June 26, 2012 – Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam, NED

Pearl Jam Show Notes 6/26/2012:

During the opening chords of Given to Fly, Ed holds the mic stand and pumps it up into the air, almost like an extension of his fist. He sings “…made it out to Holland, smoked a joint in a tree…” Mike looks rather suave in a dapper suit jacket. Ed greets the audience with his gravelly “hello” after Amongst the Waves. He follows with “Goedenavond Amsterdam” (‘Good evening Amsterdam’). He talks to the crowd in broken Dutch and it roughly translates to

“This is our twelfth time playing in Holland. I hope it’s the best ever. This is the first rock and roll show in this new venue. Let’s write history together. The rest of the show I’ll speak English as my Dutch is fuck.” 

Mike is introduced as ‘Mike David McCready’ before Even Flow kicks off. During the second chorus, after he sings “thoughts arrive like butterflies,” Ed clasps his hands together and motions butterflies fluttering away. He introduces “a nice quiet one for a singalong” and they belt out Lukin, going straight into Not For You without taking a beat. The audience covers the first two lines of the second verse when Ed appears to forget the lyric. He watches them, says “got it” and jumps back in for the second half of the verse. He also changes the lyrics to “…with no power and so much to prove…” After Not For You, Ed addresses the crowd again:

“It’s a little different tonight, and pretty special for us. The first time we ever played here, a long time ago, we were kids, and now we HAVE kids. They’re all here tonight, all the kids came. They’re just getting old enough. They’re pretty wise and worldly and of all the places they wanted to come, it’s pretty obvious why they wanted to come here. And I’m just gonna leave it at that so as not to incur any suspicion from the authorities concerning our parenting. We’re gonna play this next one for the kids. It’s a Kinks song, called Better Days.” 

The song is in fact called Better Things, but nobody’s correcting him, and it’s the live debut! Ed messes up the verses of Evolution and it comes out as a mishmash of both with a made up line: “…wanna say I wanna do it again yeah..I’m at peace with my lust…” At the end of Last Kiss, Eddie plays a little of “Pulled Up” by the Talking Heads. Smile and Green Disease are crowd requests, with Ed saying Green Disease is “about a scourge, a disease on the planet…the disease is greed.” During Rockin’ in the Free World, the band are joined on stage by John Doe of X and Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, who both play tambourine and sing back up, and Ray Cameron, Matt’s son, on guitar. At some point Mike takes his shirt off, loses the guitar, and plays tambourine instead, while Jeff and Ed launch themselves into the air in unison as the song closes out. In his usual signoff for the evening, when he mentions all band members by name, Ed precedes Mike’s name with “He started off the night fully dressed, he looked quite natty, now he’s close to naked, Mr. Mike McCready…” He also gives a special mention to D.J. Bonebrake, X’s drummer, and the rest of the band, who opened the show. The house lights come on as Indifference closes the show with a slight lyric change: “I might change direction, and I might change my mind…” Ed tells the crowd “be good, be well, be strong…” before exiting.