Pearl Jam Podcast Episodes

This week’s episode takes us back to the Yield tour to cover Pearl Jam’s first headlining arena gig in Minnesota. With only a few shows under their belt in the early onset of the Matt Cameron era, the band was starting to figure out their stride with the new, then temporary, drummer. The crowd was red hot for every performance and every hiccup within this set, which led to some surprised reactions from Ed, who didn’t have the show in mind as a sleeper show.

The big story coming out of this show stemmed from a callback to something that The Who did in their live shows. After years of playing My Generation ad nauseum, they turned the song into a very riffy, blues influenced jam. This is something that Ed, a lifelong Who fan, picked up on and started to utilize during Porch in a similar fashion back around the mid-2000’s. This was the first instance where they dabbled in it. We’ll talk about the history of both My Generation blues and the slow/riffy Porch intros and how it became a staple for them much later in their live career.

We’ll also dig into great performances of Brain Of J., Faithfull, Even Flow, Black and very early versions of Pilate and All Those Yesterdays which were rarely played that year. Joining us for this episode is our longtime friend Kirk Walton who we like to call Mr. Minnesota. He’ll share his story about the show which included a trip to Mervyn’s of California, and we’ll also get to chat about the misery that Minnesota sports fans endure.

Kentucky is not a state that Pearl Jam has frequented often, so when the 2016 tour schedule released with Lexington as one of the announced dates, folks from the Bluegrass State were overjoyed that the band would be returning for the first time in 13 years. That’s the focal point for this this episode. This is a show that is somehow approaching it’s 9th year anniversary in April, and just like many of those Spring 2016 shows, it’s full of deep cuts and talking points that are rarely broached on this podcast.

This show is a good show with an A+ crowd, but certainly not without some hiccups. While the song Lightning Bolt was utilized in the opener role for the first time ever, the band struggled a bit out the gate with the first six songs. However, that storyline doesn’t last throughout the entire show. The rabid crowd picked this band up and gave them the energy they needed to blaze through excellent performances of Corduroy, Army Reserve, 1/2 Full, Rearviewmirror, Thumbing My Way, Comfortably Numb and the ultra rare addition of Education.

A big thank you goes out to Simon and Dawn Mortimer for the Patreon episode request!

There are plenty of milestone anniversaries in Pearl Jam history that we have to celebrate in 2025 – the 25th anniversary of the Binaural tour and the 20th anniversary of the 2005 Canadian leg come to mind, but one of the big anniversaries that we’ll be digging into this year is the 30th anniversary of the legendary 1995 Vitalogy tour. This was a year of classic shows and moments from places like Red Rocks and Soldier Field, and in this episode we’ll cover the show that kicks off a big year of touring – a Vote For Choice show in Washington DC.

There are so many storylines that we have to cover in this one because of all the events that were happening in Pearl Jam’s world at the time. There’s the scarcity of tickets for this show where you had to send in a postcard to the Ten Club just to enter a lottery, Self Pollution Radio was broadcast a few days prior to this show happening that gave the audience a sneak peak as to how those Vitalogy songs that were all played on the Vs. tour were gonna sound polished up. This is considered to be the first show where Jack Irons is an official band member, and perhaps the biggest storyline is Neil Young’s involvement and this stretch of shows ultimately leading to the recording of the Mirrorball record. This show will end with Neil joining the stage to play their first ever version of Act Of Love days after Neil played it with Crazy Horse at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall Of Fame induction. We’ll talk about how important that record was for the band and how Neil’s influence has stuck with the group ever since.

In today’s episode we’re joined by Brian Horwitz from the Hallucinogenic Recipe podcast, and we’ll get to talking about the circulation of this bootleg and some of the other popular 1995 bootlegs, and we’ll discuss what boots were must owns once everything digitized in the 2000s.

Happy New Year to the Pearl Jam Podcast Community! 2025 is set to be another great year for the band on tour in April and May, and hopefully more will get announced at some point soon. To kick off the year, we are gonna finish our look back on 2024 by covering the highly talked about tour closer in Sydney. With a plethora of storylines leading up to the show, such as the 30th anniversary of Vitalogy’s release, expectations were high for the final night on the 2024 Dark Matter tour, and as per usual, the band delivered something memorable.

It was the type of show that you’d call a kitchen sink show incorporating songs that had barely been brought to the table last year such as Brain Of J, In Hiding, Tremor Christ, Save You, Dissident and Alone. But the big story from that night overpowers all of the clutch deep cuts because for the first time in ten years, the band decided to pull out Hunger Strike. It had been seven and a half years since Chris Cornell’s death, a subject that Eddie Vedder has rarely addressed publicly. But there is more behind this performance than just playing a famed song from their past. We’ll get into details of how Ed had seemed to open up a little more about his relationship with Chris, and how this moment in Sydney was seen from a therapeutic standpoint, having the crowd pitch in and help out in the roles meant for Cornell. A powerful moment, and one that will be remembered for decades onward.

We’ll also hear from our Aussie crew who helped out on our reaction episodes for the run down there, we’ll hear a story about a boy who challenged Eddie to rock, paper, scissors, and we’ll also share some news and changes about the podcast in effect for 2025.

For the third week in a row, you voted for which 2024 Pearl Jam show to cover – this time from the second North American leg! Without question, it was an easy choice as Philly Night 1 ended up with nearly 70% of the vote! And no bias came into play here at all! A large percentage of you are well aware that this was a special night for me, but beyond that, this show is unquestionably the best that Pearl Jam had to offer this year. This Saturday night crowd in Philly did not mess around, and while the setlist choices were excellent, the crowd and the energy that the band fed off them was the story.

For long time followers of the podcast, you probably have a good understanding for how personal this story is to me. Brain Of J. has been my white whale ever since I started going to shows 16 years ago. It was the song that truly kicked off my infatuation with this band back when I was twelve, and in 33 shows I had not seen it until this night. It was a cathartic moment that we’ll relive, not just for myself, but also for my friends who understood what this meant to me. And the version is an absolute banger to boot! So yes, a lot of the conversation is dominated by this song and my thoughts during and after the moment, but that wasn’t even my only fish I caught as Long Road was something that I had never seen open a show before.

Everything in this set is eyebrow raising, but we’ll spend time on great performances of Why Go, Red Mosquito, Running, Chloe Dancer/Crown Of Thorns, State Of Love And Trust and much more from this show. We also invite good friends of the podcast, Aaron Redmond and Mike Cribier, who I got to attend this show with to talk about how special it was.

We’re continuing our coverage featuring the best shows from 2024 this week with the selection from the European tour – Barcelona Night 1. There weren’t many shows to choose from thanks to a few cancelations on this run in London and Berlin for two shows, but this Barcelona show is the return after Ed caught a serious case of bronchitis that put him on the shelf for 10 days. Joining us on the podcast this week is our friend Alison, AKA the Voice Queen! She is a speech pathologist that specializes in voice recovery, and we’ll get to learn some pretty remarkable information about what age can do to someone’s vocal chords and how someone in Ed’s situation can make a full recovery to perform again. This is a can’t miss interview!

As for any concerns of Ed coming into this show not at 100% due to illness, those concerns can be halted. Ed will demonstrate right away how powerful he sounds by utilizing his lungs at full capacity playing the harmonica on the Footsteps opener, and sounding absolutely pristine on Nothingman to follow that. There are no signs of damage at this show, and all the layoff did was made the entire band hungry to take the stage because this night is all about the energy from both band and crowd alike. Songs like Given To Fly, Even Flow and Do The Evolution have a little bit of the South American flair that fits the passionate Spain crowd, but the Dark Matter songs were also big highlights here. From Scared Of Fear to Upper Hand and Setting Sun, they were at the top of their game when it came to new material.

We’ll spend a lot of time discussing the speech referencing Ed’s “near death experience” that was shared during Wasted Reprise, and we’ll talk about how Ed’s vulnerability in moments like these can help us as fans better communicate with one another. Also, lots of gear talk! Boosters, hammers, a killswitch and a Fender on steroids will dominate the technical segments of the program…

…and lest I forget… Hardcore Nudity!

It’s that time of year! We have eleven months to take in all of our experiences from 2024 that we bottle up for one big review of everything once December rolls around. So this entire month will feature episodes covering Pearl Jam shows from each leg of the 2024 Dark Matter tour as voted on by you the listeners! So we’re kicking it off with the winner of the May leg poll which happens to be the first night in Las Vegas. These back to back Vegas shows were make ups for having to cancel back in 2022, so these fans who had waited to see them in Vegas – not for two years, but it had been 18 years since they had last played in 2006, they got a setlist tailor made for diehards.

This being the fifth show of the year meant that a lot of the kinks of Dark Matter were still getting worked out, including setlist placement and fan reactions for some of the songs. The first four shows of the year put an emphasis on highlighting those songs and sticking within a relatively standard set of songs not uncommon to hear at a Pearl Jam show in any year. Pun can be intentional or not, but Vegas was the first gamble where many of the big moments from this show came from songs they don’t usually play. An opening combo of Sometimes and Hard To Imagine sets that tone, and then performances of songs such as Breakerfall, Tremor Christ, Inside Job and Breath reinforce it. Even some of the common songs felt like big changes as Black was the third song played in the set, and Corduroy was featured in the encore which included a little U2 flavor on the intro.

We’ll tell the story of the set, but there will be no better story than the one we share from a moment where Ed gave gambling money to a fan named Erin with the challenge to double it. We’ll hear the full details of that story from Erin’s perspective and how it led to a very sincere and special moment at the second show a day later.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and all of your loved ones! Out of absolutely no attempts to make any puns or jokes for this episode, it just so happens that we are covering the 1996 show from Istanbul, Turkey. Yeah, believe it or not it’s just total coincidence that it’s coming out this week… Anyway, this is the one and only time that Pearl Jam has traveled to Istanbul, and no one seems to remember it. Why is that you may ask? Well, as you’ll hear in this episode, this bootleg is no where close to being top notch even for the time. But the promise is that by the end of this podcast we’d cover every show in the catalog, so why wait to put this in the books?

We’ll spend a lot of time discussing this one off location and how perhaps the language barrier or unfamiliarity with the crowd initially kept the band from interacting. As you’ll see by the end of the show, they’ll find ways to all sing along together. This is a crowd that was very familiar with the popular songs from Ten – Even Flow, Jeremy and Alive, and you’ll hear them singing along loud and (somewhat) clear. Even though this bootleg is a tough listen, we are able to provide the one high quality recording that came out of this in Hail, Hail, and you’ll be able to decipher enough going on to get a pretty good feel of what this show was. Included in that is a total forgotten gem – an 8-minute version of Blood that we’ll gush over!

Since the tour has come to an end, we’ll share our final thoughts on how it turned out and look ahead to the possibilities of seeing them again in 2025. Get ready for next week as all throughout December we will be covering a show from every leg of this year’s tour!

We’ve come to the end of Pearl Jam’s 2024 Dark Matter tour, and our final destination of the year is Sydney, Australia. We go back to a show from 1995 in this episode to get you hyped up for the last shows. This was on the band’s first ever tour of Australia, so they are familiarizing themselves with this crowd and territory. Not to mention, this was at a time when the band went on hiatus from TicketMaster, and there was a ticket situation surrounding scalpers from this show that we’ll get into detail on.

We know the drill. It’s the Vitalogy tour. The performances are explosive, gritty and loud. While Ed was dealing with a sore throat at this show, it didn’t hinder versions of fan favorites such as Go, Spin The Black Circle, Corduroy, Not For You and Porch. This show also took place on Jeff’s birthday, so we get a big cake celebration and an appearance from a Chili Pepper to cause chaos. Flea joins the band on stage to play a very unique rendition of Needle And The Damage Done on bass with no accompanyment from Pearl Jam.

After next week, we’ll be busy covering the best shows of 2024! Don’t forget to vote via our social media pages for which shows you’d like to hear us talk about in December!

Pearl Jam’s short Australia/New Zealand is underway, and the next stop on the map is Melbourne! It’s a city that has a very rich history with this band featuring countless of classic shows from the early 90’s. Due to special Patreon request, this week we are covering the 2009 show. It’s a different setlist than what we covered from Auckland last week, but we’ll dig into more Backspacer deep cuts, crowd friendly moments and Ben Harper collaborations.

Some of you may know Javier’s frustration with 2009 from a sound perspective, how they were using tube amps that did not aid some of the intricacies that Stone and Mike add to specific songs when they play. We’ll have a good long discussion on how all of that works from both the technical and non-technical POVs, and present examples of songs it benefits and others that it doesn’t. We have some great moments in this set to get into including Indifference and Red Mosquito with Ben Harper, Throw Your Arms Around Me with Liam Finn and a version of Porch that unleashes the best of Stone Gossard.