Jeremy better sit right down and shut the hell up, because Pearl Jam won’t be playing in Raleigh this Wednesday, ruining the 4/20 plans of basically the entire NC State hacky sack club. Like Bruce Springsteen before them, the band is canceling a previously scheduled show in protest of North Carolina’s House Bill 2, the so-called “bathroom law” that requires people to use the facilities associated with the gender assigned to them at birth. (As we pointed out in a previous Newswire, exactly who will be sitting outside bathrooms and checking birth certificates at every rest stop and fast-food joint in the state remains unclear.)
The band announced the movie in a statement released earlier today, written out by hand because they’re artists like that and scanned by some anonymous member of their management team. But because it’s kind of hard to read, here’s the text of the statement instead:
It is with deep consideration and much regret that we must cancel the Raleigh show in North Carolina on April 20th.
This will be upsetting to those who have tickets and you can be assured that we are equally frustrated by the situation.