Podcast Episodes

With a full year of touring finally under their belt, the last three episodes of 2022 will feature a few of the best from each leg. We start off with an interesting one that took place on the west coast leg emanating from Fresno, CA. The band was in a tough spot with Matt Cameron still being sidelined due to Covid, but sometimes unfortunate situations can breed special moments. With Josh Klinghoffer and Richard Stuverud still back behind the kit to help out, they also recruited their original drummer, Dave Krusen, to take the stage for ten (double meaning there) songs for the first time at a Pearl Jam show since 1991. This performance was like comfort food for the old time fan who loved Dave’s groove off of Ten from the time they were a teenager. They played nearly every song from the record and gave Dave his moment to shine, something that he always deserved as a founder of the band.

Drummer drama isn’t the only hurdle they had to jump in Fresno. Ed was dealing with a bout of food poisoning that he claimed to be one of the worst he’s had aside from the infamous Polo Grounds show from 1995 where Neil Young replaced him in the set. Most of the songs prove to be a challenge for Ed vocally leading to some clunky performances in the beginning. But there is a certain movie character we compare him to once Krusen steps in and Ed suddenly seems much better. Can you guess who?

Question of the week we ask here is what songs do you think that Krusen could have been a good fit on if he had stuck around for later records.

In this episode, we put a Stranglehold on Detroit Rock City as it’s time to Kick Out The Jams on this Elephant of a show with tons of Raw Power that emanated from Detroit in 2014. A 32-song set with an excellent crowd that took place in the middle of their Heartland Tour during the Lightning Bolt era, this show was dominated by Motor City Easter eggs, local sports legends and some things you’ve never witnessed before. Big thanks to long-time Horizon Leg Patron, Fred Blood, for requesting this as he’ll get to tell his story in the episode.

Though it was the show that preceded the wildly popular Moline No Code performance, people still talk about this one eight years later. There’s no shadow hanging over it, and it’s because it was an excellent mix of fan favorites, rarities and tons of memorable speeches. It was the sixth all-time performance of Black Red Yellow, the first instance where Release and Oceans opened up a show back-to-back and includes a highly emotional version of Light Years dedicated to Ikey Owens from Jack White’s band who had recently passed away.

Listen in if you want to find out what happens when you challenge Chris Chelios to a fight, and discover the reason as to why Get Right hasn’t been played in nearly 20 years. But stay until the end if you want to know which 2022 shows we’ll be covering during the month of December!

It’s been quite a long time since we’ve covered something from down in South America, but thankfully we rectify our mistake in this episode. We’re going down to São Paulo, Brazil to cover a show from Pearl Jam’s first tour in the continent that took place back in 2005. This was a Patreon requested episode from Mike Radtke, and we’ll tell his story about how he came across this when collecting official boots and why it’s stuck with him ever since.

As it goes for shows in Brazil, the crowd is the big highlight. Now the crowd wasn’t fully developed into the traditional Brazilian crowds where everybody sings along to the melody of a verse or chorus, but they certainly did their part to stand out. Crazy Mary is a full fledge sing-along, Black has a powerful moment that leaves Ed mesmerized, and during Daughter the crowd takes it open themselves to start an It’s OK tag. All of this from the very active crowd, along with an incident dealt with by security during Alive.

In our question of the week, we asked our Facebook and Twitter followers how often they go back to South American bootlegs, we run through every answer before taking a dive into the set!

In this episode we’re talking about one of the wildest sets in Pearl Jam’s catalog coming out of Newcastle, Australia in 2006. This is a one and done city at the point of this release, they’d never played Newcastle before then and haven’t played there since. There are two key factors as to why they played there in the first place. For one, world champion surfer Mark Richards made a push for them to play, as well as a fan made petition featuring 2,277 signatures of the locals. Since this was such a unique situation, the band gave Richards the important duty to put pen to paper on this set, and boy oh boy he didn’t disappoint.

If you like to listen and go to shows where Pearl Jam does something completely out of the ordinary, you may be sold on this show from the first note. For only the second time in history, Alive was played as the opener of the show. This is the true definition of the phrase ‘anything can happen at a Pearl Jam show’ and is why this show over time has been elevated to legendary status. We’ll take about the memorable moments from this version and how the song gave this show a very strong momentum that stayed consistently high the entire night.

And how about the other rarities? For only the second time in their history, the band broke out Undone for a performance, one of five all-time. Leatherman, Down, Masters Of War, Crown Of Thorns and Alone are more surprises that pop in to make this show stand out, as well as Even Flow closing the first encore and Corduroy beginning the second encore. Lest we forget, there is an incredible 9-song run with no stops to begin this night. This show takes you on a ride, so take a listen and come celebrate it with us!

There are many big cities that Pearl Jam has touched down in that have historically held some of their best shows of all-time. Chicago is near the top of that very important list. Being the birthplace of Eddie Vedder, every time they play there there is an emotional, homecoming aspect to the show that brings out the absolute best of the crowd. In 2003, with Ed’s grandmother on hand to watch, they put together one of those big all-timer shows with a bootleg that still circulates on SiriusXM’s Pearl Jam Radio.

Nearly every song from this show was a nearly flawless performance ranging everywhere from your crowd favorites, to brand new Riot Act songs, emotional moments and songs that soar. We’ll talk about powerful performances from songs such as Release, Present Tense and Light Years, and we’ll get to praise this Chicago crowd for their hard work on Better Man and Daughter featuring a notable tag. We’ll also go over some listener answers talking about their favorite Chicago arena shows.

This episode is a Patreon request from Joey Goodsir who joins us to share his story of being a Gen Z Pearl Jam fan who found this bootleg on Apple Music where it molded his fandom to what it is today. He’ll chat about some of his favorite performances and focus on the big moments that he’ll speak fondly of.

The night after playing a notable show in Berlin that was broadcast on FM stations all over the world, the band played a show in Hamburg and made allusions to it being better than the night before. The crowd of 7,000, who had been dying to see them ever since they last played in 1992, brought their a-game to the Sportshalle. Nearly every song had a major crowd response, clapping sections in spots where we usually don’t hear them, especially for new songs that only had very few plays under their belt. It allowed the band to elevate their game and gave them a nice little spark of motivation that made the songs soar and excel.

This episode is very important to all of our German listeners out there, but it’s also important to us as a podcast. We were able to make a few different setlist discoveries that some of the other fansites may have missed. Listen to check out what we found! We’ll also hear from some of our European fans on Twitter about how Pearl Jam’s popularity in 1996 mirrored what was happening to them in the United States.

Performances to look out for in this show: Last Exit, Who You Are, Corduroy, Whipping, Sometimes, Rearviewmirror, Not For You, Daughter and State Of Love And Trust.

Pearl Jam has such a rich history in the city of Boston and it’s surrounding parts. Between there, plus Mansfield and Worcester, they’ve played the area a total of 24 times in their 32 year history. From the famous Ten Club show at The Orpheum in 1994, to the three night stay where they made the attempt to play every song in their catalog at Mansfield in 2003, to more recently when Fenway Park has become the crown jewel venue for them to play, there are a lot of absolute classics to take away from this region. In this episode, we won’t be talking about a show that was considered a classic. If there was consideration for one, it would probably be the follow up night 2 show in 2006. But as a night 1 show that didn’t have a set topping moment like Leash did the next night, it’s easy to misplace it within that massive group previously mentioned. Is it time to get this show back on some people’s minds?

We invite in our Patron, Joe Ierachi, who requested this show for us to do as an episode. He joins us here to tell his story featuring his memory from what was an unforgettable crowd, being at a show with his sister and friend who has since passed away, and a story about a fantasy football bet and how it pertains to Even Flow! It’s Joe’s pick, and he’ll tell you why night 1 is more meaningful to him than night 2.

As mentioned, this crowd had an excellent night. We’ll talk about their impact on songs such as Release, Love Boat Captain, Jeremy, Why Go and Crazy Mary. This is also a big night for Mike solos, but Stone has a big moment towards the end of the night as well when an orange shirt gets tossed on stage bearing his name.

This is a show that I’m sure you’re all familiar with. On a midwestern run in 2014, Pearl Jam did something that can be consider unprecedented. It all started in Moline, Illinois where for the first time, they played No Code in its entirety. Three days later, they decide to test out another album in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where Yield is played front to back. That’s what we’ll be covering today, the last full album show that we needed to cover in the modern era!

Returning to the show is the author of new Pearl Jam book, Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation, Steven Hyden. He’ll talk about his experience from that night and what it was like to witness what went down in real time. However, this isn’t the only artist that he’s been in the crowd to see pull out a surprise full album show. It’s a classic album by an all-time legend, find out which one during his interview!

As for the show itself, some might’ve been a little suspicious when they took the stage to Red Dot, but for others that heard rumors swirling round on Twitter, it was a sign that something big was set to go down. The band may have called for a bit of a misdirection early when they invited Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen on stage to do Baba O’Riley as the fifth song in, but once Brain Of J. hit it was off to the races. We’ll talk about the entire Yield portion of the set, how they presented it rather close to the album renditions (no Wishlist tag, no Untitled before MFC), when and how the fans figured it out and we’ll also come up with what the definitive performance from this set is.

This episode focuses on the last show to date that Pearl Jam has played in Ireland, taking us to Dublin for a performance from 2010. We thank our Patron, Clare O’Leary, for pitching a request from her one and only Pearl Jam show, and we’ll tell her story on the episode. This show is widely known for one massive moment that takes precedent – the debut of a song called Of The Earth. Of The Earth is an epic, almost cinematic song that the band never seemed to figure out how to get it done in the studio. But the song’s legacy mirrors something similar to Falling Down, a very rare track to be utilized solely for the live stage. We’re gonna talk about why this song is so important, what makes this version special and why we may never see something like this again.

As a tour leg opener, the band came out with the songs they were most familiarized with. Aside from two debuts and Long Road, every song played in this set was played at either the first or second night of MSG, the last shows of the US leg. The other pretty notable debut on this night was Arms Aloft, a song from late era Joe Strummer project, The Mescaleros. We’ll get to hear a story about Strummer’s connection with Pearl Jam, and how before he passed, some big plans were in motion for a tour with the two bands.

We’re hitting the festival circuit in this episode as we take a Patron request from Dan Greenberg to cover the non-televised Austin City Limits show from 2009. This episode could potentially seem as a bit contentious as there were things that Randy and John weren’t quite moved by. Mainly, the idea that this set felt like a time crunch in the way that they ran through it made it difficult to find an overall flow for this show. But there are no lack of good moments here! In 2009, the band went on a nice little run with Ben Harper inviting him out to play Red Mosquito on slide guitar almost every night. The performance and duel with McCready is a sight to behold, and something that we were itching to discuss on the pod for a long time. The other big moment? Inviting Perry Farrell out to sing Mountain Song. We’ll get into a deep discussion about both Jane’s Addiction and Perry’s influence on the band.

And, Ashley Moon is in the room! You may remember from last month’s Ottawa show that a woman who was sitting all the way in the back was invited to the front and got a lengthy and heartfelt dedication from the band. She writes in to the show to tell her story about the entire experience, with a part of the story connecting to our story from Erin Mackay last week.

Thanks to a request from our Patron Joe Kolbenschlag, we get to focus on a show from 1995 that occurred during a small window of shows in that September. This one is Las Cruces, New Mexico, which may not be one of the many jaw dropping shows from 1995, but is still damn good in it’s own right. We get to talk about lots from the Vitalogy era – a random rare appearance from Satan’s Bed, a fully explosive I Got Shit (ok, noticed how bad that was two seconds after typing it. It’s staying in.) and a killer Immortality that reigned king of the era with it’s incredible, jammy outro.

We’ll also get to see a rare tag off of Daughter, The Who’s “I’m One”, a 10 minute Porch that ranges from bluesy to jammy all inclusive, and stunning versions of Corduroy, Not For You, Rearviewmirror and Blood.

Also in this episode we’ll talk about some end of the tour topics featuring a few things we can’t wait to hear on bootleg, and some of our favorite moments from our travels. We’ll also hear a story from Erin Mackay who had the version of Other Side that was played in Quebec City dedicated to her for her brother. Caution: story has themes of mental illness and suicide involved. If you wish not to listen to that part, skip over it at 9 minutes in and jump to 13 minutes in.

This is our 200th episode! After four years of this podcast journey, we’ve reached a wonderful milestone that we’d like to celebrate with you all, and we’re going to do that by covering the show that (finally) introduced us into the Gigaton era from the Sea.Hear.Now festival shortly after it’s one-year anniversary.

We’ll talk a lot about the podcast milestone and what it means to us and kind of tie a nice bow on it surrounding what happened at this show, which was the first show that we attending representing the pod when fully established. But it’s also about everything that led up to that weekend too. The lingering postponements carried over from 2020 left everyone asking a lot of questions – what kind of band would this be? How would the Gigaton songs translate live? What older songs will still be in the mix? The answers we received were a gateway into a new era of Pearl Jam where setlists would be constructed unlike anything we’ve seen before.

We’ll have a lot of discussion on the Gigaton songs, which will be tied into some things we’ve heard on this more recent tour run. But there are many memorable performances from this night including Present Tense, Wishlist with a Waiting On A Friend tag, Red Mosquito featuring Danny Clinch on harmonica, Better Man with a People Have The Power tag and a cover of Springsteen’s My City Of Ruins.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.