Episode 170: Rotterdam, NLD – 3/6/1992

“Another wild, fabulous Holland show… in other words, it has to be seen to be believed”

If you’ve frequented the Five Horizons site over the past few decades, you would know that most of their show descriptions have a detailed re-telling of the performances, elaborating on the songs and speeches to give you the sense of what happened. If you’ve read the description for this Rotterdam show before, you’d know that the quote above would be the only indication of what this show was about. At the time, they hosted video on their site, but now you can find this entire show on YouTube, so for many of you that may have read this over the past handful of years, you may have no idea what you’re in for. Let’s just say Mike McCready gives us his all.

Along with all that… this was the final show of Pearl Jam’s five-night run in Holland during March of 1992. The band his always spoken highly of this run of shows and how much they loved the area and the local fans. We discussed Den Haag and Utrecht already, but this one is a good end-cap of their European run in 1992.

In the last two episodes, we talked a lot about stage divers presence and how it interfered with what was happening on stage. This time, Ed takes a new approach putting a stop to it before it even began. The crowd obliges, for the most part, and the band’s energy is truly able to resonate on stage. The band is having fun playing the music they are proud of writing, and when they’d head back to the states in a week’s time, they’ll find out that everything has changed.