Pearl Jam Podcast Episodes

In this episode we discuss one of South America’s finest performances down in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2013. This continues our Around The World Series that only has 3 more episodes that remain after this! We’ll hit up Costa Rica, Mexico and Canada to close out 2020. The Argentinian crowds… hoo boy! They are something special. This show being a part of a festival set was nothing on the rare side, but in every single song they played you could hear and feel the crowd’s reactions. From the opening of songs like Even Flow, Given To Fly and Hail Hail the crowd sings the patented guitar parts and at some points does it louder than the band. It happens all night, even on the songs you least suspect. Even something more quiet like Just Breathe has a massive crowd response. You won’t want to miss this episode if you love the way the band interacts with the crowd. As we’ll share, you’ll hear in two separate instances where Ed will have to completely stop a song in order to collect his thoughts. On a highlight such as Daughter, you’ll get to hear Ed tap into his inner bi-linguist as he sings the entire It’s OK tag in Spanish in what’s a massive highlight.

In this episode we celebrate the city of Atlanta, Georgia that deserves praise for their tremendous voter turnout helping the state go blue for the first time in 28 years! And Atlanta knows about long periods of waiting because in this episode we’ll discuss the last non-festival show in the city that happened 17 years ago! That’s FIVE albums since Atlanta has gotten a proper show! This one is an important one, and we invite long time patron Glenn Bobe to tell his story from that night. After a contentious performance in Nashville the night prior, the political rage was building up during this time period. Anything having to do with patriotism, support of President Bush or the Iraq War set the band off. This show has a moment from the very early onset where an oversized American flag was blocking the view of fans seated on the lawn. This set Ed off during an aggressive performance of Grievance and set the tone for a night where politics needed to be part of the conversation. But that was the era – a tumultuous time that had everyone on edge. However, the band brought their A (or B+) game for a show that doesn’t get talked about all that often during this era. This show had its crowd pleasing moments with a few rare appearances including Glorified G that made a comeback that year, Present Tense that was played for the first time in 65 shows and only the 3rd appearance of Crown of Thorns with the first noted Chloe Dancer tease accompanying it. You’ll also hear stellar performances of 1/2 Full and Black and a moment in Corduroy that is commonplace for today’s versions, but was potentially snuck in for the first time here.

In this episode, we dig into the band’s only show in Colombia from the 2015 continental tour. As per usual with the South American crowd, they are on fire. From Ole chants to the patented singing during songs like Do The Evolution, Better Man, Even Flow and Black. The band gets themselves acclimated nicely to the new country and even shares a statement for violence against women awareness where they all wear orange t-shirts in the final set.

This is the final episode in our coverage of politically charged Pearl Jam shows and we finish off with a Vote for Choice show that became a Vault release in Constitution Hall 1998. Just like Charlotte 1996, this show was accompanied by Gloria Steinum with registering to vote as the priority of the night. This show is a Vault for a reason. Whenever they release a show as a Vault they do it consciously knowing that there are going to be songs on this release that you don’t often get to hear live. Right off the bat, Act Of Love as the 2nd song in exemplifies that. They first time they played Act Of Love was in that same venue, it happened to be twice in one night for the same voter benefit show. Considering they’ve only played this song 10 times and only once since this night, it was easily one of the most memorable moments. Other rare live moments that you get from this show were two of the rarest from Yield – All Those Yesterdays and Push Me Pull Me. We talk a lot about big moments from this show such as Black with a blistering McCready solo and multiple songs where Ed’s gravelly growl is in full force.

Warning: This episode contains sensitive topics of a political nature including the landscape of the world after the 9/11 tragedy. The energy in this episode is more angry and fired up than usual, which is saying a lot. If this seems unsettling to you, please avoid this episode. So it’s come to this. You knew we couldn’t have a series featuring Pearl Jam’s most political moments without talking about this polarizing show. Nassau Coliseum will forever go down in infamy due to the perceived controversial actions that Ed displayed on stage, but even moreso due to the horrid fan reactions that followed. Anyone who has seen PJ20 remembers this story: Ed comes out on stage dressed up in his sparkling silver jacket donning facial wear representing then current President George W. Bush. They performed the track called Bu$hleaguer off their touring album Riot Act that so eloquently called out the President’s actions. Ed riled up the crowd by mocking the maligned leader. He put a cigarette in the mask’s mouth and poured a bottle of wine into it. He also displayed affection with the plastic piece of paraphernalia. Whether it was done to incite a riot or not (it was) the crowd retaliated by throwing quarters, garbage, t-shirts or whatever they could find onto the stage that had the band fearing for their lives.

This was only 17 years ago and our average listener is probably in their 40s, so it’s a high probability that you remember the time period, one that this current administration makes look like a favorable memory. While the country struggled to cope after the events from 9/11, the situation was escalated in suburban townships in Nassau and Suffolk County Long Island. Everyone knew someone who was affected. Maybe your neighbor was FDNY, its possible your cousin was a first responder, or even worse, you had a friend or family member in one of those buildings or on a plane. Any way you slice it, the area was in such close proximity to the attack that it was impossible not to feel the lingering effects.

With sadness comes pain and pain can turn into anger. Anger can turn into anything. It didn’t matter to them who it was – Afghanistan, Iraq it didn’t make a difference. They were attacked by people who looked different than them and turned jingoistic acts of racism into justifiable reactions. This was life on Long Island from 2001-2008.

Okay so there was actually a show outside of this mess of a controversy and it turns out, it was pretty damn good! 2003 was the sweet spot. Veteran songs such as Animal, Not For You and Even Flow meshed well with the rookie standouts like Save You, I Am Mine and the now super rare cut of Get Right. It gets lost within the headlines, but had this show gone a different route, people may be calling it the best from this tour.

On October, 22 1990, Pearl Jam played their first show as Mookie Blaylock at Seattle’s Off Ramp venue. To celebrate the monumental occasion, we’re going back two decades to the band’s ten year anniversary that took place in Vegas on the Binaural tour. Joining us for this episode for some crossover love is Branden Palomo from the Better Band Podcast. While the band came out to celebrate the moment, Ed did his best to try to downplay the situation (even after he thanked Stone and Jeff for “recognizing his great talent”) by telling stories of that first night at the Off Ramp and not even being able dream that they could be in the position they were in. The fans brought balloons to shower them with during the encore, but there is one moment that gets discussed from this show that holds precedent above all… This was the first moment that Pearl Jam ever played a song written by Mother Love Bone and they chose Crown of Thorns. While the death of Andy Wood had always been a part of their history, it was something that was never quite addressed publicly. It’s an important moment in their history for so many reasons in which we’ll discuss in full detail in the episode, but this was a major part of their healing process after the Roskilde tragedy. When Ed gave Jeff and Stone a hug, it was the bonding between two entities that were so intertwined, yet had never met until that moment. Mother Love Bone and the life of Andy Wood forever became part of Pearl Jam’s story.

We continue the politically charged Pearl Jam theme with a show that sets the standard for the band’s dedication to encouraging their fans to vote. Originally dubbed as a retirement party for former NC Senator, the bigoted Jesse Helms, this show in Charlotte prior to the 1996 election was one where the music was secondary to the mission which was to get the young people in attendance registered to vote. Joining the band on this night was activist Gloria Steinem who made a poignant speech about the importance of voting that can be repeated 24 years later and still have the same importance. On many occasions Ed would repeat that sentiment, even at a point during Porch where he painted a picture of the America that we as people can build together where everyone regardless of their race, gender or sexual orientation could live free of hatred and bigotry. It was a maturing moment for the band as they’d expressed their political beliefs in prior years, but took this time to be proactive in helping achieve their goal in signing up registered voters. Over 1,000 new voters were registered that night. And wouldn’t you believe that the music was pretty good too? The band had to deal with a wild crowd that took to surfing and moshing right from the start of Long Road. Yeah, Long Road. On numerous occasions Ed has to calm the crowd down even invoking the two steps back practice to alleviate the rambunctiousness. Key highlights from this show include In My Tree, Immortality, Red Mosquito, Whipping and I Got Shit with the inclusion of Brendan O’Brien on bass.

Hey, won’t you look at that? We’ve hit another milestone! This is our 100th (official) episode and what a way to celebrate then to kick off our series of political Pearl Jam shows. Thanks to a major 2020 election, we thought a great way to remind people to vote would be to share the best of the voter outreach shows. Toledo 2004 might be the most memorable of them all. We’re joined by long-time listener Bradley Piasecki who was in attendance this night. He walks us through step-by-step what it was like to have no idea that Neil Young was set to take the stage and create an important moment in the band’s history. The rumors swirled around prior to the start of the show when Neil joined them for a soundcheck and Ed teased the crowd that some magic was gonna go down. And boy did it ever. While PJ took the stage to play a shorter than usual 13-song main set, at the end of the first encore Neil joined Ed for Harvest Moon and that signified that Pearl Jam was merely the opening act of the night. The second encore featured tons of surprises including another guest appearance in the form of Peter Frampton and old favorites such as Act of Love and Cortez The Killer.

Continuing our trip through South America, this episode we bring you to where it all began in 2005. This show from Santiago, Chile is the band’s first ever in the continent, and while there was some hesitation and concern due to the crowd’s size in the early onset, the boys found their comfort zone and fed off the energy of such a passionate group of fans. Joining us on this episode is our friend and Patron Javier Hervas who gets to talk a little about his experience of living down in Chile and never getting a chance to see the band. He’ll discuss the crowd and how early they were to get there, what it meant to hear the band kick off the show with Release and Corduroy as well as the influence that The Ramones had on South American fans and why their performance of I Believe In Miracles was so special from this night. We’ll listen to some outstanding performances and crowd reactions throughout this night including a powerful Even Flow, an outstanding version of Save You and a rendition of Black that blew the crowd away.

We’re finally here! Around The World has taken us to South America and what better way to start than in the biggest country, Brazil! This week we’re celebrating a Sao Paolo show from 2015 that had incredibly emotional ties to it being performed only one day after the Paris terrorist attacks. The band knows when they are in a position of power to bring people together in a time where its needed, and right from the start, Ed makes sure that 60,000 in this crowd are part of a family. There are no lack of emotional moments in this show and that’s always apparent whenever Long Road pops in as your opener. During Love Boat Captain he has the crowd in his full grasp capturing an incredible moment where he goes back n forth at the end repeating the word love. The emotion continues when the approach Come Back and then again in the encore for Imagine, Sirens, I Am Mine and Black. The healing power of all these songs are immeasurable and you can feel the crowd attaching themselves to every moment. Not only did they have to battle the state of the world, they also had to battle the weather conditions of the night. Ed even quips during Lightning Bolt by saying it’s a clear night tonight just for the Gods of rock n roll to strike down upon the stage with rain and major windstorms. In a moment of turbulence, Ed calms the crowd with a beautiful rendition of Elderly Woman giving them a spotlight while the rest of the band takes safety precautions. The rain would continue to come down, most notably during Better Man where it looked as if bullets were dropping from the sky. And as always, the crowds are what make these Brazil shows so good. Getting amazing sing-alongs on Do The Evolution, Jeremy and RVM are the reasons why the band keeps going back down there for more. Thanks to Black Circle for joining us, we included a byte from their episode that we saved for this one talking about some of their favorite Brazil show moments. And thanks to fan page Pearl Jam To Fly for selecting a great show for us to discuss!

We conclude the European portion of our Around The World series with a stop in Lisbon, Portugal that happened to be the final night of the No Code tour in 1996. The band and crowd brought their a-games and it made for an electrifying atmosphere with lots of chanting and hi-jinx abound. A big talking point from this show is centered around Mr. Stone Gossard who’s parents were in attendance to witness the event. You can tell its a setlist curated to some of Stone’s favorites because he’s always been a proponent of getting the hits in the set – which is why we see a three headed combo of Even Flow, Jeremy and Daughter in a row. But they also take a few fan requests to play some rarely heard tracks, one of which wasn’t played due to Stone forgetting the song entirely. Other cool facets of this setlist include the OTOTO opener of Who You Are, which would almost fade into oblivion after this tour, Not For You which features a classic Ed moment where he takes a second to rant about the meaning of the song, an Immortality that absolutely steals the show, and then of course Ed makes love to a push broom during Porch. How else is a tour supposed to end?