Episode 322: Manchester, UK – 6/20/2012

This episode jumps into a tour year that we don’t often talk about on the pod – the final year of the Backspacer tour in 2012. This year featured 13 shows over in Europe and a few additional festival shows in the US, and for this one we’ll cover the show that kicked off the entire year in Manchester, UK. No, it’s probably not the Manchester show that you’d think. We’re not covering the show that features the one and only performance of Hitchhiker. But there are plenty of things about this show worthy of conversation, performance wise and storyline wise.

In Pearl Jam’s history, there’s been somewhat of a stigma that surrounds two different types of shows – tour openers and night ones. This show happens to be both. The stigma about tour openers is that they can tend to come off a little bit flat, there’s a concern over the equipment sounding the way it needs to sound and the fact that there is usually a somewhat significant time frame since the last performance. Night ones can sometimes have a very similar reputation as well, as many people consider night two as the show where they’ll bust out rarities and surprises. We’ll take a chunk of time at the beginning of the episode talking about how the band has essentially worked on erasing these stigmas within the last few tour years, with the band pulling out very solid tour opening shows as well as some night one shows that were far better than their night two counterparts.

And yes, getting into the performances too! We’ll spend time talking about how and why Stone overpowered McCready on the big time songs at this show such as Even Flow and Porch, and get into a short take on a great song from a hometown Manchester band that has relevance in the Pearl Jam canon.