Episodes Covering Pearl Jam Concerts in 2003

The coldest show in Pearl Jam history located in East Troy, Wisconsin was so cold that it was dubbed the nickname ‘The Ice Bowl’. When you think of cold weather areas, Wisconsin makes a lot of sense to have held the coldest show ever. But the second coldest show? If you had Birmingham, Alabama on your bingo card, I will assume you’ve cheated. Yes, you’ve heard correctly. On a cold night in April of 2003, Pearl Jam played in front of a smaller capacity crowd in 40 degree weather… in deep south Alabama. It’s kind of crazy to say aloud, but the storyline for this show is how both band and crowd react to the situation, and the put together a very good show despite all that transpired. Our Patron Tasker Hewitt will join us for the episode to talk about his experience of being in the crowd on that night.

The weather isn’t the complete story here, because had they of sold well for original venue Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex Arena, they wouldn’t have had to worry about the rough temperatures. The original plan was for them to play in the same arena which they played in 1998, a larger capacity building than the amphitheater they’d end up moving to, but tickets were not in very high demand and that’s what forced the switch. This led to a great crowd full of hardcore fans that all filled up the GA ready to make it a memorable night. In ways it was. They have some great stretches of songs in which the band purposefully made sure that the crowd stay energetic, the best example being a stretch of Even Flow, Daughter and Better Man played as the 4th 5th and 6th songs of the night. There are some great moments in this set. We’ll spend a lot of time on songs such as Thumbing My Way and Animal, and Black will be a massive discussion point as well.

But if there is one thing to take away from this night, it’s the way they ended this show. After Yellow Ledbetter, the band still has their instruments strapped in. A tease of Sweet Home Alabama from McCready at the end of Ledbetter would potentially make this crowd think there was more ahead. Instead, it was one of the weirdest troll jobs in the history of this band. Matt clicks his sticks four times, the band strums one note, and everyone walks off as if everything was normal. We’ll get into this at full detail and try to figure out what the hell was going on.

Javier returns to the show this week for segments focusing on both Even Flow and Black!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the big one. After two weeks of hype, we have now reached the third night of the Mansfield Experiment. Anybody who was there remembers it clearly – getting to the venue early for Pearl Jam to hit the stage around 5:30, witnessing them in the daylight, wanting to stand and cheer while the band eases in with an acoustic pre-set. It is almost inarguable that this show is the most important and celebrated within the history of this band, finishing a 3-night stand where a total of 97 unique songs were played. This show would feature 45 of those songs, the most that have ever been crammed into one Pearl Jam show to date.

To accomplish this feet, they had to get creative due to strict curfews in the venue. so they decided to begin the night as their own opener to play a seated 12-song acoustic set to those lucky enough to arrive early. The set is one for the ages. Classic songs meant for the setting such as Long Road and Footsteps thrived and soared throughout the atmosphere, while extreme rarities such as All Those Yesterdays and Drifting are tossed in there to delight the collectors in the audience. While the opening set is the big story here, the band busted out 33 more songs on this night that included old songs, new songs, common and rare songs, songs being reintroduced and songs packaged together in clever fashion. We’ll break down all of it in one of the longest episodes in the modern era of this podcast!

Once again, thanks to everyone who sent in their stories, we’ll share the final batch of them in this episode. Our Gear Guru segments this week will give you an overview of the acoustic set, discuss the strange tuning on Faithfull and break down a one of a kind version of Why Go featuring a riffy guitar intro.

Continuing onward with our big summer series, this episode focuses on the second night of Pearl Jam’s Mansfield Experiment. With the first night under their belt and the crowd coming into the show aware of the premise, the excitement was at an all-time high. While night 1 was a great introduction to the idea, this show’s crowd is up for all of the surprises and answers when called upon for the big call and response moments. While there may be no acoustic set like night 3, the energy at this show was palpable, even though Ed came off a bit grumpy due to a lack of sleep the night prior.

Although there were a few rarities spliced in to the night before, this show featured a few songs that you almost never heard at Pearl Jam shows during that era. The most eye opening one was Low Light. Of course Low Light has become a common staple of Pearl Jam sets in recent history, but coming into this show it had only been played one other time at the 2001 Bridge School show. We’ll spend time breaking down how this turned into a classic song over time, and some of the pieces that aren’t found in recent versions. Other big performances that we’ll dive into are Release, Animal, Insignificance, Love Boat Captain, Rival, Rearviewmirror and amazing crowd responses on both Alive and Baba O’Riley.

Once again, thank you to everyone who sent in their stories. We’ll read another batch of them in the episode. And our Gear Guru segments will focus on the emergence of Low Light, the 2003 rendition of I Am A Patriot and a Jeff Ament driven Rearviewmirror.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Pearl Jam universe, it’s here! Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been teasing this 10-episode recap of the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Riot Act tour, featuring the ultimate finale – all three shows from the Mansfield Experiment! To anyone who has never heard of this before, The Experiment was the band’s opportunity with three nights scheduled just outside Boston to play nearly every song they knew without repeating anything. This led to three monster sets with the unpredictability of a normal Pearl Jam set heightened to a new extreme. We’re gonna focus on the first night’s setlist in this episode and spend time talking about how the idea for the experiment all came to be.

The challenge of playing 97 different songs in the span of three nights might seem exciting to all of us, but for the band, it was a herculean task that came with some uncertainty. While some of the big setlist staples are tossed into this show like Go, Save You, I Am Mine, Even Flow and Porch, they had to balance all of that out with the lesser played material with songs like Get Right, Help Help, Evacuation and for the time, Smile injected into the set. All three shows have different identities, but all of the excitement from the fans who had heard the rumors gives this show an air of something special that would eventually turn into one of the most legendary runs in the history of Pearl Jam.

Thank you to everyone for writing in these past few weeks and sharing your stories. We’ll tell a few of them in this episode and spread the rest throughout the following two. Three Gear Guru segments this week will dig into a chaotic ending on Go, the 2003 alternate rendition of In My Tree and the rarely played Evacuation.

When you think about some of the more memorable performances in the history of Pearl Jam, a lot of them have a key factor in common. They develop from spontaneous moments that happen within the song. Fan interactions especially can help turn a performance of a song played over 500 times into an unforgettable moment. One of the other spontaneous facets that happens at Bonner Springs in 2003 is how the weather impacts the show. To open this night, the band gets acquainted with the crowd by playing Release under a sky of a torrential downpour of rain. Quickly after the “oh dear dad…” lyric, there is a bolt of lightning in the background in which the crowd audibly reacts to. As Ed is singing one of his autobiographical masterpieces, he looks up to the sky and says “hi dad”. It’s a moment forever etched into this band’s legacy, and we’ll talk about it in full detail during the rundown of this show.

This show was an easy decision to cover during our continued run of 2003 show, but it was made easier due to the request sent in from our Patron, Chris Bigelow. Check out his story in the episode. After the big moment, we’ll go over how the rest of the set fared and talk about a few Riot Act songs we have yet to cover on this run – Get Right and Help Help. There is a big what-if in this set – a written encore setlist of 16 song choices with two songs that could’ve potentially made their return after almost a decade of not being played. Listen in to find out what those songs were!

We’ll read your answers for question of the week which asked about some of your favorite concert memories in the rain, and our Gear Guru segment will focus on Mike’s pedals from Immortality and how the country twang sound from Off He Goes is created.

We’re back to our 20th anniversary celebration of Pearl Jam’s Riot Act tour! Due to upcoming events in September, we have selected to cover the Dallas show from 2003 to give all of you headed there a little bit of history on what’s happened there in the past. This show is mostly known for being the first official time that Alive was used as an opener, and we’ll spend a lot of time discussing this version in contrast to the only other time they’ve opened with it in Newcastle, Australia. Speaking of firsts, there is a tag of an original song that we hear off of Daughter that hasn’t happened since this date!

On the second leg of this tour, Pearl Jam was starting to get a little creative in their setlists. We all know about the Mansfield Experiment and how the trio of shows featured nearly every song in their catalog. There’s also the tour closer in Holmdel which utilized two songs from every album in chronological order. John brings up a theory about this setlist that he thought may have been Ed’s original idea for this set, but was obviously aborted somewhere down the line. Do you agree with his theory? The other big conversation here will be about how Blood was being utilized back on this tour. We’ll discuss whether it makes any sense to play Blood in the middle of the set and how that factor may have done a little harm to this show.

The question of the week this week focuses on the Daughter moment. We’ll read your answers on what you’d think would be great songs to use as tags off of it. And our Gear Guru segments this week will focus on 1/2 Full, Green Disease and Jeremy.

After a week of big announcements in the Pearl Jam world, we’re coming back this week with more of the Riot Act Tour! Why not?! We’ll discuss a little bit of the upcoming September tour in the beginning of the episode, but if you want our full fledged analysis, please check out our reaction episode that came out earlier in the week. Pittsburgh is yet again on the docket for us, and the show from 2003 has plenty to talk about. Highlights galore in the main set as we’ll chat about Small Town making what was a rare appearance as an opener at the time, a killer Corduroy, an amazing Immortality, a Wishlist with an extended improv and Even Flow which was on the patented McCready hot streak at the end of the April run.

No lack of discussions for encore 1 as we get the very rare appearance of the scrambled Mamasan with Once appearing in the set prior to Alive. We’ll continue conversation about the development of Alive’s presence in 2003, and we’ll go in-depth on the addition of the harmonica to Footsteps and what would later become a composition change in the song. Oh, and an 11-minute Rearviewmirror to end the encore ain’t a bad thing at all!

Also in this episode, we’ll share our Patron Michael Fleisher’s story about this show due to this being his request, we’ll read you answers for question of the week that asked what some of your favorite shows were that had an abundance of a certain album’s songs played, and our Gear Guru segment delves deeper into the Even Flow hot streak that took 2003 by storm.

Continuing on our run of Riot Act shows, this week takes us to the home of the Fighting Illini in Champaign, IL. For this show being on a college campus and therefore not allowing the sale of alcohol, the crowd did an excellent job bringing in the same kind of energy that you’d see from their in-state big city counterpart in Chicago.

There are a handful of interesting things from this one. Do The Evolution is opened with for only the 4th time to this point, The Police cover, Driven To Tears, is played for the first time in 404 shows, and the first with a full band, and Ed will break out a ukulele for The Who song Blue Red Grey that Ed admits he stole for Soon Forget. Those two covers are part of this show’s major theme which is a total of six covers played on this night. We’ll discuss this in full detail and bring to the table how many covers are enough or too much to play in a set.

You guys weighed in on that on social media and answered that exact question, so we’ll read some of the answers that we got in the episode. Randy will talk a little bit about his upcoming Seattle trip for the last week of the MoPop exhibit and Record Store Day at Easy Street, and Javier’s Gear Guru segment will focus on the juxtaposition of tones from Given To Fly and Nothingman played back to back on this night.

As is the theme for this year, we’re back to celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Riot Act tour for the next few weeks looking into some of Pearl Jam’s most notable shows from April of 2003. We’re talking about a show from West Palm Beach in this episode, which may not stand out to you on paper, but it features significant moments that define some of the themes for this entire tour year. Three themes are prominent from this era – 1) is of course the political aspect as the country had just gone to war with Iraq and Ed had put President Bush under scrutiny every night. 2) is the aftermath of Roskilde still in ways effecting this band three years later. And 3) is the return of old songs into the setlist that had been missing since the mid-90s. Thanks to our Patron Jared Schaffer for requesting this under the radar show.

To hit all three of these topics specifically, one thing we’ll discuss is a version of I Am A Patriot that was re-constructed strictly for this era and talk about the political nature involved, as well as Ed’s invigorated speech that followed. We’ll get deep into the topic of Love Boat Captain, which is featured as our brand new Evolution Series episode that will be out to Patreon very soon, to talk about how the incident at Roskilde helped them create music through the process of grieving. And on the subject of returning songs, this show’s Glorified G performance was the first in 188 shows since November of 1996. We know that Ed sang a glorified version of I hate this song, but what band member here didn’t seem to take it as seriously as the others on it’s return?

Other big highlights we’ll discuss are Ed singing into a fan’s cellphone during State Of Love And Trust, and an excellent call and response section of Daughter that led to a rare tag of Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out. We’ll also answer this episode’s question of the week which asked you all on social media what your favorite moments from the 2003 tour were, and our Gear Guru segments will discuss Stone’s gear during this tour year and some of the effects that came from his guitar and Ed’s vocals on Daughter.

It feels like whenever a band embarks out on a ‘world tour’, you can’t coin that phrase unless you make a pitstop in Japan. While Pearl Jam has never done a true official world tour, they’ve had the opportunity to visit Japan twice. The first time was in 1995, and then they went back for five shows in 2003. This episode focuses on the Sendai show from the Riot Act tour. These shows are always interesting because the crowd is a lot more reserved than your every day average concert crowd. This factor mixed in with a venue that maxed out at 1,000 seats meant that the band could create more of an experimental setlist, moving songs around in parts of the set that stray from normal scenarios.

The best example of this show going through the experimental route happens at the very beginning. It starts with Of The Girl, which seems normal, but the performance in itself sets up for the unconventional trio that follow – Immortality, Insignificance and 1/2 Full. The rest of the show maintains weird spurts of momentum with not many radio hits mixed in the main set. As for the hits go, this isn’t the crowd that’s going to follow the same kind of cues we’re familiar with. We’ll concentrate mostly on Better Man and how strange it was without any participation from the crowd.

We’ll answer our question of the week this week which stems off of the first four songs of the setlist, and our Gear Guru segment features Javier breaking down the juxtaposition between Mike and Stone’s solo on the show closer, Porch.

There are many big cities that Pearl Jam has touched down in that have historically held some of their best shows of all-time. Chicago is near the top of that very important list. Being the birthplace of Eddie Vedder, every time they play there there is an emotional, homecoming aspect to the show that brings out the absolute best of the crowd. In 2003, with Ed’s grandmother on hand to watch, they put together one of those big all-timer shows with a bootleg that still circulates on SiriusXM’s Pearl Jam Radio.

Nearly every song from this show was a nearly flawless performance ranging everywhere from your crowd favorites, to brand new Riot Act songs, emotional moments and songs that soar. We’ll talk about powerful performances from songs such as Release, Present Tense and Light Years, and we’ll get to praise this Chicago crowd for their hard work on Better Man and Daughter featuring a notable tag. We’ll also go over some listener answers talking about their favorite Chicago arena shows.

This episode is a Patreon request from Joey Goodsir who joins us to share his story of being a Gen Z Pearl Jam fan who found this bootleg on Apple Music where it molded his fandom to what it is today. He’ll chat about some of his favorite performances and focus on the big moments that he’ll speak fondly of.

Is this gonna be a good episode? You’re darned tootin! With many Cohn Brothers movie quotes aside, this is our final episode of our OTOTO states month emanating from Fargo, North Dakota in 2003. This is the first instance in 188 official episodes and 224 shows in total that we’ve covered that we get to talk about Arc. Arc is one of their more fascinating songs due to the weight that it holds being the tribute written for the Roskilde victims. The band would go on to play this nine times, the same number of victims from the tragedy, and none of the official bootlegs include any performance of this. We’ll get into the unique presentation that it had live and how impactful it was, even as a show opener, in it’s short stay that year.

Another big point of conversation from this one is a version of In My Tree being played for the first time in 69 shows. This song having not been played for that long mixed in with an illness from Ed meant it was never going to be as crisp of a version that we would’ve heard in 1996. This became a little bit of an improv where the lyrics and music weren’t exactly linear. Ed has some things on his mind and comes up with some beautiful improved lyrics for the end. We’ll talk about how this set the tone for other versions of In My Tree that year, especially the version that everyone remembers from Madison Square Garden.

All this and good discussion on 1/2 Full, I Am Mine, Better Man, Thumbing My Way, Rearviewmirror, I Am A Patriot and Crazy Mary.

One of our favorite Pearl Jam years to discuss on this podcast is the 2003 Riot Act tour. So many memorable moments from tons of shows spread across the map. In this episode we head to Alpine Valley where the band last played back in 2000 to freezing cold temperatures appropriately dubbed The Ice Bowl. They return to East Troy, Wisconsin during Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. In beautiful weather and a great mood, the band plays an inspired show in front of a top notch audience. Deep cuts were heavily infused from the beginning of the main set with songs such as Sometimes, God’s Dice, Faithfull, Immortality and Insignificance taking place within the new Riot Act songs while heavy hitters such as Better Man, Jeremy, Even Flow, Daughter and Rearviewmirror all hit in that order to end the set. On top of that, take the last two of that group, both songs from Vs., and add the first four played in the encore – Go, Animal, Elderly Woman and Glorified G and you have an extremely rare instance where six songs are being played off the record right in a row. We also have fun moments from this night, some that get a bit political, some that involve a random fan running out onto the stage during Crazy Mary. But as Ed says in the show, tune in to see ‘what American is gonna get a blowjob tonight.’ We’ll also discuss a little bit of the Earthling record as well as a special dedication that happened at the Chicago show

What happens when a venue dedicated to corporate sponsorship doles out tickets to non-Ten Club fans in the first ten rows of the building? The band gets to play an extra night allowing cheap lawn seats to fan club members, that’s what. In an act of defiance in Clarkston (or Detroit, depending on who you are) Pearl Jam took the stage on the second of two nights and decided to experiment instead of busting out some of the standard favorites. This experiment lead to a whopping seven songs off of Vitalogy that were played and four from No Code, with the No Code tracks in particular standing out the most. This was in a time where In My Tree was barely played, so when it was brought back in rare instances, the band would perform an alternate version stretching out the song’s soaring elements. This is a version we don’t get to chat about often, so get ready for us to take a few minutes on it. Rarities would be strategically placed throughout this main set as the pace and energy maintained consistent. Songs like Sleight of Hand, Down and Leatherman that don’t usually get the call were played, with the latter of those beginning the Man Trilogy. A great show, a great bootleg. Thanks to our Patron Clay Davis for requesting this one.

If you were to take a guess as to what venue Pearl Jam has frequented the most over the last 30 years, would you think Shoreline Amphitheatre is the correct answer? If not, then you’re wrong. 17 of the performances in the San Francisco area amphitheater came from the Bridge School benefits, but this episode will happen to cover a show played there in 2003. As of most nights from this era, there are some politically motivated moments seeped into this evening. From a pro-activism speech during Porch to a few references to some of the bay area war protests that happened that February, it’s not difficult to see what’s on the band’s mind. However, it being the second leg of this US run following the Nassau Coliseum incident, things are a lot more composed. As long as people didn’t fuck with The (Dixie) Chicks, Ed was in good spirits. Tune into this episode to check out great versions of Long Road, You Are, Daughter, Thumbing My Way, Present Tense, Love Boat Captain and an out of this world Crazy Mary. Potentially the best of all-time? One host’s opinion may reflect that. Thanks to our Patron Ryan Morden for joining us and selecting this show for us to cover!