November 18, 2011 – Estadio San Marcos, Lima, PER

Pearl Jam Show Notes 11/18/2011:

Before Pearl Jam took the stage, Ed took the stage with X singing on Devil Doll to close their set. The band jumps into their first show in Peru wasting no time between the first four tunes kicking off with Interstellar Overdrive into Corduroy and capped by Do The Evolution. Ed greets the crowd in Spanish by saying “Now I’m going to say something I’ve wanted to say for a long time: ¡Hola, Lima Perú!” Making the usual ask for everyone to take care of one another and prepare for a long night of music, he signs off with “¿De acuerdo? (All right?) Cool!” before signaling the start of Severed Hand. The crowd sounds excited to hear Immortality, and they deliver a very solid rendition. Ed checks on the crowd before counting off Elderly Woman in Spanish, which gets a strong singalong from the crowd. The enthusiasm keeps rolling as Ed introduces The Fixer as the next song, to which the crowd cheers and continues singing along to the melody. Jeff sounds a little more involved than usual during the quiet part of Even Flow, and Mike and Matt are introduced after the song wraps up. Setting Forth transitions into Not for You very nicely, with Matt already playing the latter’s beat between the former’s final two riffs. After Lukin and amid chants of “olé, ole olé olé,” Ed dedicates Amongst the Waves to all the surfers in the audience.

To start the encore 1, Ed thanks X for opening the concert on behalf of the band and crew, “Our heroes growing up, our heroes to this day,” and goes on to thank the crowd, “I don’t know why it took us so long, but thank you so much for coming.” While drawing out the first notes of The End, he continues: “Tonight, you’ve made us all feel really happy… this was written when maybe I wasn’t so happy.” As if having The End and Just Breathe back-to-back wasn’t contrast enough, Ed immediately erases this somber start with a special dedication (partly in Spanish):

“This song is for my friends who just got married… congratulations on your love, a good friend of ours, a good friend of Neil Young’s… this is for Dustin and Erica. This is their honeymoon.”

He beckons offstage and eventually the newlyweds appear and walk up, Ed presents them to the crowd and motions for them to sit in two red fold-out chairs that just happen to be waiting there. As the crowd chants “¡Beso! ¡Beso!” Ed offers Dustin the wine bottle, Dustin salutes the crowd, and gives Erica a kiss before taking a sip and handing his wife the bottle. After song, sips, and kisses, Ed gives each of them a hug and seems to tell them to take one last swig, as both immediately comply. At the end of Daughter, the crowd starts the usual humming before Ed and fully engages in the “hey, ho, let’s go” callback. Seeming to want to say something about the band’s only song with a Spanish-language title, he gives up and says (in Spanish) “This song… ¡Olé!” After a tight rendition of Blood, the crowd’s reaction and sudden flood of digital camera lights that follow the first notes of Jeremy suggests this was the song everyone was waiting for. Matt loses a crash cymbal stand somewhere in the second verse that gets replaced by the start of the breakdown, enough time for Mike to approach and tease him about it during the chorus. Ed does his mirror-spotlight-crowd number during Porch, and then approaches the left edge of the stage with the crowd going berzerk.

To start the final set, Ed reads a prepared message in Spanish, “This morning I dreamt there were many people standing in a park holding up a gigantic T-shirt and singing songs about Pearl Jam. Then I realized I was awake and it wasn’t a dream,” referring to a group of fans that had prepared an enormous T-shirt that read “We are the fans that waited” and that morning had brought it in front of the hotel where the band was staying. He goes on to thank everyone for the tremendous welcome and for making a dream our reality. During The Real Me, the band makes it look like it’s their favorite song of the night. Mike takes his Alive solo to the same unruly part of the crowd that Ed had teased during Porch. All the members of X wander onstage with tambourines during Rockin’ In The Free World and sing on the choruses. This night, Ed doesn’t introduce the whole band until after Yellow Ledbetter, with his jacket already on and beer and cigarette in each hand, and signs off with “For the first time we can say thank you, muchas gracias, Lima, Peru.”