November 6, 2011 – Apoteose, Rio de Janeiro, BRA

Show Notes:

You can feel the energy in the crowd as Eddie walks out with wine and notebook in hand and grabs a guitar to kick off the night with Unthought Known. The crowd immediately shouts along and claps. While Eddie is…

Show Notes: 

You can feel the energy in the crowd as Eddie walks out with wine and notebook in hand and grabs a guitar to kick off the night with Unthought Known. The crowd immediately shouts along and claps. While Eddie is offstage during Last Exit, the crowd helps out and sings the chorus until Ed comes back. The band and Ed clap and “hey” along during the breakdown of Blood. Only after Corduroy does the band stop for break, and Ed addresses the crowd in their native tongue. The crowd responds with uproarious cheering. During GTF, Eddie lifts the back of his shirt over his head as he and the entire audience scream, “Well fuckers we still stand.” There is a great singalong during Nothingman. At this point the vibe between the band and crowd seems obvious through the interplay of the clapping, dancing, and singing along with one another. Lots of singing along and dancing during Even Flow. During Daughter, the connection between the crowd and band is clear as Eddie plays off the crowd and follows the crowd a bit into an It’s OK tag. Immortality is dedicated to “someone over there,” and Ed seems to lose himself in Mike’s killer solo. The crowd is really into the newer music, and Eddie really gets into the groan on Got Some. During the beginning of Why Go, the crowd and Eddie sing the heys at a thunderous volume.

To begin encore 1, Eddie says “we have to argue about the songs we want to play, because we want to play many more of them.” He goes on to talk about Matt Cameron playing drums in another legendary band. He says that while Pearl Jam is 20, X is 35 and this is their first time in Brazil. Eddie says, “you were perfect!” Ed introduces Just Breathe by talking about an asteroid coming to Earth. At the end of the story, he says that you need to tell the person next you that you love them. The crowd sings along for the entire song almost louder than Ed. The band is super tight during I Believe In Miracles, but the crowd seems unfamiliar; this is one of the few songs they don’t sing along to. During State Of Love And Trust, Mike comes over to Ed towards the end of his solo for Ed to scream “He na na na na, there’s somethin’!” into Mike’s guitar as as he shreds. Ed introduces Of The Earth by prefacing, “you may not know this song,” but the band has a big time jam during the breakdown. Do The Evolution is full of dancing in the crowd and on stage. Mike jumps, Eddie moves back and forth strutting like Mick Jagger and Jeff is grooving and doing some jumps of his own. Even Stone starts dancing during his brief solo. Jeremy continues the sing along section, and the crowd continues singing the “Oh’s” after the song is over. And Eddie says, “From here to there to there from here to there…One of the best groups of people we could ever play for. The most active. Thank you. We’re very grateful for you.”

Ed introduces Pink Floyd’s Mother as a song they’ve never played before a large crowd before, the only time it was covered was for The Tonight Show back in September. During Better Man the crowd provides the perfect vocal accompaniment to Ed’s strumming on the entirety of the first verse until Ed points at himself to say it’s his turn and he holds the note. It’s a beautiful moment. During Black, Eddie and the crowd go back and forth on the vocals towards the end including the We Belong Together tag, and Eddie sways back and forth with his wine bottle in hand. Black Balloons somehow enter the audience before Stone kicks off Alive. During RITFW, Ed throws what seems like dozens of tambourines, guitar pics, and more memorabilia to enthusiastic audience members while the band jams. Ed asks if they can handle one more and they go into Indifference. Ed forgets the first lines and looks to the audience for help and the audience provides confusing direction; Ed picks it up for “One more day in hell.” It was awesome how neither the audience nor Ed knew the first verse at that moment. Yellow Ledbetter ends with Mike seated on the edge of the stage strumming and waving goodbye to folks.


November 4, 2011 – Estadio do Morumbi, São Paulo, BRA

Show Notes:

The band hit the stage with a blast of energy starting the show with Go followed by Do The Evolution. Stone sets the tone with a blistering solo. From there, the band burned through Severed Hand, Hail, Hail and Got…

Show Notes: 

The band hit the stage with a blast of energy starting the show with Go followed by Do The Evolution. Stone sets the tone with a blistering solo. From there, the band burned through Severed Hand, Hail, Hail and Got Some. Ed addressed the crowd commenting how beautiful they are. The energy slowed for Elderly Woman, but quickly picked back up with Given to Fly and Gonna See My Friend. The crowd got involved singing on Wishlist, carrying the “ah ah oh oh” after the band wrapped up the song. The band continued selecting songs from Backspacer, breaking out Amongst the Waves, and Setting Forth seamlessly transitions into Not For You. The band has back-to-back false starts for Unthought Known and The Fixer, before the home stretch of the first set with Once and Black.

Coming back from the encore break, Ed gives thanks to those in the crowd who came out five years ago to see them. He also thanks X, the opening band, going into a story about his younger days of getting a fake ID to get into a show to see X, ending up on the rail and ending up holding a beer for the lead singer and passing it back and forth to her all night. Just Breathe opens the encore, but leading into Inside Job, Ed shares the first time he heard the song when Mike played it for him in a hotel room in São Paulo. Matt jumps ahead in the set by starting the drum beat for Why Go before the band resets and jumps into State Of Love And Trust. Being in South America, Ole makes an appearance with a lot of energy from the crowd. The first encore wraps up with Why Go and Jeremy.

Starting encore two, Ed leads the crowd in a chant and the band breaks into Last Kiss. Halfway through the song, the band gets out of sync. However, the crowd continues singing the song, allowing the band to regroup and continue playing the song. The set wraps up with Better Man, Spin the Black Circle, Alive, Baba O’Riley and Yellow Ledbetter to end the show.


November 3, 2011 – Estadio do Morumbi, São Paulo, BRA

Show Notes:

Night one of this South America 2011 leg is actually the second scheduled São Paulo show after the 11/4 gig sold out. The cavernous Estadio do Morumbi was not quite full for this added show, but the energy and performances…

Show Notes: 

Night one of this South America 2011 leg is actually the second scheduled São Paulo show after the 11/4 gig sold out. The cavernous Estadio do Morumbi was not quite full for this added show, but the energy and performances more than filled it up. Release sounds huge with Ed’s vocals sounding well rested and raring to go for this next tour leg. This version includes an “oh dear John” lyric for Johnny Ramone. Primed by Release, the band offers a classic escalating run of Corduroy, Why Go and Animal to get the crowd pogoing. Ed then leads a brief swirling feedback drenched e-bow jam before the band drives hard into World Wide Suicide with Stone particularly locked in. After Got Some, Ed greets the crowd in some approximate version of Portuguese saying good evening we are happy you are in São Paulo, thank you for being so devoted. Ed misses a lyric in Unthought Known singing the “swallowed whole” part early instead of “working hard”, but stays on beat so it’s barely noticeable. Ed appears to indicate Small Town is next with the “1-2-3-4-2-3” count off, but pulls back as the crowd breaks into an “ole, ole” stadium chant with the band joining behind them for an extended fun jam. Matt then stands out with a controlled pummeling of his kit on Whipping, which makes its sole appearance on this leg. Ed uses a lyric sheet during the strobe heavy South American debut of Ole. Jeff and Stone’s backup vocals in the outro add some frantic energy to the new song. A late in the set Save You highlights the back end with Jeff and Matt throwing down hard. There was no traditional South American guitar sing along in Do the Evolution.

Ed introduces the band at the start of encore 1 in Portuguese leading into a vibrant Small Town. Just Breathe is a full band version and afterwards Ed tips his cap opener X. Ed then switches to Portuguese and mentions The Ramones playing Brazil and says Come Back was composed for Johnny Ramone. Alive features Mike switching over to Stone’s side during his solo to sear both sides of the crowd equally. Black closes with Ed doing a wordless high register vocal and Mike stinging it with a few piercing notes. Better Man is concise with Ed opting for a windmill Townshend finish in lieu of a tag. Ed then remarks:

“Obrigada. You know most Americans are a bit stupid when it comes to languages. We don’t know many. That’s I guess why we are so thankful that we play music which seems to communicate to people just about everywhere… It’s been five or six years since we’ve been here…. we see the Brazilian flag at more of our shows than any other flag, so we are very happy to be back with all Brazilians.”

The show finishes up with RVM getting an under-used nod as an encore 2 anchor before RITFW finishes things out featuring a Brazilian flag lyric reference “There’s colors of the street, green, yellow and blue”. Setlist edits for encore 2 had RVM moving from after Comatose to before RITFW, Spin The Black Circle being switched to Black and Wasted Reprise being cut before Better Man.