Pearl Jam Podcast Episodes

The theme of this show is the importance of family. This being a hometown show for both Ed and Matt, there are a lot of band member relatives taking in the performance – Ed’s mother and three brothers are in attendance, Matt’s mother, siblings and son Ray are all there, and Mike’s dad Roy is in attendance as well. As much as this is a family show for the band, it was a bonding moment for those who witnessed this on the rail. We invite our long-time friends Debra McMurtrey and Dukes Wooters onto the show to talk about how their friendship developed on this night and to discuss the special bonds that we share with each other through our connection to the band that makes it all so special. This is our first show in the next handful of weeks that’s going to zero in on some of the locations that Pearl Jam will stop at on the upcoming tour in May. This night was the last time they were in San Diego and the purpose of the show was to create a hometown party type atmosphere. They played a 34-song, 3 hour and 20 minute set on this night that’s memorable for a lot of reasons. Not just because we get to see Ed’s mother Karen take down a bottle of wine in the same way her son is known to do, but this set was filled with so many audibles and surprises that would make for special moments in any Pearl Jam show. Some of those surprises include Tremor Christ, Army Reserve, Speed Of Sound, In My Tree and the live debut of Sleeping By Myself. We’ll get into all that and more good stuff from Deb and Dukes, including a breakdown of Ray Cameron’s lackluster Rockin’ In The Free World performance.

Thanks to our wonderful listeners and followers on social media, after a grueling two months worth of polls to select this week’s episode, the people have spoken and selected the legendary Katowice II 2000 show as the winner! The people chose well. This show is considered the cream of the crop of the official bootlegs from the Binaural tour and was sealed with the elusive Apeman logo as a show that the band thought of fondly. This show is unique for its era, both in story and in setlist. After playing the same arena, Spodek, the night prior in front of a sold out crowd of 8,000, the original tour route was going to bring them to Budapest, Hungary. That show was canceled for unknown reasons, leading the band to play a second night in Spodek to a crowd less than half the size as the previous night. They came onto the stage with a setlist mapped out, but after taking one look into the crowd and seeing a completely different atmosphere, they decided to make up the setlist on the fly instead. This led to a 4-song slow burn opening, some rare songs for the time spread all throughout the set, and many Binaural songs in their prime. We’ll run down the entire set and gush over some of the extremely rare placement of some of their most common songs. We’ll also get into a discussion about the recent premium ticket sales for the upcoming 2022 North American leg, and how the average Pearl Jam fan is having an extremely difficult time being able to afford them at the prices offered.

A night full of broken barricades and pepper spray, one of the glanced over shows from the No Code tour happened in Hartford, Connecticut only days following the massive Randall’s Island shows. As wild as some of the mid-90’s shows such as Miami 1994 got, this one had a moment that ended in the arrest of 13 fans. During Blood, a massive surge from the lawn crowd broke down the barricade, forcing riot police to invoke pepper spray, which in return caused fans in the seats to leave their section and rush towards the stage. The situation was handled better by Ed than by the police, but after a show that kicked off it’s main set with a ton of momentum, the band couldn’t let the situation potentially end the night sooner than anticipated. In this episode, we’ll touch up on that entire ordeal as well as a great moment during Not For You where Ed gives a speech similar to the infamous Porch speech at Randall’s Island. Also in this episode, we’ll touch up on ticket updates after the Ten Club lottery dropped, and we celebrate the life of Foo Fighters drummer, Taylor Hawkins.

After a long trip back into 1992 to get a taste of the band’s rise to fame, this episode brings you back to the 1998 Yield tour right after Matt Cameron joined the band. It’s the second show of the second leg emanating from East Lansing, Michigan, home of the Michigan State Spartans. Thanks to our Horizon Leg Patron Nick Smith for requesting this show and joining us briefly to chat about it! The second half of the Yield tour is well renowned for so many reasons. Although this show may not be recognized as much as others such as Mansfield or Madison Square Garden, this can be seen as a show that had the seedlings to building into what you’d get to see later in the tour. Reason for that comes from a fan holding up a sign requesting that the band play Breath. This is seemingly the beginning of what would all culminate at that memorable MSG show. The story from this one is Matt Cameron. After some tougher shows on the first leg where he was still attempting to get the catalog under his belt, he came back in August on an absolute tear. We’ll get to talk about some of the Cameron stand outs from this night such as Spin The Black Circle, Brain of J, Rearviewmirror, Hail, Hail, I Got Shit and Black. This version of RVM is one that you won’t want to miss.

It’s one of the most important Pearl Jam shows in their history with iconic moments that are likely engrained in your memory from as far back as 1992. In this episode, we’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of the MTV Unplugged performance. We’ll touch up on everything that led up to this very moment happening. How they were called to do the show when they were in Europe and had less than three days to prepare before performing. It kind of came off the heels of that legendary Zurich show where they played on such a small stage that they were basically forced to switch over to acoustic, and like to PJ20 movies tells it, that moment led directly to this event happening. We’re going to tell some stories from this show that maybe you’re a bit unfamiliar with, including an incident where the band was forced to rent equipment due to their own not arriving from Europe in time. You’ll get to hear some quotes from Jeff, Mike and Stone discussing about how this and other facets of the event happened. At the time they returned, the band saw their popularity in the states rise as Ten was sneaking onto Billboard’s Top 20. The songs! Of course the songs are important. Some of the most impactful performances of all-time. From a stand out State Of Love And Trust proving that most of their catalog was going to transition well, to Black being one of the greatest Eddie vocal performances of all-time including the absolutely iconic We Belong Together tag, and then of course, Porch. We’ll go through and break down the entire moment where Eddie wrote PRO CHOICE!!! on his arm. Again, just legendary moments. And we’ll share maybe a story you haven’t heard, do you know what Vs. song was being played in a commercial break during this? We’ll have your answer in the episode! Also joining us for this one is our friends at Hallucinogenic Recipe, Patrick and Brian, who will talk about the aspects of finding this on bootleg and some of the strange titles that were given to State Of Love And Trust.

“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.

You may have seen the shirt, now it’s time to hear the show! This episode is about the show emanating from the Tivoli club in Utrecht. It’s continuing our 4-show mini-series highlighting the best of their March run from 1992. To help us out once again to discuss the bootleg aspect of the show is Patrick and Brian from Hallucinogenic Recipe (@elusiverecipe on Twitter). This show has a lot of very similar talking points as the Den Haag show did – it’s a very similar, near identical setlist structure, the band sounds great and there are countless amounts of stage divers and crowd surfers getting involved with the show again. It happens more often in here than in Den Haag, and the approach Ed takes is a little more relaxed this time. Even after Jeff has an issue with his pedals getting messed with. The crowd comes into play towards the end with an absolutely bizarre scene happening on stage. We’ll also discuss what we know of the origin of the famous Tivoli shirt, the bike girl who Eddie befriended at this show and would be reunited with 3 years ago, Ed’s off day tattoo and how Mike was able to get away with saying “suck my ass” and “jerkoff” in a Dutch interview.