Episodes Covering Pearl Jam Concerts in 2012

This episode jumps into a tour year that we don’t often talk about on the pod – the final year of the Backspacer tour in 2012. This year featured 13 shows over in Europe and a few additional festival shows in the US, and for this one we’ll cover the show that kicked off the entire year in Manchester, UK. No, it’s probably not the Manchester show that you’d think. We’re not covering the show that features the one and only performance of Hitchhiker. But there are plenty of things about this show worthy of conversation, performance wise and storyline wise.

In Pearl Jam’s history, there’s been somewhat of a stigma that surrounds two different types of shows – tour openers and night ones. This show happens to be both. The stigma about tour openers is that they can tend to come off a little bit flat, there’s a concern over the equipment sounding the way it needs to sound and the fact that there is usually a somewhat significant time frame since the last performance. Night ones can sometimes have a very similar reputation as well, as many people consider night two as the show where they’ll bust out rarities and surprises. We’ll take a chunk of time at the beginning of the episode talking about how the band has essentially worked on erasing these stigmas within the last few tour years, with the band pulling out very solid tour opening shows as well as some night one shows that were far better than their night two counterparts.

And yes, getting into the performances too! We’ll spend time talking about how and why Stone overpowered McCready on the big time songs at this show such as Even Flow and Porch, and get into a short take on a great song from a hometown Manchester band that has relevance in the Pearl Jam canon.

We’ve had a very busy week! Album announcement? Check! Debut single announcement? Check! Tour announcement? Oh you better believe it, check! So of course there was a lot to react to during this time period, which we did with two episodes focusing on all of the great stuff that lies ahead. While the normal weekly episode may have been pushed back a day, there was no way that we weren’t going to get to Atlanta 2012 this week.

This one is personal in many ways for John. It was his first show in 14 years, but he would tell you that more importantly, this is the last time to date that Pearl Jam has visited Atlanta. Twelve years have gone by without returning to the city the featured one of the greatest Pearl Jam shows of all time in 1994. It seems a little befuddling, right? While much of this episode focuses on stories of being there and experiencing them for the first time in over a decade, there is a lot of questions to be asked as to why the band has ignored the ATL, and perhaps a plea or two to try and convince them to go back in the near future.

We have some solid performances of Better Man, Porch and Corduroy in this show, and Javier’s segments this week will focus on Why Go as well as an interesting effect added to a cover of The Clash song Know Your Rights. It’s tour time people, get excited. It’s the best!

After a 12 year absence, Pearl Jam returned to Sweden in 2012 for the first time since the Binaural tour. Today’s episode will focus on that show and how a fanbase that had been deprived of their band came through and surprised a lot of people, basically forcing their hand to return in two years. This is a Patreon request from Michael Jonsson who was ecstatic to see them in his home country for the first time, and we’ll share his story here. This set defines a pretty typical Pearl Jam move whenever they play a play they haven’t visited in a while and that’s to hit the crowd with the Ten record. Eight songs off of Ten were played, but possibly considered the rarity of the bunch, Garden is a highlight in a set that was looking for a standout moment. We also get the second and last performance of Kinks cover Better Things that was released as a Ten Club single in 2011, but we’ll debate over whether or not their rendition is the best take on the song. In addition to the show, Randy and John once again discuss the Earthlings performances from the past week elaborating a little bit on the previous reaction episode. This time we’ll talk about why maybe we were a little bit too harsh on Andrew Watt who is set to produce the next Pearl Jam record, whenever that may be.