I don't think I've ever listened to Phoenix 03, but the 2000 Phoenix show is one of the more under-rated from that tour as well

i think the 2003 tour is a big reason why i even still follow the band.

I totally agree. The Southwest and Texas shows from '00 are all really good.

It was definitely a weird time. The roller coaster ride of albums had led to a turning point for a lot of people much like No Code except No Code was a more unexpected fork in the road. Most people like Binaural today in retrospect. It was not "loved" at the time. Partially because NAIS was a first single, and while it is loved now, was not really a standout then and did not get received well at rock radio then Grievance was played on Letterman and sounded great, but fell flat on the album.

There was not a hit on that album. Following Yield, which was a monster that saved the band after No Code. I think the Yield album and 98 tour are the only reason Pearl Jam still has a fandom. The rumors of a cool sounding album from a new producer on Riot Act fell flat. Turned out they scrapped most of what Kasper did with them and went back to the same old sound.

Anyway, the 2000 tour was a big success and then Roskilde happened and again the band nearly ended. When Riot Act came out, the anticipation was high for another "return to form" yet again and anticipation following September 11th and George W Bush. They should be on fire and full of angst. Instead, Ed sounds tired and disinterested. This combined with the attacks on Bush on tour were not generally well-received, similarly to Dixie Chicks at the time and without a solid single the album tanked.

As an album, Riot Act is dark and by Pearl Jam standards very long without much standout work. There was more excitement about the unreleased b sides from Binaural than anything on Riot Act. It is to me, the album that just falls flat. No hits. No great live songs. No energy. No songs that grow with you over time. Just a lot of filler from a time when the band was hurting in many ways and trying to find ways to express that differently than before and it missed. They know it too because they rarely play much of anything from Riot Act.

How is Riot Act the "same old sound"? Riot Act is amazing. You're nuts.

The biggest change in how I hear Riot Act has to do with Ed's vox. I also thought he sounded bored and tired when it came out. Now I think it was a really effective artistic choice, that he was trying to sound worn out and beleaguered by what was going on in the US.

This is more or less where I'm at.

I don't think that quite explains to me why Riot Act caused some long-time fans to jump ship when Binaural didn't.

People wanted a bounce back. It did not happen. Put out worst album to that point. People gave up. Better?

This was absolutely his intent. It was also an effort to go away from the sound so many shitty alternative singers were horribly trying to imitate.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here but I lost touch with Yield and the 1998 show which was flat for me. I didn't even buy Yield for months, the one listen I had left me thinking they were travelling to the middle of the road (echoed in a few reviews that actually mentioned Emerson, Lake and Palmer).

By Binaural I was loosely interested but NAIS knocked me out. It was by far the best track since Tremor Christ and if they'd have toured Australia then I would have been back on board. The Binaural album's track list affected my listening pleasure (I still think it's poorly tracked). I bought a handful of 2000 boots which I liked and Touring Band which again I felt was flat.

Riot Act sounded like a return to form for the first six tracks. Then it was a mess of styles and quality. The supporting tour in Australia was hyped by major rock stations and I just opted out knowing I could pick up the boots. Where the band was politically was def aligned with my own beliefs. I still kick myself for not making the effort to see them then but it wasn't where I was at.

So for me the boots kind of made the actual show unnecessary to attend.

Other than Binaural being a much better album?

Broadly similar experience to my own, LMS. I loved No Code but Yield really wasn't where I was at at the time and I totally lost track of the band until the mid 2000s. Didn't even listen to Binaural or Riot Act until then. I also wish I'd caught the band on the 2003 tour but I don't recall even being aware that they were touring at the time.

It's not just that Binaural is much better, though I agree with the above poster that it was received with a big 'blah' from the fan base at the time, it's that Riot Act is their second worse album ever and I think it's the quality of the performances of the non-RA material on the 2003 tour (and the even worse Backspacer) that stop people from realizing what a dud it is. Forcing Boom into live songs he has no place playing on didn't help either.


Note: We should have a separate thread for this topic.

binaural blew me away when it came out. it seemed to have a completely different atmosphere and space of its own. when riot act came out, it was the first album of their's that i heard downloaded first, which was out of order mp3 tracks from kazaa (im not sure i even downloaded all the tracks). i was definitely underwhelmed and it took me a couple of years before i even bought it (second hand from a friend). i love it these days, but at the time i wasn't keen. i think some of that was not listening to it properly the way it was intended until years later. some of it was that the tracks certainly don't hook you on first listen, though.

I don't remember these rumors. Is there any evidence at all of this? The only thing that's been directly quoted that I can remember is that there was an alternative version of Bushleaguer with Ed actually singing the lyrics.

I also agree with much of what you've said. I thought Riot Act was a dud for a long while, but its aged really well for me. And, MSG 1 from that 2003 tour is still the best PJ show I've been to.

I know my experience with Pearl Jam is different than most of you guys; I started getting into them in between Binaural and Riot Act, so I didn't live with their progression up to that point. The expansion of their personal horizons through Binaural was what made me a fan of their work, not their status as "legends" or their biggest hits, so Riot Act was exactly what I wanted when I bought it (about 9 months after release, I think).

In my current regard, it's a flawed album that is very of its time, but to say it has no stand out tracks amongst the rest of the catalog is a little absurd. "Can't Keep," "Save You," "Cropduster," "You Are," and "Help Help" are all songs that stand along the best from their other albums.

For me, the biggest issue with Binaural and Riot Act has always been track selection.

Sad, Education, Fatal, In the Moonlight, Down, Undone and Other Side are some of the strongest songs of those album sessions, and they were all cast off. It's one thing if one gem gets cast aside for one reason or another (i.e. Hard to Imagine because the band felt it didn't fit the album(s) it was considered for), but for this many really good to great songs to be voted off the island is really just mind boggling.

I don't know that "Riot Act" really did alienate more fans than previous releases. PJ's fanbase has always been full of people holding out hope for a new "Ten," and throughout their history each release has seen another flock of fans lose patience and abandon ship. "Riot Act" may have been the tipping point for a few high-profile internet PJ weirdos, but across the board it was just another step in the gradual thinning of the herd.

That said, there may be some significance to the idea that this moment in time simply represented a sort of crossroads for people in the age range of the average PJ fan. Throughout the '90's, I sat around and waited for my 10 or so favorite bands to release new music, mainly because I was a dumb kid in a cloistered environment who didn't really know to do any different. If one of
them released a shitty album, oh well, another one will be out in two years (I remained an Offspring fan for many years because of this). In 2002, I was 19, had gone to college, met people who'd broadened my horizons, learned where to go on the internet to learn about more eclectic stuff (and also where to go to download or preview it), etc., and suddenly the idea of sitting around waiting for the same few alternative bands to put new albums out seemed a lot less appealing. I always liked PJ's new albums, but this was around the time when a lot of other bands went from "bands I'll follow no matter what" to "bands whose old albums I'll always like but whose new ones I'm comfortable missing out on." I wonder if on some larger scale this wasn't just the moment when a lot of PJ's fanbase realized that there were bigger (or smaller, perhaps), better things out there to be discovered, due to both external cultural factors as well as more internal yet somewhat broadly experiences ones.

Yea, I was on a very serious Dischord/K Records/Kill Rock Stars kick by that point, and regarded Pearl Jam's political leanings to be pretty tame and boring. I was convinced Fugazi was the most earnest band in the world, and Pearl Jam were just posers.