Show Notes
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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More from Live On 4 Legs: Pearl Jam Podcast
To celebrate an album birthday, this week we are going back to 1993 on the Vs. tour to talk about a show in Dallas that happened at the prime of their popularity. This show takes place a month after the release of Vs., which was a massive hit selling a then record 950,378 copies in its first week. While everyone wanted a piece of this band, they chose to keep things simple while going on tour to promote the album. Instead of selling out massive basketball arenas, they stuck to smaller venues including many on college campuses so that they could keep prices affordable for their young fanbase.
After Jack Irons' abrupt exit from Pearl Jam in early 1998, the band was left to scramble for a replacement to help support them on a 47 show tour for North America. With Soundgarden having split up a year prior, old friend Matt Cameron was available as a temporary replacement until a new member could be found. As we know, Cameron transitioned from temporary to permanent within a few months remaining in that position for 27 years. The show that we're covering in this episode is his 11th full performance with the band in St. Louis near the beginning of that long tour.
2026 has been a good year for Pearl Jam milestone anniversaries. It marks the 20th anniversary of Avocado's release, 35 years since Ten, and for this episode's purposes, 30 long illustrious years for the No Code record. Back in 1996, the music world that was still attempting to grab on to the last lingering traces of the grunge movement was anticipating Pearl Jam's 4th album after Vitalogy skyrocketed the band to the top of the charts. People that expected to get more of the same raw sound from the previous record were shocked to find that No Code took a completely new direction that didn't quite captivate their audience like their first three albums did. Along with their continued boycott of Ticketmaster venues, Pearl Jam was losing mainstream appeal at a time where rock music was fading out of interest.
After much anticipation over who was going to be behind the kit for Pearl Jam for the first time since Matt Cameron left last summer, we have finally found our answer... or so we think. Abe Laboriel Jr., who has made a name for himself as the drummer for Paul McCartney, was revealed as the guy holding it down for the band as they played for the first time since May of 2025. We'll have plenty of reaction to how Abe approached these songs and what kind of chemistry he had with the band that led to the festival being a big success. But there is also the fallout after Ohana with some added speculation on whether or not Abe is fully a part of Pearl Jam's future. We'll address comments from the band and try to make sense of the next steps involving their future.
The time is finally here! We've been waiting for a year and a half to find out who the new drummer of Pearl Jam is going to be, and this weekend at the Ohana Festival, we'll finally have our answer. Will it be Jane's Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins? Zak Starkey from The Who? Dave Krusen making a triumphant return? Or maybe a guy like Abe Laboriel Jr., Josh Freese or Richard Stuverud. The time has finally come to turn the page to the next chapter, and we're here to get you ready for it with this week's episode going back to the most recent Ohana performance back in 2024.