September 12, 2024 – CFG Bank Arena, Baltimore, MD, USA

Pearl Jam Show Notes 9/12/2024:

After being mentioned by Stone earlier in the year during an interview as one of the songs he’d like to see come back, Can’t Keep opens the show, the first time it’s been played since 2014! Ed puts some extra emphasis behind the “…it’s been wonderful tonight…” lyric and Stone is fully in the groove. The long build in Present Tense gets the crowd going, and the song breaks loose and soars, one of the best versions in recent memory. During the Corduroy breakdown, Ed says “Good evening Baltimore!” and then continues afterwards, saying “…we don’t get here as often as we’d like, and now feeling your energy right off the bat, we are seeing the errors of our ways,” adding that they were scheduled to play here when the pandemic hit in 2020, and then the building was being renovated in 2022 during the rescheduled tour. He sees a sign for a couple who’s been married for 43 years, saying “it was only 38 back then [when the show was originally scheduled]…by the way, Stone and Jeff have been together almost forty, so don’t get cocky.” He starts to introduce the next song, but can’t remember the title, joking “fuck it…once they start playing, I’ll remember,” leading into React, Respond. He says there’s “a fervent request…he’s a hematologist, so of course the song, of course, he wants us to play is called Blood.” He continues, joking “…bring your sign to the Springsteen show tomorrow, maybe he’ll play it….he can sing it, too,” and says the next one is a request from a NASA scientist, “right up there with hematologist,” and Tremor Christ is played for only the second time this year. Ed introduces Stone, and then hears the crowd and says:

“Stone, they’re asking if you would sing a song tonight [Stone dismisses the request with a wave of his hand]…see, that’s the problem, the band is a democracy…if it was a dictatorship, and I happened to be the dictator, I’d say ‘Stone, you gotta fuckin’ sing…or I’ll fuckin’ kill you’ [laughs]….okay, he’s thinking about it!”

However, Wreckage follows. After Unthought Known, Mike starts playing the riff from Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold,” a call back to the 2013 show where Ed talked about Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins seeing Nugent in this arena back in the ’70s. The band picks up on it, laughing, and after a minute or so Ed starts singing, repeating “I don’t want a gun/I don’t ever want to own a gun/I don’t want a gun/I don’t own a gun” over and over, and mimics shooting a bow and arrow up into the sky. Mike starts off the Even Flow solo with a slow burn but the shredding is unleashed in time. Ed says they have “good news and sad news,” mentioning the recent loss of actor James Earl Jones, saying that he had seen him in a Tennessee Williams play in London 15 years ago, and got to meet him. He then says “…but now, the good news: did you hear that Taylor Swift…?” He doesn’t finish the thought, but flexes his arm (Swift had endorsed Kamala Harris for President). He goes on to talk about today’s news that North Dakota had vacated their abortion ban, ruling it unconstitutional. He works the news into the Daughter tag again, adding “…leave women’s bodies alone” and repeating “vote to make it okay” at the end. Deep is dedicated to “three different people going through difficult things,” and he uses a lyric from Once (“it could happen to you, it could happen…”) as an intro. Upper Hand is the fourth and last Dark Matter song. During the Porch jam, Ed goes over and strums Mike’s guitar, and then sings a little of the Stooges’ “T.V. Eye” (“I gotta T.V. eye”) before kicking back into the song.

During the break, there’s a loud mechanical noise heard in the building, and Ed references it when he comes back out, joking that he’s glad the crowd “still has their hearing after that fucking sound disruption,” saying they had an issue with the front board and apologizing for the “technical difficulties.” There are a bunch of signs that Ed references, including the woman from a previous show who had a 150th show sign and tonight has one that says “151.” Glen Hansard joins Ed on stage for Falling Slowly. Ed sings a little during the Black solo, repeating “someday…” as Mike drops to the floor, wringing all the emotion out of his guitar. Ed says STBC is a request from José Cardenal, and Mike and Jeff circle each other as they play. Alive is paused to take care of someone in the crowd, and then continues where they left off. Baba has a big ending jam and Ed adds “I’ll stay” to Ledbetter to close the night out.