July 7, 2018 – Rock Werchter Festival, Werchter Festival Park, Werchter, BEL

Pearl Jam Show Notes 7/7/2018:

Small Town opens, setting the campfire mood of a late night festival set. Ed tries to get the crowd to sing along at the end, which is heard from the front but not the full crowd as a whole.  Do The Evolution, however, features the crowd chanting along to Stone’s playing during the bridge with a bit of Ed’s encouragement. Corduroy is the extended version, and also has some crowd chanting during the intro. Following the song Ed addresses the crowd in Dutch for a few lines, which is always a struggle.  He continues in English, offering that this is the best [festival] lineup and the group can’t remember another lineup that compares, and it means a lot to them to be on this stage and they are very grateful.  He offers it’s their 5th time playing the festival and introduces Matt Cameron on the drums, and that this is his 7th time, as he’s played it with Soundgarden, adding

“We have something special tonight…and speaking of Soundgarden, we have Mr. Kim Thayil with us here tonight and he doesn’t normally leave Seattle. He’s got an incredible gang with him because he’s over here doing some amazing shows so right now it is my honor to introduce a true legend…MC5, Mr. Wayne Kramer, I turn the mic over to you. Here I guess you’d call him Vayne, so Vayne this is Werchter, Werchter, this is Wayne.”

The MC50 lineup of the MC5 joins on stage, including Wayne, Kim, Doug Pinnick (King’s X), Brendan Canty (Fugazi), and Marcus Durant (Zen Guerrilla), Ed introduces the members and then hands the mic to Wayne who offers the famous line, “right now…right now…it’s time to kick out the jams, motherfucker!”

The combined bands then perform the MC5’s “Kick out the Jams,” trading off solos, with Marcus and Ed trading verses. Ed teases “here’s a quiet one for you” before going into Even Flow. Prior to Habit, he says “Jack White dedicated a song earlier to Donald Trump and I don’t want to give him too much attention…but we got one for him too.” Habit falls apart halfway through, leading Ed to offer “fuck him it’s not worth it.”

The improv that follows features the lines “oh what I’d do to you if I thought I could get away with it, what I could do to you.” Given to Fly is introduced with “this one is for all our kids and the next generation who are going to make it alright.” Jeremy features a rather large crowd participation at the end, singing along during the outro, and Ed recognizes the good singing. Jack Johnson joins for Imagine amidst a wash of cell phone lights throughout the crowd.  Jack and Ed trade versus and the song is performed with the full band seated.

Ed attempts in Dutch to congratulate the Belgian football team after Once (Belgium had defeated Brazil 2-1 the previous night in the World Cup), and says  they’d like to play some Ramones for the crowd and the team, leading into I Believe in Miracles.  An 8-minute Black includes great crowd participation on the last lines, Mike’s solo slowly fading into the crowd taking over singing the outro and clapping. Out of the break, portions of the crowd continue singing the outro to Black. Alive is dedicated to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Mike begins a few notes of Yellow Ledbetter before Ed calls an audible and starts Baba O’Riley instead.