Pearl Jam Rocks Portland With Special Guests

Seattle rockers Pearl Jam have entered the home stretch of their fall tour, which visited the Moda Center (formerly Rose Garden) in Portland, OR last night. The band continues to deliver marathon shows at each stop and Friday night’s performance was no exception as Pearl Jam played a total of 33 songs before ending the evening with a full stage of guests for a Neil Young cover.

Pearl Jam loaded the early portion of the show with songs off the recently released Lightning Bolt and offered the first of two Pink Floyd covers they’d play in Portland -“Interstellar Overdrive.” Eddie Vedder made numerous mentions of drummer Matt Cameron’s birthday, which took place on Thanksgiving, and called him “the goal of what I want to be when I grow up.” Vedder also shouted out Jason Baldwin, a member of the West Memphis Three who was attending his first Pearl Jam show.

Last week Pearl Jam started covering “After Hours” by The Velvet Underground in honor of the late Lou Reed. On Friday the band covered “After Hours” for the third time in the past week. A funny moment took place near the end of the show when guitarist Stone Gossard started up “Alive,” before realizing he was supposed to have started “Black.” The band vamped on some jazz in honor of Cameron’s birthday as they discussed what they should do until Stone finally kicked off “Black.” For the evening’s finale, Pearl Jam brought out all three members of Sleater-Kinney -including Portlandia star Carrie Brownstein -as well as R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and guitarist Scott McCaughey (Minus 5, Baseball Project, R.E.M.) for a rendition of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World.”