Episodes Covering Pearl Jam Concerts in 2009

We’re hitting the festival circuit in this episode as we take a Patron request from Dan Greenberg to cover the non-televised Austin City Limits show from 2009. This episode could potentially seem as a bit contentious as there were things that Randy and John weren’t quite moved by. Mainly, the idea that this set felt like a time crunch in the way that they ran through it made it difficult to find an overall flow for this show. But there are no lack of good moments here! In 2009, the band went on a nice little run with Ben Harper inviting him out to play Red Mosquito on slide guitar almost every night. The performance and duel with McCready is a sight to behold, and something that we were itching to discuss on the pod for a long time. The other big moment? Inviting Perry Farrell out to sing Mountain Song. We’ll get into a deep discussion about both Jane’s Addiction and Perry’s influence on the band.

And, Ashley Moon is in the room! You may remember from last month’s Ottawa show that a woman who was sitting all the way in the back was invited to the front and got a lengthy and heartfelt dedication from the band. She writes in to the show to tell her story about the entire experience, with a part of the story connecting to our story from Erin Mackay last week.

Berlin is an important city in Pearl Jam’s history. There’s no questioning that. From the 1996 radio broadcast show to the Roskilde tribute on the 10th anniversary of the incident at the show in 2010, there are no lack of major moments that have happened in Deutschland’s capital. The show we cover in this episode certainly fits into that category. At the famous Kindl-Bühne Wuhlheide venue, the band pulls out their bag of tricks and creates a plethora of memorable moments for one of the best shows in 2009. The show may seem dominated by rare tracks with four songs from Binaural being played and four off of Lost Dogs, but some of the regulars will make for the biggest moments of the night. Even Flow was a show stealing moment, Daughter had incredible energy and crowd interaction, Small Town, flanked by a short tease of Stones song Angie, has a big anthemic vibe. The band simply came to play on this night, but it was the crowd that helped elevate this show to elite level status. And don’t sleep on this version of Insignificance either, possibly the highlight of the night. As mentioned, yes, there are tons of rarities! God’s Dice, Nothing As It Seems and Light Years rounded out the Binaural representation, but we also hear the Untitled/MFC combo, Glorified G, Unemployable, Bee Girl, an amazing rendition of Hard To Imagine, and the ultra rare early era song, Brother.

We’re heading back to an era that has gone nearly untouched in the Live On 4 Legs pantheon. In 2009, the Backspacer album was released and subsequently toured for. Although somewhat polarizing in retrospect, people thought highly of the album at the time and considered it to be Pearl Jam’s return to their “true rock ‘n roll roots.” Yet of the eleven tracks the album bares, the band rarely goes back to many of those songs that were getting attention then. As a podcast, these songs have seen minimal coverage possibly thanks to that. This episode will continue the Seattle hometown series featuring a show that was considered to be the Backspacer era’s maiden voyage taking place only a day after the record was released. As mentioned, a lot of music critics and journalists hopped back aboard the Pearl Jam bandwagon when this album came out. Was it due to the album being exclusively released at a big box store like Target? Or could it possibly have been because the George W. Bush administration was out of office and the album seeing a fresh, positive outlook for the first time since Yield? Whatever the case was, the band was clearly feeling good about their recent production, continuously pushing songs such as Got Some and The Fixer along with the family oriented love song Just Breathe. But this era also hosts a few of those songs that have absolutely disappeared from the Pearl Jam live repertoire such as lead-off track Gonna See My Friend, Johnny Guitar and Ed solo track The End which we’ll cover the debuts for in this episode. But this era also led the way for a few classics that we continue to hear today such as the aforementioned Just Breathe and Unthought Known. Since we are coming off a month where Gigaton songs were finally played for the first time in 18 months, we’ll make some comparisons to how these new songs fit in with the setlist to how the Backspacer songs ended up. Seven O’Clock is seemingly on the projection of an Unthought Known made to be a nightly hit, but what songs can we compare Retrograde and River Cross to? All of that, plus a few good personal stories mixed in for this one.