Live On 4 Legs: Pearl Jam Podcast

The chronology takes us to 1994 in this episode during a time where there were no act in the world bigger than Pearl Jam... outside of maybe Ace Of Base. Coming off of the release of Vs., the band continued to struggle with their rising stardom. Tickets for their shows were in such high demand, yet the band wasn't quite ready to take on bigger venues to hold the capacity crowds that wanted to experience them. This episode focuses on a show from Miami where the capacity issues reach a boiling point and led to fences being broken down, fans rushing the stage and arrests being made. For an 8,000 seat venue, an alleged 24,000 got through to see the show. On top of that, the band was unhappy because the venue featured corporate sponsorship signs that they demanded be covered up.

It took the band an hour before they took the stage, which could have added to some of the commotion going on outside the gates, but when they started playing, you could sense a real anger and frustration in their tone. There's a moment where they needed to have a fan kicked out for being too dangerous in the pit. That emotion is what motivated them throughout the night as songs like Blood, Deep, Porch, Not For You and State Of Love And Trust brought intensity to what was already a tumultuous evening.

We'll also talk about the beginning of their battle against Ticketmaster service fees and how maybe our only hope in our current environment is... Kid Rock... kill me.

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The timeline moves ahead to 1993 this week, a massive year for Pearl Jam as their sophomore album Vs. was released with a ton of fanfare backing it. It can be argued that there's no year of this band's career where they were bigger. The record was a massive success, tickets to their shows became nearly impossible to attain, but as all of this was taking shape, the band was not comfortable with their role as the top artist in the world. Their focus was on writing, continuing to raise the bar for their live shows and as we see from this show in Mesa, Arizona, raising awareness for meaningful causes like protecting indigenous land Mt. Graham from (I kid you not) alien observation towers.

This show centers a little bit around preservation of Apache land, and we'll discuss how an incident with a crowd member is connected to that. But the moment that people are gonna remember the most from this show is that it marks the official live debut of Yellow Ledbetter. Having released it as a b-side a year prior, fans in the know began to gravitate towards it, and after some time had passed radio stations would put the song into heavy rotation. Being unlike the rest of the catalog at the time, Ledbetter stood out for it's moody Hendrix inspired guitar wailing from McCready and anthemic chorus build ups. We'll discuss whether or not the band had plans for this song to be incorporated into the rotation, or if it was the will of the fans that turned it into the end of show curtain call that it is today.

We'll also do a deep dive on the era and talk about the band's budding mentorship with Neil Young as well as massive performances of Once, Jeremy and... John Denver?

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For the first time in our nearly eight years of being a podcast, we are presenting you coverage of a full length episode entirely on our YouTube Channel! This week is week two of our episodic series following every Pearl Jam tour year in chronological order, which means we're covering one of the most important years in their history - 1992. After a year of playing small venues and opening up for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam's popularity was growing in 1992 mainly due to radio and music video networks playing Alive and Even Flow. But the band truly saw their fame escalate once their MTV Unplugged performance aired and the Jeremy music video hit rotation, the former of which happening two nights before this show in San Francisco.

We'll get into deep discussion over how good the band sounded this night and Ed's on stage mannerisms featuring clips from the entire show. We'll also talk about some discoveries made when listening to this bootleg, including a Paul Simon song that was tagged, and perhaps the first hint at Yellow Ledbetter live. Massive versions of Black, Porch, Alive, Once and all of the favorites from the Ten era will dominate the conversation as well, and we pay tribute to a man deeply connected with San Francisco who we lost this past week, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead.

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It's a brand new year, and a brand new season of the podcast will feature a brand new series where each week we will cover every single Pearl Jam tour year in chronological order! The kick off starts here with 1991 as we cover a show that's only the second known bootleg from back when they were still billed as Mookie Blaylock at Florentine Gardens in Los Angeles. This was the beginning of their first tour - an 11-show west coast swing opening up for the surging Alice In Chains.

This show is like an artifact dug up from underground and showcased to a group of people interested in studying the past, but the bootleg for this show had been available in the 90s, yet not widely circulated. For a show that has the live debuts of Garden and Brother, and the only performance for 18 years of the latter, you would think that there would be interest from nerdy fans who wanted their hands on everything. Well, that was not the case. We invite Patrick and Brian from our Hallucinogenic Recipe podcast to talk about why this show wasn't as massed produced as it could have been. Was it due to audio quality? Was it due to popularity of shows in the mid-90s garnering more attention? They'll break down all of the reasons, and the reasons why it needs to be heard today.

As we'll do with every show during this series, we'll give a synopsis of the entire tour year and some statistical analysis of what went down. The episode is much longer than the actual show that clocks in at 40 minutes, but don't worry, because we get to tell the tale of our friend "taper dude" and how excited he was to witness the former Mother Love Bone in their new formation.

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Our final show for 2025 is the #1 Pearl Jam show of the year voted on by the listeners, and of course it can't be anything other than the tour closer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Unbeknownst to us, this would be the final show of Matt Cameron's 27-year tenure in Pearl Jam, and although it wasn't announced until two months later, there are enough subtle hints in this show that are clearer from hindsight's perspective - the champagne toast, the hugs and even t-shirts worn by Mike and Jeff are some signals that you can tell the band knows what's going on. But there is also references to this show being the end of the Dark Matter run that only got one full calendar year of touring.

While Matt Cameron is the storyline that we didn't know at the time, it was his former Soundgarden bandmate, Chris Cornell, that was the major storyline heading into this show. May 18th this year was the anniversary of Cornell's death, something that the band has been hesitant to address at shows due to the nature of the subject. Going back to that date last year, there was a show in Vegas that did not reference him outside of a shirt that Cameron wore. After telling a story about him at Fenway Park last year and performing Hunger Strike in Australia, it seemed that the band was ready to pay tribute to the man they called a bandmate and brother. We'll talk about the first ever appearance of Comes Then Goes in a setlist, as well as Hunger Strike being played for the final time with Cameron.

Thank you for checking out this podcast all year! after 350 episodes, we can't wait to show you what's all in store for 2026!

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