Stone Gossard interview with SPIN 3/19/24

HailHailVitalogy

2023 had way more variety than 2022, but 2022 didn’t have the two nights in each city format. I think we still get big variety on the two night cities. 

Jcanr20

Caught myself smiling while reading that.

deb1211

Stone mentioned SOLAT and Breath about waiting for Stevie really got me excited

BF25394

Spiritual_Chaos said:

BF25394 said:

AlaG said:

Excited for the new album.

This business about new production has me concerned about the variety of the sets we’re going to get. I’ll continue to remain optimistic but I think I’ll wait and see what May brings before I commit to any additional shows.

Varied set lists are the band's stock-in-trade, so I'd be surprised if that changed. Stone even mentions variety in the interview.

The variety went down with the shorter set lengths though. With them still keeping the same backbone of staples. 

Even with it beings the band "stock-in-trade". 

Just a reminder, that they should mix up that rigid backbone a bit PLAY INSIGNIFICANCE !

And yet at the last eight shows they played in 2023, they played at least 104 different songs. That's incredible variety.

BF25394

CantKeepmedown said:

PJNB said:

New album songs
Short sets 
Still playing a lot of the hits

All means variety will be less and less this tour. It’s impossible not to happen. 2013/14 we had the luxury of having 30 plus songs a night to let those guaranteed songs being played each night not matter so much. 

They did an excellent job last year of mixing it up but Gigaton songs were not heavy in rotation. 

Yeah, unfortunately, by the time they started playing shows again, Gigaton's newness had long worn off. It never really went through it's proper tour cycle.  It sucks, but it is what it is.

I'm definitely expecting for them to go back to how they used to do things.  Dark Matter will likely be played heavily most nights. Which maybe leaves you 15-18 other songs to include. Add in the staples, and you're cycling through 6-8 other songs each night. I hope they do a better job of cycling through their hits but we'll see. Just looking forward to seeing them again. Feels like it's been far too long. 

They leaned heavily into Gigaton initially. At the first night in Ohana, the second show back from the pandemic, they played eight songs from it, including six of the first eight songs in the set. When the 2022 shows started, they were still playing a lot from the album (eight songs at the tour opener in San Diego, as I recall). But once Matt went down, the whole M.O. shifted. Josh only knows the first five albums really well (this is by his own admission). That's why the shows from Oakland through Fresno were so light on Gigaton, and really much of anything post-1998.

LaFleur

i'm not sure what i'm looking forward to more now - the new music, or hearing Stone talk about the new music . 

Jimmydean55

deb1211 said:

Stone mentioned SOLAT and Breath about waiting for Stevie really got me excited

Same!

demetrios

Thanks!

on2legs

Woot!

ComeToTX

Let’s goooooo!!!!

Celticskemba8

thomascbullock said:

PJNB said:

They did an excellent job last year of mixing it up but Gigaton songs were not heavy in rotation. 

But in ‘22, apart from very early on, there wasn’t much Gigaton either - it was 3 or 4 from the album, tracks from rearviewmirror, and for some reason unthought known. I think last year showed they’ve got their sea legs back in terms of the catalog and we should be able to get lots of the new record and a broad spectrum of songs.

Justice for Unthought Known!

Good interview. 

tylerj

There was plenty of variety in 2023 shows. There was 2 repeats for the Chicago shows. 

spankyMP

tylerj said:

There was plenty of variety in 2023 shows. There was 2 repeats for the Chicago shows. 

Agreed. Very few repeats in Austin as well.

ComeToTX

spankyMP said:

tylerj said:

There was plenty of variety in 2023 shows. There was 2 repeats for the Chicago shows. 

Agreed. Very few repeats in Austin as well.

Alive was the only one in Austin 

100 Pacer

Definitely getting excited for the Vancouver shows.

thomascbullock

ComeToTX said:

spankyMP said:

tylerj said:

There was plenty of variety in 2023 shows. There was 2 repeats for the Chicago shows. 

Agreed. Very few repeats in Austin as well.

Alive was the only one in Austin 

I remember thinking through what they hadn’t played so far, a couple of songs into the encore, and thinking “I guess we get like 7 hits now then”, which they then did, and it was glorious. 

spankyMP

ComeToTX said:

spankyMP said:

tylerj said:

There was plenty of variety in 2023 shows. There was 2 repeats for the Chicago shows. 

Agreed. Very few repeats in Austin as well.

Alive was the only one in Austin 

Even better than I remember 🤣

RatherStarved

I liked that 2023 sprinkled Gigaton in but wasn’t really Gigaton focused.  2022 was more Gigaton focused.

 I am a bit concerned this year won’t have much bandwidth for variety, with their determination to play the new shit, shorter sets, and the staples like Even Flow and Alive.  

On a given night there’s still nowhere I’d rather be than at a PJ show, and it’s still so cool they are still around, but it’s going to be a little disappointing compared to what it could be this year.  

kmcmanus

It is absolutely insane to be talking about how “disappointing” it’s “going to be” at the shows in March. Also insane to decide the album will suck based on 20 seconds of Bill Raftery calls as I’ve seen more than once.

I don’t understand this fanbase at all sometimes.

Spiritual_Chaos

kmcmanus said:

It is absolutely insane to be talking about how “disappointing” it’s “going to be” at the shows in March. Also insane to decide the album will suck based on 20 seconds of Bill Raftery calls as I’ve seen more than once.

I don’t understand this fanbase at all sometimes.

You underestimate the power of a going from a pessimistic point of view baseline to later being severely pleasantly surprised