Episode 365: Munich, DEU – 6/12/2007

After a massive tour in 2006, Pearl Jam’s 2007 was a lot less chaotic than the 79-show tour that spanned three continents. They went back to Europe for 12 shows, half of them being festivals in places they’ve barely visited, and then two memorable shows in Chicago – Vic Theatre and Lollapalooza. This episode covers the Munich show from this run, one of their few arena headlining gigs from the tour. It was their first to back since 1992, a memorable night where they performed the Ten album in full.

After heavily supporting the Avocado record the year prior, this show specifically doesn’t feature the same plethora of songs from the album. When supporting the record, they’d begin most of their shows with some kind of combination of World Wide Suicide, Life Wasted, Severed Hand and Marker In The Sand with around a total of eight songs from the record played, but in Munich they significantly reduced that album’s representation opting for only three songs. However, Severed Hand is a major highlight from this show, and Unemployable will take us to a conversation where we connect it to a random 70’s song that has nothing to do with Pearl Jam. Other highlights include the return of Sometimes after a long absence, a killer version of Sad, Matt Cameron’s patented Even Flow solo for the era and how some of the gear Mike was using impacted songs like Given To Fly and Present Tense.

We’ll also share the story of Ed’s #5 guitar, how it relates back to Pete Townshend, and how it further relates to both Johnny Marr and Noel Gallagher in a wild tale that all gear and music nerds will enjoy.


Episode 243: London, UK – 6/18/2007

In this episode, Randy and John go where this podcast has (almost) never gone before… to the 2007 tour! While we covered Vic Theater in this podcast’s infancy, we’ve never done the full dive into what’s sort of a forgotten year in Pearl Jam history. Outside of the Vic and the Lollapalooza Chicago show, there were only 12 shows played on a European run that included mostly festival dates. The show we cover here happened in London, and was the first arena show there since 2000. Thank you to friend and Patreon, Simon Pountney, for requesting this!

This show took place in the aftermath of a massive tour supporting the Self Titled record, featuring many songs from the album that don’t get heard often today. We’ll go in depth on Marker In The Sand, Parachutes, Comatose as some of the highlights from this night. We’ll also address how in this era, the band turned up the RPMs and started playing many of their songs faster than usual. We’ll talk about where it benefits and suffers inside this setlist. A show with a Ten Club heavy presence on the floor leads to a set chock full of fan favorites leaving songs like Even Flow, Black, Jeremy, Better Man, Daughter, Rearviewmirror and Corduroy off the setlist entirely.

For our question of the week, we had something unique happen in this show where World Wide Suicide was played in the usual Alive spot. We asked you guys what other songs you thought would work well in that role before Rockin’ In The Free World. And for the Gear Guru, it’s time for some Javocado! Javier breaks down a trio of songs from the record including Comatose, Marker In The Sand and Inside Job.

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Episode 14: Vic Theatre – 8/2/2007

One of the most rare and special shows in Pearl Jam’s live catalog, the small club in Chicago played host to just over 1,000 fans in attendance prior to a Lollapalooza headlining gig. What followed was something we’ve never seen from them before or again – a show filled entirely of white whales and uncommons. No Even Flow, no Alive, no Better Man but instead we see them bust out lesser heard songs such as All Or None, Education and Undone. To help us with numbers and stats, we welcome Dave JanTausch from LiveFootsteps.org to get into the nitty gritty details of what made this show something we’re likely to never see again.

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