 2000.

After a year of touring in Canada and testing out new songs and setlists on the road, this show has it’s fair share of surprises and rarities for the time. Recently we saw Porch get played as the second song in Wrigley Field, and we’ll get to talk about that when it comes to this show. Songs like Sad, Low Light and Man Of The Hour are in their early infancy, so we’ll chat about how those songs were continuing to evolve at the time into the big performances that we’re familiar with today. We’ll dive into excellent versions of Save You, Crazy Mary and Rearviewmirror as well.

Javier joins in on this episode and will talk about some of the different things you’re hearing at these shows including Cameron playing with an open snare and Mike’s guitar featured behind in the mix. And we’ll talk about our favorite performances of Dark Matter songs from this tour!

When proposing an episode for this week’s show, the goal was to put focus on a tour that we haven’t discussed a whole lot on this podcast – the 2011 Canadian tour. The question here was which show would be the one to cover. So we crowd sourced it and got some great answers, but the best answer was a suggestion to do the episode in tribute of former Calgary Flames star, Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew, who were tragically killed recently. This made the Calgary 2011 show a no brainer to talk about.

There is a big storyline that looms over this show. This happened to be the same day that R.E.M. called it a career. Hearing the band react to the news and play a very impassioned touching tribute to them with the song It Happened Today has been the consensus call back moment from this show. Pearl Jam could have made a decision to play one of their more well known radio singles like Losing My Religion, Everybody Hurts or Man On The Moon, but we’ll talk about how they selected the right song for the right moment.

There are also songs in this setlist that connect to something that the band has done recently such as Brain Of J, Rats, Crazy Mary and even something relevant in concerns to Johnny Guitar!

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.