Podcast Episodes

With the 2023 tour in our rearviewmirror, we’re pushing forward back as this episode features a great show from Prague at the end of the Lightning Bolt tour run. Seeing as we are now officially finished with the Gigaton run, we thought it would be a good idea to take both of these tour years and see how they compared before embarking on a new era. It’s interesting to look at side by side because at the show in Prague, the crowd was treated to many crowd favorite rarities such as Tremor Christ, Brain Of J., Love Boat Captain and Help Help. That’s not far off from what we were just treated to! Of course the sets were a little longer in 2018, but we’re going to get into why certain things have needed to be adjusted as the band gets older.

While people may remember 2018 for the Home/Away shows, the massive show in Rome or even the London make-up show, this Prague show should be right up there when people discuss the best of this year. The crowd was lively on big time favorites such as Corduroy and Do The Evolution, which means they were treated to some well deserved surprises later in the set. Two big highlights of this show include a version of Love Boat Captain that features an incredible jam/improv intro, and a tandem of The Beatles Help! transitioning into Riot Act deep cut Help Help. We’ll also have a little Prague history for you that we’ll discuss!

Thanks go out to Ross Strothers for requesting this episode, you’ll get to hear his story told. And the Gear Guru segments this week feature a discussion on Stone’s tone during Tremor Christ and other songs, and Mike using a very unique pedal that created a sound in songs like Even Flow and Black that we didn’t get to see presented in 2023.

With a busy weekend covering the final three Pearl Jam shows of the 2023 tour, we’ve decided to make this week’s episode a little bit on the shorter side so we could focus our attention on the Texas shows rather than spend nights heavily editing. So to do that, we had to go back to an era that had significantly smaller sets. Which is why we chose a show from the University of Kansas campus that took place as Pearl Jam was firmly on the rise back in May of 1992. With this little gathering marketed as “Day On The Hill” by the University, they paid the band $3,000 to play this show. It was booked back in January of 1992 when Alive was their only song in circulation, but as the next five months rolled around, no one in Lawrence, Kansas expected this show to be this huge. 18,000 students took over the little outdoor park venue as the band continued their meteoric ascension.

Now it’s pretty clear that what was documented from this day is actually an incomplete show. We’ll get into the details of all that in the episode, but what we do get to see is your classic 1992 affair – the band bouncing around the stage at high energy, crowd surfers galore, songs played at full intensity and of course, stage climbing antics from one Eddie Vedder. The scene is very similar to one set a few months later at home in Seattle for the legendary Drop In The Park show. When Porch breaks into it’s solo, Ed assesses the situation and climbs all the way up to the top of the stage to go swinging. It’s always a sight to behold, and we’ll break down every step of the journey.

We’ll also go through a summary of the tour up to the point of recording, and for those of you who like to study up beforehand, we release our entire rest of the year episode schedule for 2023! But most importantly, our Gear Guru is back! Javier will check in on versions of Why Go and Porch from this day.

As the 2023 tour continues to move from north to south, we’re gonna get you prepared for the Austin shows by covering the last non-festival show that was played in the Texas capital way back in 1995. This was a make-up show for the postponed date that stemmed from Ed’s bout of food poisoning back at the Golden Gate Park show. This show in Austin had it’s own fair share of controversies, including a set time change that threw a large portion of the fans off that thought that 7pm was the start to the show.

This barnburner of a set will have two major talking points – Mike and Jack. Jack Irons was clearly in a groove after nine months of playing and traveling with the band, and while not every song had been fully polished just yet, you can see what spots Jack was having a major influence on and where he thrived the most. Mike on the other hand had numerous moments where his guitar solos shot out of the amps like a cannon on fire. We’re gonna gush over Mike’s presence on songs such as Go, Animal, Corduroy, Why Go, Even Flow, State Of Love And Trust, Immortality, Black and Porch. No shortage of conversation there!

We’ll kick off the episode addressing the recent Indianapolis show postponement and what this may mean for the rest of the 2023 tour.

It’s tour time! We’ve been hyping it up for the last few months, and this episode is the last before the 2023 tour kicks off! We’ll begin the episode talking about the possibilities of what may happen and whether or not there are new songs tossed into the mix. For up to date tour instant reaction episodes, please direct to our Patreon where that content can be found – http://patreon.com/liveon4legs

But let’s not bury this excellent show out of Alabama! Highly regarded as one of the best sounding bootlegs of 1998, it’s a great show to have available in this high of quality. Having never been to this part of the deep south before, the band puts together an inspired performance where we argue the difficulty of choosing an MVP between Ed, Mike and Matt. Stellar performances here. We’ll spend some time breaking down the laser show eminating from the Porch solo, a very aggressive Immortality, Footsteps in an unusual spot played middle of the set, and a powerful Given To Fly that sounds like a 2003 or 2006 version rather than 1998. But the moment that everyone will remember from this show is the Dueling Banjos intro leading way to Corduroy. Was it a little too on the nose for the location?

Sad to say that we won’t be hearing from Javier this week who needed to rest before making his way to St. Paul. But we do have Patrick and Brian from Hallucinogenic Recipe who will take a glimpse into the background behind this bootleg, and the switchover from cassette to CD-R that took place in the trader circuit during this year.

It’s time for our third trip to the Steel City this year! After covering 2000 and 2003 in the spring, we’re going to focus on the tour year that preceded those shows in 1998. Want to hear something kind of shocking? This was their first show in Pennsylvania since Lollapalooza 1992! With the 1994 and 1996 tours that traveled through the northeast, it’s kind of insane that they never hit Pittsburgh or Philadelphia during that time frame. But they make it up to all of yinz by putting together an energetic show where Ed’s intensity is all full force. And we get the live debut of No Way!

With the 2023 tour now a week away, we’ll spend some time discussing some of our thoughts about what could go down, suggesting that perhaps the Metallica method that was popularized this year may be an influence. But tying that into Pittsburgh, what’s great about this show is that we have a soundcheck in our possession. We’re discussing it at the right time because listening to it and hearing the rain and thunder rumbles makes you a little bit homesick for the live Pearl Jam atmosphere. Especially when Ed performs Throw Your Arms Around Me in the pre-set. The rest of the show features classic versions of songs like Black and Do The Evolution, as well as a Rearviewmirror that has a bridge unlike anything we’ve seen in a long time. We’ll also talk about an Easter Egg from this show that’s made the rounds over the years featuring Ed in a different perspective.

Gear Guru segments this week will focus on Stone’s vibrant solo on Brain Of J, Mike’s energy on Alive and a glimpse into why No Way may have never worked out live as well as you’d might think.

We’ve done extensive coverage of the 2003 Riot Act tour celebrating the 20th anniversary this year. Now it’s time to celebrate the anniversary of another major tour in Pearl Jam history – 1998! We kick off a 3-episode Yield tour stretch with an outdoor festival show that took place in Barrie, right outside of Toronto. With Cheap Trick as the supporting act on tour at this time, there are multiple instances where the band gives a subtle nod to their rock heroes, including Mike using Rick Nielsen’s guitar for State Of Love And Trust.

Our Patron Alex Sink joins us for this episode to tell his story of what went down that day. For a bootleg that had a tough time capturing the identity of the show and with no visual aides available, Alex is able to take us back to what that scene was like. A rowdy crowd of over 30,000 created dirt clouds and mud as the mosh pits were in full force on this one. And the band was clearly in a good mood after watching Cheap Trick on the side stage. Ed makes multiple mentions of how great this crowd was, and even addressed some of the craziest fans he had ever seen in the parking lot during an extended version of Leatherman. We also have the world debut of the Do The Evolution music video that happens at this show with the band performing while the images are shown on a screen behind them.

If you love Matt Cameron, this may be the episode for you! Get ready for five moments that we’ve dubbed the ‘filthy fills’ that will be featured throughout this show! Our Gear Guru segments will featured Javier talking about the lack of overdrive pedal from this tour and how Mike would make adjustments on Even Flow and Yellow Ledbetter, and he’ll also discuss Mike’s using Rick Nielsen’s guitar during State Of Love And Trust.

We are less than a month away from seeing Pearl Jam take the stage for nine shows in September, and there’s possibly no bigger stage than the one set for Ed’s hometown of Chicago. As Wrigley Field has dominated the tour runs for the last ten years, the band is finally returning to the United Center for the first time since 2009, which is the show we’ll be digging into in this episode. It was right before the Backspacer record came out, and while not every song had been released yet, it was somewhat of a showcase for songs such as The Fixer, Got Some and Supersonic. With Randy in attendance for the night two of this back to back, he gives some insight as to what was going on this weekend and some of the buzz coming out of night one.

As all Chicago shows are, this is a true homecoming for Ed where he will reference fond memories of his youth on multiple occasions. He ties it in nicely when classic Who songs Love Reign O’er Me and The Real Me are played due to spending lots of cold nights listening to them on his walkman waiting for the L train. He’ll also tie in a story about some of his earliest loves of music coming in the form of listening to Motown and idolizing Michael Jackson, who had died that summer. There is a nice dedication to Michael during Ed’s rendition of Needle and the Damage Done, and a version of Rats featuring a short intro tease of the Michael Jackson song that’s referenced at the end, Ben. And of course, he’ll give nod to the Bulls championship banners in the rafters. As Ed would deem this show to be an emotional ride from the very beginning, we’ll get to hear those kind of songs such as Long Road, Come Back and Man Of The Hour utilized in this set.

Many thanks to Patron Andy Lore who requested this show! Our Gear Guru segments this week will get into a buzzy Mike solo on Sad, how Given To Fly and other songs guitar tone on this tour felt flat, and how Stone’s rigged strumming was the backbone for a fantastic version of Love Reign O’er Me.

Toga! Toga! We’re heading to upstate New York to cover Pearl Jam’s last show to date at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, aka SPAC. It’s a widely popular venue, one in which jam bands such as Phish and Dave Matthews Band have frequented, and as Ed would mention in this show, it was an early Lollapalooza tour venue back in 1992 when they played alongside Soundgarden. Glad he kept the shirt.

This show comes right off the heels of a major turning point from the Binaural tour – The Jones Beach shows. The legendary Daughter performance with the It’s OK tag, forever enshrined on the Touring Band 2000 DVD, marked as a healing moment for the band during the toughest period in their history. This show getting off to a hot start was a sign that the band was starting to loosen up and learn how to have a little fun on stage again. Breakerfall, Whipping, Spin The Black Circle, Hail, Hail, Corduroy and In My Tree are the first six songs of the night, and they absolutely do not disappoint. Add in an experimental Rearviewmirror to close the main set and a combination of Black/Yellow Ledbetter to this night, there are a lot of signature moments that make this show stand out. Oh yeah, and the nudist lava lamp inventor… him too.

We’ll hear stories from our Patron, Andrew Famulare, as well as Patrick and Brian from Hallucinogenic Recipe who were both at this show in the same section, but didn’t know each other at the time. They’ll share their hilarious memory from this show from both perspectives. And our Gear Guru segments this week look into Stone’s Rickenbacker impact on Breakerfall, an interesting octave change in the Spin The Black Circle chorus, and why the combo of Black and Ledbetter worked so well, including love for the Nobody’s Fault But Mine Led Zepplin tag.

In this episode, Randy and John go where this podcast has (almost) never gone before… to the 2007 tour! While we covered Vic Theater in this podcast’s infancy, we’ve never done the full dive into what’s sort of a forgotten year in Pearl Jam history. Outside of the Vic and the Lollapalooza Chicago show, there were only 12 shows played on a European run that included mostly festival dates. The show we cover here happened in London, and was the first arena show there since 2000. Thank you to friend and Patreon, Simon Pountney, for requesting this!

This show took place in the aftermath of a massive tour supporting the Self Titled record, featuring many songs from the album that don’t get heard often today. We’ll go in depth on Marker In The Sand, Parachutes, Comatose as some of the highlights from this night. We’ll also address how in this era, the band turned up the RPMs and started playing many of their songs faster than usual. We’ll talk about where it benefits and suffers inside this setlist. A show with a Ten Club heavy presence on the floor leads to a set chock full of fan favorites leaving songs like Even Flow, Black, Jeremy, Better Man, Daughter, Rearviewmirror and Corduroy off the setlist entirely.

For our question of the week, we had something unique happen in this show where World Wide Suicide was played in the usual Alive spot. We asked you guys what other songs you thought would work well in that role before Rockin’ In The Free World. And for the Gear Guru, it’s time for some Javocado! Javier breaks down a trio of songs from the record including Comatose, Marker In The Sand and Inside Job.

As we say goodbye to reliving the 20th anniversary of the Riot Act tour, there are so many other Pearl Jam anniversaries that need to be celebrated this year. Believe it or not, it’s been a full decade since the 2013 Lightning Bolt tour, as well as the release of the record. In July of that year, the band revealed their plans for their 10th studio album release nearly days before the two big North American summer shows – Wrigley Field and London, Ontario. We all know how big of a deal that Wrigley show was. It was the first ballpark show of it’s kind,  heavy storms caused a two and a half hour delay leading to a show that didn’t end until 2 am, and Bugs was played. Because of the hype leading up to Wrigley, the London show that preceded it became a bit of an after thought. For those unfamiliar, we’ll tackle why this show deserves more love and appreciation from this fanbase that may have forgotten about it in the wake of Wrigley.

Like Wrigley, this is a show that was never released as an official bootleg. So most of the stories and moments that are relived come directly from the less than 10,000 fans who were there in attendance in this intimate venue. We’re lucky to be joined by two in this episode as Patron, Tim Fortescue, hops on to discuss why he requested this show, and filling in for John this week is Hallucinogenic Recipe co-host, Patrick Boegel, who also has great memories from this. A lot of the discussion here will come from this being the true kickoff to the new era, with a brand new rig, stage and lighting set up, setlist structure and new takes on old songs. It was the beginning of the nightly three song slow burn openers that came off as a massive surprise when the rarely opened with Present Tense kicked off this night. It was also the start of the slowburn encore in a way too, which was the most anticipated part of the set featuring some of the rarest songs in the catalog, IE: Parachutes and Man Of The Hour at this show.

We’ll also get to talking about the live debut of Mind Your Manners, a London Calling tease, amazing transitions between songs such as Modern Girl into Black, Dundas hookers on crack and experimental takes on two fan favorites – one that worked in Corduroy, and one that didn’t in Daughter. As a bonus, we’ll also ponder why Canadian hotels only have Garfield cartoons featured on their TVs.

Our Gear Guru segments this week focus on the brand new rig set-up for 2013, the defining sound of Mind Your Manners and Alone featuring Mike’s usage of a slide pick.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the big one. After two weeks of hype, we have now reached the third night of the Mansfield Experiment. Anybody who was there remembers it clearly – getting to the venue early for Pearl Jam to hit the stage around 5:30, witnessing them in the daylight, wanting to stand and cheer while the band eases in with an acoustic pre-set. It is almost inarguable that this show is the most important and celebrated within the history of this band, finishing a 3-night stand where a total of 97 unique songs were played. This show would feature 45 of those songs, the most that have ever been crammed into one Pearl Jam show to date.

To accomplish this feet, they had to get creative due to strict curfews in the venue. so they decided to begin the night as their own opener to play a seated 12-song acoustic set to those lucky enough to arrive early. The set is one for the ages. Classic songs meant for the setting such as Long Road and Footsteps thrived and soared throughout the atmosphere, while extreme rarities such as All Those Yesterdays and Drifting are tossed in there to delight the collectors in the audience. While the opening set is the big story here, the band busted out 33 more songs on this night that included old songs, new songs, common and rare songs, songs being reintroduced and songs packaged together in clever fashion. We’ll break down all of it in one of the longest episodes in the modern era of this podcast!

Once again, thanks to everyone who sent in their stories, we’ll share the final batch of them in this episode. Our Gear Guru segments this week will give you an overview of the acoustic set, discuss the strange tuning on Faithfull and break down a one of a kind version of Why Go featuring a riffy guitar intro.

Continuing onward with our big summer series, this episode focuses on the second night of Pearl Jam’s Mansfield Experiment. With the first night under their belt and the crowd coming into the show aware of the premise, the excitement was at an all-time high. While night 1 was a great introduction to the idea, this show’s crowd is up for all of the surprises and answers when called upon for the big call and response moments. While there may be no acoustic set like night 3, the energy at this show was palpable, even though Ed came off a bit grumpy due to a lack of sleep the night prior.

Although there were a few rarities spliced in to the night before, this show featured a few songs that you almost never heard at Pearl Jam shows during that era. The most eye opening one was Low Light. Of course Low Light has become a common staple of Pearl Jam sets in recent history, but coming into this show it had only been played one other time at the 2001 Bridge School show. We’ll spend time breaking down how this turned into a classic song over time, and some of the pieces that aren’t found in recent versions. Other big performances that we’ll dive into are Release, Animal, Insignificance, Love Boat Captain, Rival, Rearviewmirror and amazing crowd responses on both Alive and Baba O’Riley.

Once again, thank you to everyone who sent in their stories. We’ll read another batch of them in the episode. And our Gear Guru segments will focus on the emergence of Low Light, the 2003 rendition of I Am A Patriot and a Jeff Ament driven Rearviewmirror.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Pearl Jam universe, it’s here! Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been teasing this 10-episode recap of the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Riot Act tour, featuring the ultimate finale – all three shows from the Mansfield Experiment! To anyone who has never heard of this before, The Experiment was the band’s opportunity with three nights scheduled just outside Boston to play nearly every song they knew without repeating anything. This led to three monster sets with the unpredictability of a normal Pearl Jam set heightened to a new extreme. We’re gonna focus on the first night’s setlist in this episode and spend time talking about how the idea for the experiment all came to be.

The challenge of playing 97 different songs in the span of three nights might seem exciting to all of us, but for the band, it was a herculean task that came with some uncertainty. While some of the big setlist staples are tossed into this show like Go, Save You, I Am Mine, Even Flow and Porch, they had to balance all of that out with the lesser played material with songs like Get Right, Help Help, Evacuation and for the time, Smile injected into the set. All three shows have different identities, but all of the excitement from the fans who had heard the rumors gives this show an air of something special that would eventually turn into one of the most legendary runs in the history of Pearl Jam.

Thank you to everyone for writing in these past few weeks and sharing your stories. We’ll tell a few of them in this episode and spread the rest throughout the following two. Three Gear Guru segments this week will dig into a chaotic ending on Go, the 2003 alternate rendition of In My Tree and the rarely played Evacuation.

Alpine Valley has been a staple of the Pearl Jam touring route going all the way back to Lollapalooza in 1992. In the seven instances in which they’ve played there, there’s no lack of unforgettable shows and unforgettable moments. A few of the shows even have monikers that they go by such as PJ20, when they played there for their 20th anniversary, and the Ice Bowl in 2000 where they played a full show in freezing cold weather. In this episode, we’re gonna go back to 25 years ago where they played their first headlining gig in East Troy. To help us tell the story, we’ve enlisted our Patron Aaron Redmon who requested this show.

This was very early in Matt Cameron’s tenure with the band, and there are some things that we’ll hear out of Matt that show that he was still getting adjusted to being on tour with them. Songs like Do The Evolution and Brain Of J feature a harder edge than we’re accustomed to today. This show will feature technical difficulties, botched lyrics and early indications that certain songs were ready to become massive crowd friendly moments. The two big moments to look out for are Black with a highly intense We Belong Together tag and Alive with an improv within the solo.

With Alpine Valley being such a historic venue, we asked you to share your favorite moments from seeing shows there, which we’ll share during our question of the week segment. And our Gear Guru segments this week will feature Mike’s clean guitar sound on Even Flow, well deserved love for Jeff Ament and a tag of Jimi Hendrix’s Machine Gun at the end of Yellow Ledbetter.

When you think about some of the more memorable performances in the history of Pearl Jam, a lot of them have a key factor in common. They develop from spontaneous moments that happen within the song. Fan interactions especially can help turn a performance of a song played over 500 times into an unforgettable moment. One of the other spontaneous facets that happens at Bonner Springs in 2003 is how the weather impacts the show. To open this night, the band gets acquainted with the crowd by playing Release under a sky of a torrential downpour of rain. Quickly after the “oh dear dad…” lyric, there is a bolt of lightning in the background in which the crowd audibly reacts to. As Ed is singing one of his autobiographical masterpieces, he looks up to the sky and says “hi dad”. It’s a moment forever etched into this band’s legacy, and we’ll talk about it in full detail during the rundown of this show.

This show was an easy decision to cover during our continued run of 2003 show, but it was made easier due to the request sent in from our Patron, Chris Bigelow. Check out his story in the episode. After the big moment, we’ll go over how the rest of the set fared and talk about a few Riot Act songs we have yet to cover on this run – Get Right and Help Help. There is a big what-if in this set – a written encore setlist of 16 song choices with two songs that could’ve potentially made their return after almost a decade of not being played. Listen in to find out what those songs were!

We’ll read your answers for question of the week which asked about some of your favorite concert memories in the rain, and our Gear Guru segment will focus on Mike’s pedals from Immortality and how the country twang sound from Off He Goes is created.

We’re back to our 20th anniversary celebration of Pearl Jam’s Riot Act tour! Due to upcoming events in September, we have selected to cover the Dallas show from 2003 to give all of you headed there a little bit of history on what’s happened there in the past. This show is mostly known for being the first official time that Alive was used as an opener, and we’ll spend a lot of time discussing this version in contrast to the only other time they’ve opened with it in Newcastle, Australia. Speaking of firsts, there is a tag of an original song that we hear off of Daughter that hasn’t happened since this date!

On the second leg of this tour, Pearl Jam was starting to get a little creative in their setlists. We all know about the Mansfield Experiment and how the trio of shows featured nearly every song in their catalog. There’s also the tour closer in Holmdel which utilized two songs from every album in chronological order. John brings up a theory about this setlist that he thought may have been Ed’s original idea for this set, but was obviously aborted somewhere down the line. Do you agree with his theory? The other big conversation here will be about how Blood was being utilized back on this tour. We’ll discuss whether it makes any sense to play Blood in the middle of the set and how that factor may have done a little harm to this show.

The question of the week this week focuses on the Daughter moment. We’ll read your answers on what you’d think would be great songs to use as tags off of it. And our Gear Guru segments this week will focus on 1/2 Full, Green Disease and Jeremy.

When you think of 2009, immediately the first thing that comes to everyone’s minds is those four Philadelphia shows that closed down The Spectrum. But people may forget that this wasn’t the only four-night stint that they had in one building during this tour year. The 6,000+ capacity Gibson Amphitheatre located in Universal Studios in Los Angeles also played host to four Pearl Jam shows. Not four in a row like Philly, but the shows invited a bit more of an intimate experience. We’ll talk about the two sets of shows and how one dominates the conversation over the other, but we’ll also address a misconception that people seem to have due to how The Spectrum shows went down.

We thank our Patron, Jason Weiss, for selecting this show as his episode request, and we’ll share his story here. This is a Backspacer era tour, which meant that eight of the eleven songs were played. Coming off the heels of our contentious takes on Ole, we’ll go off on another contentious song this week in Johnny Guitar, which has been known to be a bit divisive as well. If you join us for the Johnny talk, then you gotta stay for the conversations on Rearviewmirror, Alive, Red Mosquito featuring Ben Harper on a flat top steel guitar, and a spontaneous Lukin which included a string quartet accompanyment.

We’ll read you Question of the Week answers where we asked about what Backspacer songs that you’d like to see come back on the 2023 tour, and the Gear Guru segments will focus on Amongst The Waves, Red Mosquito and McCready’s electric Star-Spangled Banner.

Let’s head down to South America for this episode where the crowds show up in massive numbers and bring their powerful voices along with them. We have a special one here for you as we’re joined by our 5th leg, the Gear Guru Javier Hervas, for the entire episode. As you may have heard in recent episodes, Javier is our expert musician who joins in for a few segments per show to discuss some of the things you hear in songs and how the band creates the sound you’re witnessing. He’ll break down all of those pieces for an entire set here, including why 2011 is an important year for developing the tone that is still used in current shows.

As this was a show he attended in his homeland of Chile, the Guru will pull double duty talking about both the sound experience as well as his personal perspective and memories from the show. We’ll talk about Unthought Known being an usual opener getting the nod to kick things off, a wild crowd who would not adhere to Ed’s ‘three steps back’ request and full breakdown on some of the best highlights of the night, including amazing versions of Black and Rearviewmirror.

Javier will answer your questions for him this week about gear that they’ve used on tours and what makes certain songs work, and we’ll also go into heavy discussion on the song Olé. It’s our first time covering the song since episode 13, which means a full breakdown on why this could be Pearl Jam’s worst song was a necessary discussion!