Pearl Jam Late Night Series: Ep. 19 – Late Show With Stephen Colbert 2015

It’s our penultimate episode in our series that has focused on every single television performance the Pearl Jam has been a part of. For this one we go back to 2015, a bit of a slow year outside of South America shows, but the one show played in the states was the Global Citizen’s Festival. Pearl Jam headlined the event featuring a list of artists a bit unusual for them to play with (Beyonce, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran) and in promotion of that, they were guests on Stephen Colbert’s new gig on the Late Show that he’d only been doing for two weeks to that point.

We’ll talk about the choice to play Mind Your Manners at a time where maybe they could have been doing something fresher (I make a great suggestion and I’ll stick by it), the weird interview with the band where they didn’t even have to answer most of the questions, and then a really fun performance of Rockin’ In The Free World where Colbert offers up his chops and is the happiest man on the planet in that moment.


Episode 218: Mexico City, MX – 11/28/2015

It’s been two years since we’ve covered a show in Mexico City, and there is absolutely no excuse for that. Just like every other Latin American country, the fans from Mexico are some of the loudest and most passionate of any Pearl Jam fans around the world. As the band is now potentially looking at eight full years since playing down there, its as good a time as any to to put focus on them.

There’s no question that this crowd is going to take up the majority of the story for this show. As the band was ending the nine-show run, the fans had been waiting four long years for them to return to the 62,000 person capacity soccer stadium. All of that energy bottled up was exploded from the first note of Pendulum. This crowd was especially prominent on songs such as Small Town, Do The Evolution, Corduroy, Daughter, Rearviewmirror and Black which we’ll talk about at length. There’s also an obscure cover from the Eagles Of Death Metal played here that had only been played on three nights as a tribute to the band who were in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks.

Our question of the week – Have you ever been featured as part of the show? Whether it be a dedication, banter with Ed, a sign you held up or even high fiving Ed or Mike? There’s that, and we’ll hear from our Gear Guru Javier again this week talking about the cross play between Stone and Mike’s guitar’s during this version of You Are.

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Episode 105: Bogota, COL – 11/25/2015

In this episode, we dig into the band’s only show in Colombia from the 2015 continental tour. As per usual with the South American crowd, they are on fire. From Ole chants to the patented singing during songs like Do The Evolution, Better Man, Even Flow and Black. The band gets themselves acclimated nicely to the new country and even shares a statement for violence against women awareness where they all wear orange t-shirts in the final set.

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Episode 98: São Paulo, BRA – 11/14/2015

We’re finally here! Around The World has taken us to South America and what better way to start than in the biggest country, Brazil! This week we’re celebrating a Sao Paolo show from 2015 that had incredibly emotional ties to it being performed only one day after the Paris terrorist attacks. The band knows when they are in a position of power to bring people together in a time where its needed, and right from the start, Ed makes sure that 60,000 in this crowd are part of a family. There are no lack of emotional moments in this show and that’s always apparent whenever Long Road pops in as your opener. During Love Boat Captain he has the crowd in his full grasp capturing an incredible moment where he goes back n forth at the end repeating the word love. The emotion continues when the approach Come Back and then again in the encore for Imagine, Sirens, I Am Mine and Black. The healing power of all these songs are immeasurable and you can feel the crowd attaching themselves to every moment. Not only did they have to battle the state of the world, they also had to battle the weather conditions of the night. Ed even quips during Lightning Bolt by saying it’s a clear night tonight just for the Gods of rock n roll to strike down upon the stage with rain and major windstorms. In a moment of turbulence, Ed calms the crowd with a beautiful rendition of Elderly Woman giving them a spotlight while the rest of the band takes safety precautions. The rain would continue to come down, most notably during Better Man where it looked as if bullets were dropping from the sky. And as always, the crowds are what make these Brazil shows so good. Getting amazing sing-alongs on Do The Evolution, Jeremy and RVM are the reasons why the band keeps going back down there for more. Thanks to Black Circle for joining us, we included a byte from their episode that we saved for this one talking about some of their favorite Brazil show moments. And thanks to fan page Pearl Jam To Fly for selecting a great show for us to discuss!

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