Hey, I'm one of those folks who only pops in here once in a blue moon to see if there's any PJ-related news I'm missing ("Sad"? Best of the aughts? Really?) Anyway, I finally wrapped up a labor of love project posted over on demonoid which I wanted to share as a modest thank you to all you who tape these shows and have pointed me in the right direction over the years. It's a compilation of 65 tunes from Ed Ved's Into the Wild / April Fools tour from 2008 that I tried to compile and spiff up a little. Link, setlist and original info below. It's nothing prestine, but I've always been majorly bummed nothing official was ever released for these fantastic performances.

http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/2326666/25321800/

Disc 1
1. Walking the Cow
2. Around the Bend
3. I Am Mine
4. Dead Man Walking
5. Man of the Hour
6. Brain Damage - Sometimes
7. I'm Open
8. Setting Forth
9. No Ceiling
10. Rise
11. Far Behind
12. Society
13. Guaranteed
14. Trouble
15. Don't Be Shy
16. If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out
17. So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star
18. Won't Back Down
19. Atlantic City
20. Millworker
21. Betterman (Lullaby Version)
22. Blackbird
23. You're True
24. I'm One
25. Girl from the North Country
26. Forever Young
Disc 2
27. Porch
28. Hurt
29. Helpless
30. Gone
31. Old Man
32. Can't Keep
33. Lukin
34. Let My Love Open the Door
35. Long May You Run
36. Golden State
37. Driftin
38. Hide Your Love Away
39. Picture in a Frame
40. Growing Up
41. Here's to the State of Mississippi
42. Patriot
43. State Trooper
44. 4th of July
45. No More
46. Unthought Known
47. The End
48. Speed of Sound
49. Parting Ways
50. Someday We'll Go All the Way
Disc 3
51. Santa Cruz
52. Open All Night
53. Wishlist
54. Til the Rivers Run Dry
55. Satellite
56. Ship Song
57. Throw Your Arms Around Me
58. This is Goodbye
59. Broken Heart
60. Soon Forget
61. Crazy Mary
62. All Along the Watchtower
63. Arc
64. Hawaii 78
65. Hard Sun


Say Hey Campers -

In April and August of 2008, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder undertook a two leg tour of the west and east coasts of the US to promote his solo debut album, the soundtrack for the motion picture Into the Wild. This solo tour, originally dubbed his "April Fools Tour," was fantastic, with Ed Ved churning out about 25 songs per show, nearly all of them solo performances (Liam Finn and Eliza-Jane Barnes opened these shows, and accompanied Eddie on some tracks such as closer Hard Sun, as well as a few sporadic special guests). I personally got to see the opener in Vancouver, BC, and then the close of the West Coast tour in San Diego. Freakin' fantastic!

The only disappointment was they never released anything "official" from these tours - no CDs, not a compilation, not a DVD, nothing, nada, zilcho. At this point, two years later, there is little point in holding out hope.

I was thrilled, however, by the many super-awesome-peanut-butter-brownie fans who taped these performances, and made them available through demonoid.com and other torrent sites. Although I never got a hold of every show, I did download every one I could find - some being pretty decent in quality, some outright terrible - but still better than nothing!

It's taken me awhile, but I finally went through all the shows I had, and have composed this compilation for fans of Ed Ved's work who'd like a decent selection from this tour. My only contribution, other than arranging this, was to go through and select the best overall recordings of each song (sound quality), to trim the tracks so they only have the music and not the five minutes of crowd noise before and after each song, (I also took out all Eddie's storytelling - it's great live and in person, but gets old to hear over and over on a recording) and to amplify a number of the selections as they were so quiet you could barely hear anything, so you could burn them to CD and you wouldn't have to be turning up and down your stereo with each track.

The downside: About halfway into the project I realized I had lost track of which song came from which performance - a cardinal sin to purists. But, having invested too much time in the whole thing, I decided to let that go. So no, I don't include the info of what show each song was sung at. Sorry. I know, I suck.

Other then that, there are a busload of great covers on here, like Hurt and Blackbird and Ship Song. The only track that I had to really mess with was Crazy Mary, during which Ed screwed up, and there was like a minute of crowd noise. I cut all that out, but included the track as it was the only recording of that performance I had.

A HUGE thank you to Eddie, and to all the tapers, and to all you handsome torrent-uploaders! Obviously, this is meant to be free and fun, so let's keep it that way!

So, anyway, here you go. Enjoy. Share. Go to Church. Eat ice cream. Be kind to children. Drink plenty of fluids. And play nice!

Murjefolon July 2010

Do you have any source info, even if it's incomplete?

Don't want to rag on you, but 128kbps?!

Oh shit

i dont have a demonoid account, any other way i can get my hands on this????

This is just amazing. Thanks so much!!!

Im listening to this now, thanks mate this is awesome

to you two who are bitching about the 128kbps,

This is a great compilation, a great listen, and I thank you very much for taking the time where no one else would to put it together. Cheers.

When did I bitch, Rudd?

I thought your "oh shit" was shock that it was only 128kbps.

I listened to a lot of this today at the beach. This really is a nice little gem of a collection.

hey, I'm glad people are enjoying it. I just took so much from these shows, and was so appreciative of folks who taped them and made them available. Was very bummed nothing was ever released official - maybe they couldn't get all those covers cleared for distribution? I dunno. But anyway, took me so long to finally get around to this that when it was done, wanted to share!

And since they are reissuing Into the Wild on vinyl, and Ed Ved said PJ wouldn't be touring for a while... maybe another leg of his solo work? Long shot, but I can hope! If he did, I'd follow him for those shows this time around!

Yeah, that was me - and I stand by it...

Honestly, in this day and age (hell, five years ago), there's no reason to use such a compromised format. I don't even use MP3's at all anymore (I don't think there's a reason for their existence with larger storage capacity now everywhere), let alone crappy ones.

It just seems a shame to shut out people who won't give it a chance (like me) because of the file format.

Since EV material isn't trade-friendly, a mod should remove this link / thread.

really? youre gonna complain about someone spending their time putting this together for you to take for free?

I mean...come on. Take a step back here...

Don't get me wrong, strat, I think it's great that this guy did this. But the format means I'll never listen to it and I'm sure I won't be the only one who passes because of that, it just seems like a shame for the guy to put a lot of work into something and then not showcase it in its best light.

spenno, I'm not trying to argue with you, because I prefer lossless too. But I also know that I myself have just been getting into the whole lossless arena, and not everyone is as audio savvy as you or others. If this guy was just putting together a compilation of all the EV songs and didn't know much about it, maybe it isn't proper to come into the thread to bitch about it? Maybe it can inspire you or someone else to put together a flac collection of it? Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong?

its like coming into your grammas house and pissing on the meat loaf she made for you

He is a better man than I, Glad to see someone did this.

No, you're not. I really didn't want to seem like I was pointlessly being negative, more that I assume he downloaded lossless files of these shows to begin with and so it seemed like a real shame to downgrade that to such a compromised format.

Even though I probably still would've passed, I doubt I'd have raised an eyebrow if he'd made it 320kbps or something - but 128kbps? It may as well be on wax cylinder. That was the point I was trying to make.

and it's that horrible that you just won't listen to it? What if you were handed a leaked EP from Pearl Jam, never heard before, but in 128kbps? Would you not listen to it? I'm in it because I like the band, and if it means getting to hear it or not hearing it at all, I'm gonna pick hearing it every time.