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Pearl Jam walks in to Sydney after setting an extremely high bar for their last show in Melbourne, which means they know they have to end the tour on a high note. The penultimate show of the tour was yet again another phenomenal effort from this band. This show had a ton of requests and dedications in the form of songs like Come Back, Last Kiss and Even Flow, but the marquee moment of this show comes with an absolutely stunning Mike McCready performance during Black. Or Porch, depending on who you ask.

The crew from site led by Chris Warne is back at it again giving us the rundown of their favorite moments. However, there is a lot of discussion about Vitalogy right now due to it’s 30th anniversary. There has been a group going to the shows holding up a massive sign requesting them play the full album. Every other 90’s record has been played live except for this. You have to wonder if those weird interstitial songs like Pry, To, Aye Davanita and Stupid Mop are what holds it back, but we will get into a full blown discussion on the opportunity for the last show of the year to have something legendary go down during it. And I will make a very bold prediction when it comes to nausea being tickled…

One more to go. Can’t believe it’s over, yet at the same time, I can’t believe we made it.

We finish our two night stint in Melbourne with the show and setlist that should have everybody talking. This is what it’s like for this band to find a groove five shows into a tour. This show had spectacular moments ranging from surprises to a few rare ones. Most importantly, the return of the It’s OK tag after six years! After being left on the chopping block at multiple shows, we finally see Setting Sun make it’s Australia debut. Light Years is the first Binaural song to appear down under. But the magic is what made this night truly special, and we’ll dig into that with some of our favorite guests we’ve heard from every night on this tour.

Chris Warne is back with the Live On 4 Legs super team featuring Alex Hoggard, William Rees, Caroline Vader Ritter, Brad Arundale and a cast of more characters to chat about how unbelievable this show was for them.

Two more in Sydney before the 2024 tour fades.

If there were a city in Australia that’s known for being the defining Pearl Jam location, Melbourne would by far be the one everyone gravitates towards. They played a legendary show there in 1998 that has been pressed on vinyl, so returning for the first time since the “real” release of Give Way meant the stakes were gonna be high. There aren’t a lot of times where this band won’t rise to the occasion and exceed every bit of expectations, so of course this show was more of the same.

We’ll get to hear from a lot of our friends out on site for this one, including many first timers who have now experienced that amazing feeling of what it’s like to bare witness to it. Chris Warne rounds up the troops again and chats with Caroline Vader Ritter, William Rees, Alex Hoggard, Brad Arundale, Gianluca Camma and many more folks who stop to share their stories.

One more in Melbourne on Monday, see you then!

Many of us know what it’s like to sit through a weather delay at a Pearl Jam show. The energy gets tense, there’s a lot of impatient waiting and a sense that perhaps the show will not go on as scheduled. We had a little bit of a scare here in Gold Coast as thunderstorms caused the night to be tampered with a little bit, but the show took place and the crowd was treated to a 22-song setlist with a few surprises here and there.

The biggest surprise comes from the form of “Got To Give,” the one song off of Dark Matter that seemingly had its cord cut after the second show of the year in Vancouver. They play it here, and we’ll get into a discussion of what the future of this song live may be. Other performances we see are “Man Of The Hour,” “Severed Hand,” “I Got Shit,” and “Corduroy” as an opener.

This may be a set where you look at it on paper and it could look more impressive than the Auckland shows due to it’s variety, but we’ll hear from Chris Warne and the gang from site about why the storms might’ve affected a little of the energy from this one.

Excelsior, Melbourne!

New Zealand is in the books! After a big return for night one, the band came out again and did what they do best to put this crowd in a frenzy and play some of the best songs in their catalog. In this show, the big moment takes place during the encore when Ed invites Neil Finn to the stage to play an incredible rendition of “Throw Your Arms Around Me” that should be considered the highlight of this short tour to this point. We got the Haka dance to begin the show again before Release, only 4 Dark Matter songs with “Wreckage” being the only repeat, no “Setting Sun” after cutting it on Friday and an encore featuring “Smile,” “Animal,” and “Rearviewmirror” that looked like a big treat for this crowd.

The LO4L Down Under crew are back to tell their stories! Headed by Chris Warne, he’ll chat with Alex Hoggard, William Rees, his 8-year old daughter, and more friends, including a guy who traveled from Boston that Ed shouted out on night 1.

Next up, Gold Coast!

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. It’s the final leg of a great tour run that we’ve had this year, and we’re celebrating the band’s return to both New Zealand and Australia for the first time in 10 years! The setlist was very much like a welcome back set. The band came out there and hit this crowd with a barrage of their biggest hits and got a warm reception for their troubles. From the emotion of “Small Town,” the excitement of the Dark Matter songs being played for the first time down there, to the surprise of “Hard To Imagine,” there is a lot of good takeaways from this show to set the tone for the next six.

We get to hear from one of our favorite Kiwis, Chris Warne, and one of our favorite Englishmen, Alex Hoggard, who will do their fair share of reacting and responding. They’ll discuss everything from the energy, to expectations and how a song like “Quick Escape” maybe didn’t quite hit with this crowd (how dare they!). Glad to hear from the both of them, and you can expect them to be staples of the reaction episodes every night on this tour.

So, there is a bit of an elephant in the room in regards to some events that happened in America earlier this week. Some people may feel ecstatic over the outcome, others may feel fearful of the future ahead. Even though they are not in the US right now, it seemed pretty clear that they would address it somehow, as they are a band that always tackles the issues head on. While there was no naming of any names, Ed’s speech before Just Breathe was consistent with his statement the entire year – let’s stand united. Now in discussing this, I suppose I could not help but add in my own personal two cents. The intention is not meant to shame any one, but just like Ed, I’m putting forth a way where the next four years may not have to be a nightmare for us like the last 8 were, and it comes with one simple request… respect one another. As many of you know, I’m not gonna shy away from using my voice, and I promise that this will not be a common thread throughout the foreseeable future. But I felt like if there were any time to say something, it’s right now…

And Javier is on this episode!!!

It has sadly come to this, the final North American show in 2024. While we still have Australia and New Zealand waiting in the wings, our five month journey has ended here for the time being. And as we last spoke to you after Friday show about a OTOTO performance, the conversation is yet again revolved around another OTOTO relevant with our mother ocean. In the middle of the set, Ed shares that the band will be playing all the water songs tonight (not you, “Oceans”) and they appeased the crowd with the other major rarity that the fanbase has been begging for for years – “Gremmie Out Of Control!”

Yes, we went silly surfing tonight and got to see old friend Brendan O’Brien back on the Pearl Jam stage for the first time in quite a while. We also got a “Big Wave” appearance for the first time since playing surfing hotspot Ottawa, Ontario, Last Kiss for the Swifties and no black circles or animals for those with obnoxious signs. We’ll also get into a little bit of a discussion of song “Waiting For Stevie” (not played tonight) as it pertains to one of the aforementioned songs.

It’s a bittersweet episode as we say our final goodbyes for the tour, but we are joined by a star studded cast including Hallucinogenic Recipe co-host Brian Horwitz, Brian Anderson, Jason Weiss, and what’s a reaction episode without the big McRib? He’ll be back and share a small update on “Felicity” and how the campaign will live on for yet another tour year.

Thanks everyone for your support this tour! Stick around on our Patreon, more to come that you guys will enjoy very very soon!

Every time we as hardcore fans go to a Pearl Jam show, we have almost given ourselves this expectation that the band is going to play the rarest of the rare of their catalog. And we have a right to think that we based off of the past history and how good we’ve been treated by this band over the years. It’s not every show that we get something that happens of this magnitude, but that rarest of the rare happened last night…

Whale. Song.

Two words I don’t think many of us have uttered when thinking about setlists this band has put together. I mean, there are ingredients missing. You need Jack Irons there to sing. It’s also perhaps one of the least-paid-attention-to Lost Dogs off that b-side record. That all changed tonight. “Whale Song” has finally joined the lexicon of Pearl Jam live songs, so eat your heart out “Comes Then Goes” and “Gremmie!”

There is a LOT to talk about here, so we’ll hear from reaction show veterans Mike Cribier and Lori Jernberg, as well as a fan in a bar named Paul. “Whale Song” will dominate the conversation, naturally, but we’ll also discuss the vibe of the festival, the other acts, Ed doing “Can’t Keep” and joining Crowded House, as well as the rest of the Pearl Jam setlist which is pretty impressive for a fest set! Enjoy this one!

The touring portion of the North American leg has now been completed as Pearl Jam finished up their second night at Fenway Park. Although they still have Ohana left for next week, this show was certainly treated like a goodbye show. We got the most amount of songs in a set all tour with 29!

A lengthy main set with some great surprises and stories highlighted by a tribute to a former Fenway Park employee named Dick who had passed away since the last time Ed had made mention of him at the 2018 show. The surprise of Untitled and the complete shock that it was Present Tense and not MFC that followed seemed to be the consensus big highlight of the night.

We’re joined by the same old cast of characters you’ve been hearing from all tour – Aaron Redmond, Jason Weiss, Tom Gregory, Ned Lally, former Live On 4 Legs co-host Matt Helbig and many more. But lest we forget our VERY special guest who we didn’t get to hear from on Sunday thanks to a recording mishap… Ned Tugent joins us!!!

After six years, Pearl Jam has returned to Boston to put on another excellent show inside of Fenway Park. It was a night for dedications and stories as well as a celebration of being in one of baseball’s great cathedrals. It’s a little bittersweet for myself because this is where my road unfortunately ends for this year, but to have it end on such a high note is what I’ll take away from it. From spending the Glen Hansard set in the seats to finding my way down to GA for the set, it was a perfect way to go out celebrating with three of my oldest Pearl Jam friends.

This episode was originally recorded with about 12-15 of us speaking in a circle for about 40 minutes, but unfortunately we lost connection after about 8 minutes and the recording didn’t save beyond that. So you may have missed some amazing Ted Nugent impressions (we’ll make sure you get them on Tuesday), but you won’t miss yet ANOTHER Trumper trying to interrupt our conversation. How does this keep happening? To make up for the loss of audio, I went down to my hotel bar and interviewed some people who attended the show. Lots of great things to chat about, including milking blood from a cow, an excellent story about Chris Cornell before In My Tree, a story about Tim Wakefield, and the amazing one-two punch of Footsteps and Release to kick off our night!

After four years of waiting, Baltimore finally got their show. And to show their appreciation, the band put on a performance that the local Maryland crowd will be talking about for years. Firstly, a plea has finally been heard. One of the songs that Stone stated that he’d like to play on this tour happened to be Can’t Keep. After 10 years, the band finally decided to bring this back into the fold in order to make Stone, and the rest of the crowd, happy. To go a little deeper into this, although it had been a shade over 10 years since it’s been played, it had been 14 years since it was a show opener! Not just that, but this setlist has some fairly cool moments such as a rare appearance of Tremor Christ played for Dr. Amber, and the completely out of left field performance of Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold”. There is a story to that: to get the full details, listen to the weekly episode on Baltimore 2013!

We get to talk to some of the usual suspects, such as Aaron Redmond and Mike Cribier, and many more who joined the crew in Baltimore!

The first night in Philadelphia on Saturday had everybody talking. It was a red hot crowd that was treated to some of the best songs the catalog has to offer. So to put an expectation on this show exceeding what night 1 brought is probably unfair to do, but it was still a fine show regardless.

We’ll talk about a few key moments here that made this show stand out such as the impromptu Rats decision. After Ed brought up the Spectrum having no working bathrooms and rats crawling around the floors, a group of fans were seen holding up a sign for Rats on the side stage. With democracy put to good use, decision was made and left Sonic Reducer on the cutting room floor. There was also a very cool moment with Alone where they were talking about the one and only JC Dobbs show from 1991. They showed a poster and a piece of the wall that the band had signed at Dobbs that a local music store owner had kept after the club closed down.

Those topics, and we’ll talk a little about what didn’t get played as Insignificance was crossed off the setlist in favor of Once. Total bummer! I’m joined by Patrick Boegel, Jason Weiss, and Mike Cribier from out in front of the arena to wave farewell to Philadelphia.

There is absolutely nothing to say about this show. Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing to see here….

OK, maybe I lied a little. I didn’t think that we’d be able to see a better show than MSG on Wednesday, but here we are. Philadelphia. Wow. So anybody who’s been listening to this pod for a while understands my background with this band, and the song that people probably attribute the most to me is Brain Of J. It had been not only my white whale, but the most significant song that molded me into a Pearl Jam fan. And tonight, a mere few hours before my 38th birthday, it happened!

I’ll go back and share the full story of what this song means to me, and how I got by with a little help from my friends. But it wasn’t just that! The whole setlist was fantastic! A big time Yield show with 5 songs from the record, Long Road opener, Singles songs galore with Chloe/Crown, Breath and a MONSTER version of State Of Love And Trust. A massive Philly crowd brought their a-game and made this show an instant classic, perhaps the best of 2024 thus far.