Sept 23rd 98

set: Release, Hail Hail, Animal, Spin the Black Circle, Given to Fly, Corduroy, Rearviewmirror, Wishlist, Faithfull, Even Flow, Daughter/(Time Bomb)/(WMA), Improv (Life), Whipping, Present Tense, Not For You, Brain of J, Black, Alive
enc 1: Breath, Elderly Woman, I Got Shit, Do the Evolution, Rats, Smile, Leaving Here
enc 2: Yellow Ledbetter
notes: Mike is apparently cross-dressing again, wearing a feathery black stole around his neck briefly at the start and end of the show. He also sports a tight, black (spandex?) shirt with a silver bead design (spelling out "Rolling Stones") in the front with a low circular neckline. Ed welcomes everyone to the last night of the tour and says, "... besides the hurricane's gonna kill us all so let's go out with a bang." 'Wishlist' lyrics are modified to: "I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish ... sometimes it works out." The 'Daughter' tags are Rancid's 'Time Bomb,' followed by 'WMA,' with the lyrics altered to "... big hand slapped a white male Floridian." After 'Daughter', Lars Fredriksen from Rancid comes onstage, hands Ed his strat, towels off his face, puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it, shines his shoes, hugs him and tosses the towel to the crowd. The improv is actually named: Ed says, "OK, we're gonna call that song 'Life'." During the encore break, the crew pulls out a ping pong table and sets it up while the 'Star Wars' theme plays over the loudspeaker. Eric Johnson gets on the mic and announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to have the ping pong challenge, and the sponsor is the PJ road crew. There will be two teams, the red team is Jeff Ament and Eddie Vedder; the black team is Stone Gossard and Matt Cameron; refereed by star Mike McCready." The band begins playing ping pong (with the 'Star Wars' theme continuing), a couple of points go by, and Eric says, "This ball's going a little bit flat. Let's get another ball here," and someone up above drops a whole bunch of ping pong balls, dozens, on the table. The band is totally surprised and they start hitting the balls into the crowd for a minute or two. Ed ends it saying, "What the fuck was that? ... snowing in Florida?" Then he makes mention of people who have been to a lot of the shows and picks out a few in the crowd, "18 or 20 shows ..." and thanks them. Then Ed changes the songs, and he goes into 'Breath'. "Oh, I just changed songs on them." Toward the end of 'Breath', Ed is tossing ping pong balls at Mike who is batting them into the crowd with his guitar. At the end of 'Leaving Here,' Mike smashes his guitar. After 'Smile,' Ed says, "This is the only tour we're gonna stop where we wished we could play some more ..."