Episode 242: London, ONT, CAN – 7/16/2013

As we say goodbye to reliving the 20th anniversary of the Riot Act tour, there are so many other Pearl Jam anniversaries that need to be celebrated this year. Believe it or not, it’s been a full decade since the 2013 Lightning Bolt tour, as well as the release of the record. In July of that year, the band revealed their plans for their 10th studio album release nearly days before the two big North American summer shows – Wrigley Field and London, Ontario. We all know how big of a deal that Wrigley show was. It was the first ballpark show of it’s kind,  heavy storms caused a two and a half hour delay leading to a show that didn’t end until 2 am, and Bugs was played. Because of the hype leading up to Wrigley, the London show that preceded it became a bit of an after thought. For those unfamiliar, we’ll tackle why this show deserves more love and appreciation from this fanbase that may have forgotten about it in the wake of Wrigley.

Like Wrigley, this is a show that was never released as an official bootleg. So most of the stories and moments that are relived come directly from the less than 10,000 fans who were there in attendance in this intimate venue. We’re lucky to be joined by two in this episode as Patron, Tim Fortescue, hops on to discuss why he requested this show, and filling in for John this week is Hallucinogenic Recipe co-host, Patrick Boegel, who also has great memories from this. A lot of the discussion here will come from this being the true kickoff to the new era, with a brand new rig, stage and lighting set up, setlist structure and new takes on old songs. It was the beginning of the nightly three song slow burn openers that came off as a massive surprise when the rarely opened with Present Tense kicked off this night. It was also the start of the slowburn encore in a way too, which was the most anticipated part of the set featuring some of the rarest songs in the catalog, IE: Parachutes and Man Of The Hour at this show.

We’ll also get to talking about the live debut of Mind Your Manners, a London Calling tease, amazing transitions between songs such as Modern Girl into Black, Dundas hookers on crack and experimental takes on two fan favorites – one that worked in Corduroy, and one that didn’t in Daughter. As a bonus, we’ll also ponder why Canadian hotels only have Garfield cartoons featured on their TVs.

Our Gear Guru segments this week focus on the brand new rig set-up for 2013, the defining sound of Mind Your Manners and Alone featuring Mike’s usage of a slide pick.