Episode 155: Salt Lake City, UT - 11/2/1995

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the big one. After two weeks of hype, we have now reached the third night of the Mansfield Experiment. Anybody who was there remembers it clearly - getting to the venue early for Pearl Jam to hit the stage around 5:30, witnessing them in the daylight, wanting to stand and cheer while the band eases in with an acoustic pre-set. It is almost inarguable that this show is the most important and celebrated within the history of this band, finishing a 3-night stand where a total of 97 unique songs were played. This show would feature 45 of those songs, the most that have ever been crammed into one Pearl Jam show to date. To accomplish this feet, they had to get creative due to strict curfews in the venue. so they decided to begin the night as their own opener to play a seated 12-song acoustic set to those lucky enough to arrive early. The set is one for the ages. Classic songs meant for the setting such as Long Road and Footsteps thrived and soared throughout the atmosphere, while extreme rarities such as All Those Yesterdays and Drifting are tossed in there to delight the collectors in the audience. While the opening set is the big story here, the band busted out 33 more songs on this night that included old songs, new songs, common and rare songs, songs being reintroduced and songs packaged together in clever fashion. We'll break down all of it in one of the longest episodes in the modern era of this podcast! Once again, thanks to everyone who sent in their stories, we'll share the final batch of them in this episode. Our Gear Guru segments this week will give you an overview of the acoustic set, discuss the strange tuning on Faithfull and break down a one of a kind version of Why Go featuring a riffy guitar intro. Visit the Concertpedia - http://liveon4legs.com Donate to the Show - http://patreon.com/liveon4legs

12 Jul 20232h 37min

Continuing onward with our big summer series, this episode focuses on the second night of Pearl Jam's Mansfield Experiment. With the first night under their belt and the crowd coming into the show aware of the premise, the excitement was at an all-time high. While night 1 was a great introduction to the idea, this show's crowd is up for all of the surprises and answers when called upon for the big call and response moments. While there may be no acoustic set like night 3, the energy at this show was palpable, even though Ed came off a bit grumpy due to a lack of sleep the night prior. Although there were a few rarities spliced in to the night before, this show featured a few songs that you almost never heard at Pearl Jam shows during that era. The most eye opening one was Low Light. Of course Low Light has become a common staple of Pearl Jam sets in recent history, but coming into this show it had only been played one other time at the 2001 Bridge School show. We'll spend time breaking down how this turned into a classic song over time, and some of the pieces that aren't found in recent versions. Other big performances that we'll dive into are Release, Animal, Insignificance, Love Boat Captain, Rival, Rearviewmirror and amazing crowd responses on both Alive and Baba O'Riley. Once again, thank you to everyone who sent in their stories. We'll read another batch of them in the episode. And our Gear Guru segments will focus on the emergence of Low Light, the 2003 rendition of I Am A Patriot and a Jeff Ament driven Rearviewmirror. Purchase the Tour Shirt! - http://liveon4legs.com/2023tour Visit The Concertpedia - http://liveon4legs.com Donate to the Show - http://patreon.com/liveon4legs

5 Jul 20231h 46min

Ladies and gentlemen of the Pearl Jam universe, it's here! Since the beginning of the year, we've been teasing this 10-episode recap of the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Riot Act tour, featuring the ultimate finale - all three shows from the Mansfield Experiment! To anyone who has never heard of this before, The Experiment was the band's opportunity with three nights scheduled just outside Boston to play nearly every song they knew without repeating anything. This led to three monster sets with the unpredictability of a normal Pearl Jam set heightened to a new extreme. We're gonna focus on the first night's setlist in this episode and spend time talking about how the idea for the experiment all came to be. The challenge of playing 97 different songs in the span of three nights might seem exciting to all of us, but for the band, it was a herculean task that came with some uncertainty. While some of the big setlist staples are tossed into this show like Go, Save You, I Am Mine, Even Flow and Porch, they had to balance all of that out with the lesser played material with songs like Get Right, Help Help, Evacuation and for the time, Smile injected into the set. All three shows have different identities, but all of the excitement from the fans who had heard the rumors gives this show an air of something special that would eventually turn into one of the most legendary runs in the history of Pearl Jam. Thank you to everyone for writing in these past few weeks and sharing your stories. We'll tell a few of them in this episode and spread the rest throughout the following two. Three Gear Guru segments this week will dig into a chaotic ending on Go, the 2003 alternate rendition of In My Tree and the rarely played Evacuation. Purchase The Tour Shirt - http://liveon4legs.com/2023tour Visit the Concertpedia - http://liveon4legs.com Donate to the Show - http://patreon.com/liveon4legs

28 Jun 20231h 53min

Alpine Valley has been a staple of the Pearl Jam touring route going all the way back to Lollapalooza in 1992. In the seven instances in which they've played there, there's no lack of unforgettable shows and unforgettable moments. A few of the shows even have monikers that they go by such as PJ20, when they played there for their 20th anniversary, and the Ice Bowl in 2000 where they played a full show in freezing cold weather. In this episode, we're gonna go back to 25 years ago where they played their first headlining gig in East Troy. To help us tell the story, we've enlisted our Patron Aaron Redmon who requested this show. This was very early in Matt Cameron's tenure with the band, and there are some things that we'll hear out of Matt that show that he was still getting adjusted to being on tour with them. Songs like Do The Evolution and Brain Of J feature a harder edge than we're accustomed to today. This show will feature technical difficulties, botched lyrics and early indications that certain songs were ready to become massive crowd friendly moments. The two big moments to look out for are Black with a highly intense We Belong Together tag and Alive with an improv within the solo. With Alpine Valley being such a historic venue, we asked you to share your favorite moments from seeing shows there, which we'll share during our question of the week segment. And our Gear Guru segments this week will feature Mike's clean guitar sound on Even Flow, well deserved love for Jeff Ament and a tag of Jimi Hendrix's Machine Gun at the end of Yellow Ledbetter. Visit the Concertpedia - http://liveon4legs.com Purchase the Tour Shirt! - http://liveon4legs.com/2023tour Donate to the Show - http://patreon.com/liveon4legs

21 Jun 20231h 29min

When you think about some of the more memorable performances in the history of Pearl Jam, a lot of them have a key factor in common. They develop from spontaneous moments that happen within the song. Fan interactions especially can help turn a performance of a song played over 500 times into an unforgettable moment. One of the other spontaneous facets that happens at Bonner Springs in 2003 is how the weather impacts the show. To open this night, the band gets acquainted with the crowd by playing Release under a sky of a torrential downpour of rain. Quickly after the "oh dear dad..." lyric, there is a bolt of lightning in the background in which the crowd audibly reacts to. As Ed is singing one of his autobiographical masterpieces, he looks up to the sky and says "hi dad". It's a moment forever etched into this band's legacy, and we'll talk about it in full detail during the rundown of this show. This show was an easy decision to cover during our continued run of 2003 show, but it was made easier due to the request sent in from our Patron, Chris Bigelow. Check out his story in the episode. After the big moment, we'll go over how the rest of the set fared and talk about a few Riot Act songs we have yet to cover on this run - Get Right and Help Help. There is a big what-if in this set - a written encore setlist of 16 song choices with two songs that could've potentially made their return after almost a decade of not being played. Listen in to find out what those songs were! We'll read your answers for question of the week which asked about some of your favorite concert memories in the rain, and our Gear Guru segment will focus on Mike's pedals from Immortality and how the country twang sound from Off He Goes is created. PURCHASE THE TOUR SHIRT! - http://liveon4legs.com/2023tour Visit the Concertpedia - http://liveon4legs.com Donate To The Show - http://patreon.com/liveon4legs

14 Jun 20231h 32min

We're back to our 20th anniversary celebration of Pearl Jam's Riot Act tour! Due to upcoming events in September, we have selected to cover the Dallas show from 2003 to give all of you headed there a little bit of history on what's happened there in the past. This show is mostly known for being the first official time that Alive was used as an opener, and we'll spend a lot of time discussing this version in contrast to the only other time they've opened with it in Newcastle, Australia. Speaking of firsts, there is a tag of an original song that we hear off of Daughter that hasn't happened since this date! On the second leg of this tour, Pearl Jam was starting to get a little creative in their setlists. We all know about the Mansfield Experiment and how the trio of shows featured nearly every song in their catalog. There's also the tour closer in Holmdel which utilized two songs from every album in chronological order. John brings up a theory about this setlist that he thought may have been Ed's original idea for this set, but was obviously aborted somewhere down the line. Do you agree with his theory? The other big conversation here will be about how Blood was being utilized back on this tour. We'll discuss whether it makes any sense to play Blood in the middle of the set and how that factor may have done a little harm to this show. The question of the week this week focuses on the Daughter moment. We'll read your answers on what you'd think would be great songs to use as tags off of it. And our Gear Guru segments this week will focus on 1/2 Full, Green Disease and Jeremy. Visit the Concertpedia - http://liveon4legs.com Donate to the Show - http://patreon.com/liveon4legs Buy the Tour Shirt! - http://liveon4legs.com/2023tour

7 Jun 20231h 33min

When you think of 2009, immediately the first thing that comes to everyone's minds is those four Philadelphia shows that closed down The Spectrum. But people may forget that this wasn't the only four-night stint that they had in one building during this tour year. The 6,000+ capacity Gibson Amphitheatre located in Universal Studios in Los Angeles also played host to four Pearl Jam shows. Not four in a row like Philly, but the shows invited a bit more of an intimate experience. We'll talk about the two sets of shows and how one dominates the conversation over the other, but we'll also address a misconception that people seem to have due to how The Spectrum shows went down. We thank our Patron, Jason Weiss, for selecting this show as his episode request, and we'll share his story here. This is a Backspacer era tour, which meant that eight of the eleven songs were played. Coming off the heels of our contentious takes on Ole, we'll go off on another contentious song this week in Johnny Guitar, which has been known to be a bit divisive as well. If you join us for the Johnny talk, then you gotta stay for the conversations on Rearviewmirror, Alive, Red Mosquito featuring Ben Harper on a flat top steel guitar, and a spontaneous Lukin which included a string quartet accompanyment. We'll read you Question of the Week answers where we asked about what Backspacer songs that you'd like to see come back on the 2023 tour, and the Gear Guru segments will focus on Amongst The Waves, Red Mosquito and McCready's electric Star-Spangled Banner.  Visit The Concertpedia - http://liveon4legs.com Now including a 7-day Free Trial for new donors! Donate To The Show - http://patreon.com/liveon4legs

31 Mai 20231h 35min

Earlier this month, bluegrass cover band, Iron Horse, famed for their covers of bands such as Metallica, Guns 'N Roses, Nirvana and many more, released an album complete with 12 renditions of popular Pearl Jam songs. All four members - Tony (mandolin), Vance (guitar), Andy (banjo) and Ricky (bass) join us to chat about the making of the record. We'll ask them what went into the decision of selecting Pearl Jam material, how they decided what songs to pick, their previous intake of Pearl Jam and how challenging the process was to transition their songs into bluegrass. It's a great conversation with insight into the bluegrass world and how it's able to mix within other genres of music. To listen to a Director's Cut of this episode, please head over to Patreon and drop a donation http://patreon.com/liveon4legs

26 Mai 202339min