1.
By now, you should’ve seen the mash-up performance from last weekend’s Made In America festival where co-headliners Pearl Jam were joined on stage by Jay-Z, which lead to a live version of Jay’s “99 Problems” during their performance of “W.M.A.” (which is taken from their 1993 album Vs.). Seems to be a favorite past time of Jay’s, seeing as he’s done performances with Phish and Linkin Park before. Bassist Jeff Ament recently spoke to Spin about how this concept came about between Hov and Pearl Jam, and it doesn’t sound like it was as fine-tuned as one might think:
“Ed [Vedder] had a conversation with Jay-Z maybe a month ago, so we knew it was a possibility and started doing the work on our end, mashing up one of our songs with one with one of his because groove-wise, we thought it would work. But we didn’t really know until a half hour before the show, when he came back and played it with us, that we were going to do it. And within 30 seconds, we knew it was going to be good. And I think he knew it was going to be good, too.”
Seeing as though they only knew of the festival (and their spot on the bill) about four months in advance, it’s great to hear that they were able to pull this performance off so well. He even gave props to Matt Cameron for nailing the song as well as he did. We have to agree – we all won this one.
