September 4, 2024 – Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, USA

Pearl Jam Show Notes 9/4/2024:

Night two at the Garden opens with…Garden. Mike gets a chance to get into the groove early and Matt pounds away like thunder, and Ed goes down front to sing the end. During the bridge of Corduroy, Ed wants to tell a story:

“I think it was two years [ago] when we played in this very building, and they had some event down below…like a TV thing, it was gonna happen the next morning. They focused all the lights, got all the lights ready for the TV show in the morning, and when they came in the morning…all the lights were falling off and all fucked up and all out of place because the building had been rocking so hard the night before…let’s do that again!”

Hail, Hail has a very cool smoke/flame visual. Ed says that it’s the band’s 50th show in New York City, and it’s Even Flow that shows up early tonight. Afterwards, he speaks again:

“This is a Public Service Announcement…because there’s some shit that will go down in the next couple of months that will dictate what will go down in the next three or four decades….and women, I’m speaking to you, but dads, you can listen too…the rights of women are not just being threatened, they are already being taken away. I know it’s a little early to be getting into this shit, but let’s get it over with! So the right to choose issue, it used to involve religious fanatics, and then politicians got involved, not because they care one way or another, they just would like the votes. And now, it’s evolved into judges…and women of all ages are up against a Supreme Court…it’s time to vote, and as the great Patti Smith said, ‘People Have the Power’, never have truer words been spoken…women, feel empowered, vote for your own interests, help a sister out while you’re at it.”

Daughter follows, with Ed again changing the lyrics in the tag, this time to “…politicians leave our girls alone/judges leave our girls alone/just to make sure, be your own.” Dark Matter again has the ambient intro and visual that we were used to seeing from Scared of Fear. Prior to Won’t Tell, Ed sees a fan named Rob wearing a Soundgarden shirt (at which point Mike plays a tease of “Superunknown”), and then points out that Steven Van Zandt (of the E Street Band and The Sopranos) is in attendance, mentions his SiriusXM radio show and that he had told the band that the song would be a huge hit, and it should be a single. After a powerful I Am Mine, Ed talks about how Jeff and Stone had been to NYC before PJ made it there, and talks about his first time being in a big building meeting with the record company, calling it “a dream come true.” He tells the crowd “…this one’s all you” before starting Small Town. He asks the crowd if they should play a request:

“…it’s for a good friend of ours, he wanted to hear it, and I realized…he said ‘Why don’t you like playing that song?’ I said, it’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that I…that I…and actually, you know what, I don’t like playing this song…because it’s about guns, and I hate fucking guns! Even if it’s a song criticizing guns, I don’t even…I hate fucking guns! It’s like the first day of school, and then today, in Georgia, where they don’t have as good gun laws as they do in New York City, there was another big shooting…every other fucking day, so why would I want to spend four minutes singing a fucking song about guns?”

The “friend” is Howard Stern, and Ed adds “this one’s called…well, you know.” He exhorts the crowd during Jeremy, interjecting “..c’mon, c’mon!” Andrew Watt is introduced and helps out on Waiting For Stevie, taking the solo, and then sticks around to play Ed’s guitar part on RVM.

I Am a Patriot, a Steven Van Zandt cover, opens the massive 10-song encore with Ed changing the lyric to “…I was walking/with my wife of 24 years…,” the song’s first appearance since Fenway 2018. After Just Breathe, Glen Hansard comes out on stage, and Ed talks about all the shoutouts they’ve had requests for, mentioning Andrew Greenhall, who’s a transplant patient, and Alison, a mom of a 13-year-old named Sam who has a rare disease, and dedicates Song of Good Hope to them and others. Ed gets worked up during Gimme Some Truth, and the unlikely combo of Setting Sun and Sonic Reducer follows. Leash is a surprise, and it looks like the band is rushing a little with the curfew approaching during Alive, but then Watt, Hansard (with his band), and Van Zandt all join on stage for the Rockin’ in the Free World party, with so many people on stage that Jeff ends up playing tambourine. Order is restored on stage, and Ed says “this is how we say goodbye” before Ledbetter, adding that in Hawaii they say “a hui huo, see you later.”