Happy election day! One of the most important times in America happens every four years where we use our democratic power to decide who we want to see run our country for the next four years. As we will be waiting impatiently for the results, we’ve decided to release a little bonus episode focusing on a short performance that Pearl Jam was featured on in Washington DC as the Vote For Change tour in 2004 winded down. Only five performances here, but if you need five songs to define what this band was going through politically during the 2004 election run, I don’t think you’re gonna find better choices. We’ll break them all down and talk a little bit about the event that took place featuring all of the artists who went out on tour, but mostly we’ll complain about Rolling Stone articles from 20 years ago being paywalled after the first initial read, preventing some information getting out to you guys that we planned to share. Outside of that, enjoy!
Episodes Covering Pearl Jam Concerts in 2004
The 2024 election is upon us and there’s no better way to celebrate than to cast your vote early or on this upcoming Tuesday. The second best way to celebrate is by going back and reliving Pearl Jam’s 2004 run on the Vote For Change Tour! Through a run of six swing states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri and Florida as well as North Carolina, which this episode will focus on, the objective for this tour was to get people to register to vote while speaking out against President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. As with their entire history, the democratic process has been incredibly important to Pearl Jam, and this is one of the most important runs that exemplifies that.
Because they were touring with Death Cab For Cutie and Tim Robbins project, GOB Roberts, setlists in 2004 were not quite the marathon shows that we got a glimpse of the prior year. This set is 21 songs long, but only features a 12 song main set. We’ll talk about how this was not the best night for Ed’s health as he was battling illness, which would leave a bit left to be desired on powerful vocal songs like Brain Of J and Grievance. There is also quite a memorable moment in Do The Evolution where an entire portion of the song was completely disregarded. An important one at that! We’ll also talk about some great moments including Long Road opening up the encore and a Blitzkrieg Bop Daughter tag turned into “Hey Ho, Let’s Vote!”
This episode was selected over 2004 shows due to the unfortunate devastation of Hurricane Helene through Asheville. Alongside this episode, we ran a fundraiser to donate to some local organizations helping to rehabilitate the community – Beloved Asheville, Asheville Survival and Pansy Collective. Stay tuned in this episode for our announcement of how much we were able to raise!
Here is the first Late Night Series episode of the year featuring the Masters Of War performance in 2004! We’ll not only discuss the performance, but we’ll tap into the era as well, one that was smack in the middle of a major Presidential election during war time. As they were about to embark on the Vote For Change tour, this Letterman performance was the first before they stopped at six swing state cities scattered throughout the midwest and south. We’ll also talk a little bit about Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary and how the soundtrack used a version of this song. Enjoy!
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.
Hey! Ho! LET’S VOTE! We flashback to 2004 to focus on the first show from the Vote For Change tour that took place in six different swing states prior to the Presidential election. The message on this night was one that can be reiterated in our current political climate – Every. Vote. Matters. While we attempt to stray from our personal beliefs (yet at some points can’t hold back), we take the overall message from this time period as a wake up call for today. As for the show, it’s an intimate set featuring a total of 10 covers (if you count Last Kiss and Crazy Mary) including some that are no longer in rotation today. On top of that, we discuss the pacing of songs played that night such as Given To Fly and how they’ve changed up their playing style during current live performances.