After spending all year celebrating the 20^th anniversary of their debut album, Ten, Pearl Jam have announced their first shows of 2012, which will take place next summer in Europe. The nine-date trek will include three festivals and six headlining dates on their own. The three festivals are Isle of Wight in England, Rock Werchter in Belgium and the Main Square Festival in France. Additionally, they will tackle arena shows in Manchester, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen. Los Angeles rock band X will open all of the arena shows. The first show, in Manchester, will take place on June 20, and the tour will culminate in Copenhagen on July 10.

Pearl Jam started the 20-year anniversary celebration for Ten back in 2009 by releasing a deluxe edition of the album that had been remastered and included a DVD. In September, Pearl Jam Twenty was released, which is a rockumentary about the band directed by Cameron Crowe. The movie documents the history of the band from its formation until April 2011. Crowe edited over 12,000 hours of video for the documentary. The film was screened at the Toronto Film Festival and other U.S. theaters throughout September, and was released on DVD and Blu-Ray the following month.

Pearl Jam formed in Seattle in 1990 and helped bring grunge rock into the mainstream, along with other bands mainly from the northwest like Nirvana and Soundgarden. Ten is the band’s most commercially successful album and has sold over 10 million copies. Sales were slow when the album was released in August of 1991, almost exactly a month before Nevermind by Nirvana was released. It took nearly a year to break into the top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart, and peaked at number two in May 1992, kept out of the top spot only by the Billy Ray Cyrus album containing the hit “Achy Breaky Heart.”

Following months of breathless anticipation, Pearl Jam has announced details for their upcoming 20th anniversary concert. The band will be headlining and hosting a festival over Labor Day weekend in East Troy, Wisconsin at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre. Special guests include John Doe from X, Glen Hansard, Liam Finn, Joseph Arthur, Mudhoney, Queens of the Stone Age and The Strokes. Fan club members will be able to purchase tickets starting May 23, and the general public on June 4. Pearl Jam is donating $2 per ticket sold to the band’s Vitalogy Foundation. The organizations provide grants to nonprofit organizations that are selected by band members.

The band, following their anniversary festival, will be hitting the road to tour Canada. The outing will consist of arena gigs and visit most of Canada’s major cities. The trek will kick off on September 7 in Montreal at Bell Centre and wrap up on September 25 at Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.

The anniversary celebration of Pearl Jam’s, as was previously announced will include “Pearl Jam Twenty,” the retrospective documentary by Cameron Crowe. It is scheduled to arrive along with a Simon & Schuster published book as well as soundtrack album that will feature music from the film selected by Crowe. The movie “Pearl Jam Twenty” will air on October 21 on PBS stations as part of their American Masters series.

In an interview with Billboard, Jeff Ament, bassist for the band, said that Pearl Jam will begin working on a new album in early spring. He also said that 25 demos have already been recorded and the group will come together in the near future.

Ament stated, “We did a whole bunch of demos and everybody’s got a disc of 25 [songs] right now. April will be the time where we get together and learn to play all these demos and figure out which 12 to 15 of them float to the top. Hopefully we can get something done this year.”

2011 marks the 20th anniversary of ‘Ten’ the band’s album that came out in 1991. There will be a documentary directed by Cameron Crow, a festival, and a book. However, Ament indicated that the group is eagerly anticipating what is still to come.

He said, “There’s been so much focus on the past that I think all of us are really excited to make a new record. And have something to look forward to because we’ve been digging in the boxes in our basement a lot the last year or so.”

The most recent album released by the group was ‘Backspacer’ which dropped in 2009.

As iconic metal rockers Pearl Jam continues to bask in its monumental 20th anniversary, a feat that most rock bands of today can only dream of achieving, Eddie Vedder and the rest of the band are planning to stage their very own music festival, according to an announcement made by the band’s manager Kelly Curtis via the band’s own radio station, Sirius XM Radio.

When asked when and where the festival will kick off, Curtis tells that the target date is summer of next year with a launching point at “somewhere in the middle of the US” and not in Seattle, contrary to what Pearl Jam fans might expect as it is the band’s home turf.

Meanwhile, the band is also prepping for the release of “Live on Ten Legs”, which includes 18 of the band’s greatest live performances from 2003 to 2010.  “Ten Legs” follows up the band’s first live release, 1998’s  “Live on Two Legs”, recorded from the band’s 1998 summer tour.

On the other hand, band vocalist Eddie Vedder will be heading down south in Australia in 2011 for a series of solo gigs in spring.  The band is also planning to reissue some of its previous releases although no word yet if the plan will push through.

On Saturday Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam frontman, married model Jill McCormick, his longtime girlfriend and mother of the couple’s two children, in Hawaii.

Musician Jack Johnson and actor Sean Penn were two of the 70 guests.

On December 4 Vedder asked McCormick to marry him while in Washington.  He performed later that weekend at an event at Kennedy Center to honor Bruce Springsteen.

It is the second marriage for Vedder and first for McCormick.  The couple has two daughters: Olivia, who is six years old, and Harper, who on Friday will be two years old.

The Spectrum, a concert arena in Southern Philadelphia, is home to some of the greatest rock performances in history.  Sure, it doesn’t have state of the art audiovisual facilities or the comfort of differing levels of seating like most modern arenas would have, in fact, it is just waiting for its time to come crashing down only to pave the way for a larger and more commercially sized-up establishment.

Yet, The Spectrum had something that no other concert venue had.  It is the spirit, the energy, the dynamism and the warmth of the audience even before the first note has been played that makes rock legends like Bruce Springsteen, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple or Pearl Jam to name a few, perform over a multitude of times.  Unlike audiences from other music loving cities like New York which have become so jaded, Philly audiences will show their love for whoever’s performing even with just their mere presence on stage.

All these memories became more profound than ever when Pearl Jam released “2009 Philadelphia”, a CD box set which showcases their four night-live performances in October last year which also marked the last concert to be staged at The Spectrum.  The band played a total of 103 songs dug from their entire discography, to their own versions of classics from Neil Young, The Who, Devo and the Dead Boys, and even a 40-track Halloween themed set which had guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard blasting the Pearl Jam classic “Better Man” with lyrics from the English Beat hit “Save it for Later”.

The album reminds me of Deep Purple’s  “Fireball” album tour in 1971 with The Faces and Matthews Southern Comfort – without Iain Matthews.  Purple performed an extensively lengthy version of “Mandrake Root” while The Faces was in its prime, all in their blues rock glory and without the divisiveness brought upon by Rod Stewart’s one-man career taking flight.  Two years after, The Who brought their “Quadrophenia” slate and the same gig also saw the beginnings of Lynyrd Skynyrd and one of the earliest live versions of “Free Bird”.

Another remarkable performance took place three years later in the spring, this time with The Kinks who brought the house down with the “Preservation”, King Crimson sampling brand new material from their freshly released “Starless and Bible Black” prog-rock anthology and Peter Frampton who brought his eponymous “Camel” to jam with him at The Spectrum.

In the summer of 1975, Mick Jagger and the rest of The Rolling Stones also made its way in the Southern Philly venue which also marks one of the first performances that featured the band’s then new guitarist Ronnie Wood, who after playing for The Face will eventually take the place of Stones’ Mick Taylor.  And for a change, funky soul group The Commodores also graced the stage with their bouncy track “Brick House”.  This was the time when tickets were so cheap, a seat in the near front row costs barely $20 and there was no such thing as extra charges or fees.

1976 was a big year for The Spectrum with newcomers Boston opening up for Brits Foghat who were known for their funky boogie music style.  However, that night was remarkable not for the performances but because majority of the concert goers went home after Boston’s “More than a Feeling” with only about half of the crowd left for Foghat’s show.  Still in the same year, performances were back in the up and up when Ted Nugent, the Blue Oyster Cult and best of all, ZZ Top performed to a sold-out crowd even when two other events were being staged at the Veterans Stadium and at the John F. Kennedy Stadium.

The latter part of the decade saw some of the greatest acts in rock music performing in the concrete Philly stage.  Bruce Springsteen for two years, 1976 and 1978, Pink Floyd minus Roger Waters who called in sick on that one fateful night in 1977, Aerosmith during their healthiest, cleanest and finest years, and Electric Light Orchestra who hit The Spectrum more than just once.

For what it’s worth, Pearl Jam’s  “2009 Philadelphia” teaches us that rock music will continue to transcend ages, stadium innovations, sound improvements, sky rocketing ticket prices and an ever changing public taste and perception.  Rock, especially, live rock jams in massive stadiums and arenas will continue to be embraced by music junkies, aged six to eighty-six, everywhere.

Two months from now, rock icons Pearl Jam will be performing alongside Neil Young in front of an audience who might not have been born yet during the rock act’s prime.

But it won’t be the first time for the grunge rock legends to perform at the yearly Bridge School Benefit Concert organized by Neil Young.  They have performed the same gig for eight times and this year’s performance will mark their ninth, and will also mark the band’s 20th year anniversary since they performed live on stage for the first time and under a different name – “Mookie Blaylock” – in Seattle.

“It’s perfect (for the anniversary), not too blown up…It’s not about us, it’s about all those kids that are on stage with you, and about Neil Young and his commitment, his influence”, says Stone Gossard when asked by Billboard.  Gossard is the band’s rhythm guitarist.

The annual Bridge School music event will be held on October 23 and 24, and will benefit children afflicted with physical, motor and mental disabilities.

Pearl Jam will be releasing recordings from their 2010 shows. The official bootlegs offered by the band will continue a tradition that they began in 2000. In addition, Pearl Jam announced they are launching a web-based radio station called Pearl Jam Radio. According to Pearl Jam’s website, the station will be offering a a continuous stream of studio, rare and live songs.

Starting in the middle of May, their 2010 Bootleg Program is featuring soundboard recordings taken from the current tour of the band in three formats: MP3, FLAC and CD. Pearl Jam’s tour launched at New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on May 1. On June 22 the band will head over to Europe after a series of US shows.

Pearl Jam will also offer recordings from their four shows they performed in Philadelphia in October at Spectrum arena. Those were the last concerts ever played at the venue. The shows are going to be made available as individual downloads or as a CD. The performances can be pre-ordered as well in limited edition set form, featuring records from all four performances.

Additional information on the band’s new radio stations and bootlegs is listed at PearlJam.com.

Grunge stalwarts Pearl Jam are ready to take to the road to support last fall’s release “Backspacer.” The tour is slated for May and will cover 10 US cities along the east coast and Midwest. The tour kicks off in Kansas City, Missouri on May 2 and runs through a double stop at New York’s Madison Square Garden on May 20 & 21. Band of Horses will provide opening support on all tour stops save the NYC dates. The Black Keys will cover opening responsibilities for these dates. A full listing of Pearl Jam tour dates are listed below.

Pearl Jam Ten Club members will have the first stab at tickets on March 15 at 9am. The regular onsale dates have yet to be released.

Pearl Jam’s latest album “Backspacer” debuted at the number 1 slot on the Billboard album charts when it was released on November 10. The album represents Pearl Jam’s ninth studio release and first since 2006. It was released on their homegrown label Monkeywrench Records.

2010 Pearl Jam Concert Tour
May 2010
3 – Kansas City, MO – Sprint Center
4 – St. Louis, MO – Scottrade Center
6 – Columbus, OH – Nationwide Arena
7 – Noblesville, IN – Verizon Wireless Music Center
9 – Cleveland, OH – Quicken Loans Arena
10 – Buffalo, NY – HSBC Arena
13 – Bristow, VA – Jiffy Lube
15 – Hartford, CT – XL Center
17 – Boston, MA – TD Banknorth Garden
20, 21 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden

Pearl Jam, Aerosmith and Green Day, along with Skunk Anansie, are some of the first confirmed acts for the 2010 Heineken Jammin Festival. It will take place July 3-6 in Venice Italy at Mestre’s San Guiliano Park. Earlier this week the four acts were announced during a Mestre press conference attended by Venice’s Mayor, Heineken Italy’s Marketing Director, Live Nation Italy/Milano Concerti’s CEO, and Municipalita Mestre Carpendo’s President.

1998 was the first year for the Heineken Jammin Festival event. The headliner was Vasco Rossi. In 2007 the festival became an event of four days and featured acts like Stone Sour, Slayer and Iron Maiden.

The Cranberries and Aerosmith are scheduled for July 3. On July 4, Green Day, Rise Against and 30 Seconds to Mars are scheduled. On July 5, Massive Attack and Black Eyed Peas are set to perform. On July 6, Pearl Jam, Wolfmother, Gossip, Skunk Anansie and Ben Harper will wrap up the festivities. The lineup for the 2010 Heineken Jammin Festival is subject to change.