Pearl Jam Podcast Episodes

Pearl Jam has such a rich history in the city of Boston and it’s surrounding parts. Between there, plus Mansfield and Worcester, they’ve played the area a total of 24 times in their 32 year history. From the famous Ten Club show at The Orpheum in 1994, to the three night stay where they made the attempt to play every song in their catalog at Mansfield in 2003, to more recently when Fenway Park has become the crown jewel venue for them to play, there are a lot of absolute classics to take away from this region. In this episode, we won’t be talking about a show that was considered a classic. If there was consideration for one, it would probably be the follow up night 2 show in 2006. But as a night 1 show that didn’t have a set topping moment like Leash did the next night, it’s easy to misplace it within that massive group previously mentioned. Is it time to get this show back on some people’s minds?

We invite in our Patron, Joe Ierachi, who requested this show for us to do as an episode. He joins us here to tell his story featuring his memory from what was an unforgettable crowd, being at a show with his sister and friend who has since passed away, and a story about a fantasy football bet and how it pertains to Even Flow! It’s Joe’s pick, and he’ll tell you why night 1 is more meaningful to him than night 2.

As mentioned, this crowd had an excellent night. We’ll talk about their impact on songs such as Release, Love Boat Captain, Jeremy, Why Go and Crazy Mary. This is also a big night for Mike solos, but Stone has a big moment towards the end of the night as well when an orange shirt gets tossed on stage bearing his name.

This is a show that I’m sure you’re all familiar with. On a midwestern run in 2014, Pearl Jam did something that can be consider unprecedented. It all started in Moline, Illinois where for the first time, they played No Code in its entirety. Three days later, they decide to test out another album in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where Yield is played front to back. That’s what we’ll be covering today, the last full album show that we needed to cover in the modern era!

Returning to the show is the author of new Pearl Jam book, Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation, Steven Hyden. He’ll talk about his experience from that night and what it was like to witness what went down in real time. However, this isn’t the only artist that he’s been in the crowd to see pull out a surprise full album show. It’s a classic album by an all-time legend, find out which one during his interview!

As for the show itself, some might’ve been a little suspicious when they took the stage to Red Dot, but for others that heard rumors swirling round on Twitter, it was a sign that something big was set to go down. The band may have called for a bit of a misdirection early when they invited Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen on stage to do Baba O’Riley as the fifth song in, but once Brain Of J. hit it was off to the races. We’ll talk about the entire Yield portion of the set, how they presented it rather close to the album renditions (no Wishlist tag, no Untitled before MFC), when and how the fans figured it out and we’ll also come up with what the definitive performance from this set is.

This episode focuses on the last show to date that Pearl Jam has played in Ireland, taking us to Dublin for a performance from 2010. We thank our Patron, Clare O’Leary, for pitching a request from her one and only Pearl Jam show, and we’ll tell her story on the episode. This show is widely known for one massive moment that takes precedent – the debut of a song called Of The Earth. Of The Earth is an epic, almost cinematic song that the band never seemed to figure out how to get it done in the studio. But the song’s legacy mirrors something similar to Falling Down, a very rare track to be utilized solely for the live stage. We’re gonna talk about why this song is so important, what makes this version special and why we may never see something like this again.

As a tour leg opener, the band came out with the songs they were most familiarized with. Aside from two debuts and Long Road, every song played in this set was played at either the first or second night of MSG, the last shows of the US leg. The other pretty notable debut on this night was Arms Aloft, a song from late era Joe Strummer project, The Mescaleros. We’ll get to hear a story about Strummer’s connection with Pearl Jam, and how before he passed, some big plans were in motion for a tour with the two bands.

We’re hitting the festival circuit in this episode as we take a Patron request from Dan Greenberg to cover the non-televised Austin City Limits show from 2009. This episode could potentially seem as a bit contentious as there were things that Randy and John weren’t quite moved by. Mainly, the idea that this set felt like a time crunch in the way that they ran through it made it difficult to find an overall flow for this show. But there are no lack of good moments here! In 2009, the band went on a nice little run with Ben Harper inviting him out to play Red Mosquito on slide guitar almost every night. The performance and duel with McCready is a sight to behold, and something that we were itching to discuss on the pod for a long time. The other big moment? Inviting Perry Farrell out to sing Mountain Song. We’ll get into a deep discussion about both Jane’s Addiction and Perry’s influence on the band.

And, Ashley Moon is in the room! You may remember from last month’s Ottawa show that a woman who was sitting all the way in the back was invited to the front and got a lengthy and heartfelt dedication from the band. She writes in to the show to tell her story about the entire experience, with a part of the story connecting to our story from Erin Mackay last week.

Thanks to a request from our Patron Joe Kolbenschlag, we get to focus on a show from 1995 that occurred during a small window of shows in that September. This one is Las Cruces, New Mexico, which may not be one of the many jaw dropping shows from 1995, but is still damn good in it’s own right. We get to talk about lots from the Vitalogy era – a random rare appearance from Satan’s Bed, a fully explosive I Got Shit (ok, noticed how bad that was two seconds after typing it. It’s staying in.) and a killer Immortality that reigned king of the era with it’s incredible, jammy outro.

We’ll also get to see a rare tag off of Daughter, The Who’s “I’m One”, a 10 minute Porch that ranges from bluesy to jammy all inclusive, and stunning versions of Corduroy, Not For You, Rearviewmirror and Blood.

Also in this episode we’ll talk about some end of the tour topics featuring a few things we can’t wait to hear on bootleg, and some of our favorite moments from our travels. We’ll also hear a story from Erin Mackay who had the version of Other Side that was played in Quebec City dedicated to her for her brother. Caution: story has themes of mental illness and suicide involved. If you wish not to listen to that part, skip over it at 9 minutes in and jump to 13 minutes in.

This is our 200th episode! After four years of this podcast journey, we’ve reached a wonderful milestone that we’d like to celebrate with you all, and we’re going to do that by covering the show that (finally) introduced us into the Gigaton era from the Sea.Hear.Now festival shortly after it’s one-year anniversary.

We’ll talk a lot about the podcast milestone and what it means to us and kind of tie a nice bow on it surrounding what happened at this show, which was the first show that we attending representing the pod when fully established. But it’s also about everything that led up to that weekend too. The lingering postponements carried over from 2020 left everyone asking a lot of questions – what kind of band would this be? How would the Gigaton songs translate live? What older songs will still be in the mix? The answers we received were a gateway into a new era of Pearl Jam where setlists would be constructed unlike anything we’ve seen before.

We’ll have a lot of discussion on the Gigaton songs, which will be tied into some things we’ve heard on this more recent tour run. But there are many memorable performances from this night including Present Tense, Wishlist with a Waiting On A Friend tag, Red Mosquito featuring Danny Clinch on harmonica, Better Man with a People Have The Power tag and a cover of Springsteen’s My City Of Ruins.

Believe it or not, this is episode 199! We’re one away from our 200th episode! So for this one we are going to celebrate the birthday of one John Farrar by going back in time all the way to the first show he ever attended back in 1998 on the Yield tour. To everyone’s surprise, yes… it’s an Atlanta show. John has a good story as he’ll talk about Pearl Jam being in sort of the downswing of his life after joining a punk band and moving on to other influences. Going to this show was essentially a way for him to say that he went and got to witness it, but it wouldn’t be for another 14 years that he’d see them again.

This show marked some semi-notable moments for the Yield album which, as we’ll discuss, did not give enough love to it’s deeper cuts on this tour. A soundcheck was played before this show that would have certainly been the stuff of legends had we owned a recording. They played Low Light, a song that they never played on this tour, Parting Ways, which was two years away from being on an album, Dead Man with drums and a slowed down version of Blood. The band opted to play No Way for only the 2nd time out of 12 overall in the 24 years since thanks to a guy who kept bringing a sign to every show. They also tagged All Those Yesterdays off of Daughter which saw just a marginal amount more of playing time. It’s a small sample size, but this show incorporated a side of Yield that went untouched for most of the early time that Cameron was in this band.

Oh yeah, there’s also the Yeastie Girlz! We’ll talk about how Ed’s extremely obscure rap was something that John actually knew about and made him super excited both at the show, and during the episode.