Ed Vedder after "Save You," April 3, 2003, Oklahoma City (Ford Center)

"I'm glad you could all be with us tonight. There's a lot of fucks in that last song, and it's fuckin' great to be here. And fuck is a great fuckin' word. And it seems like ten years ago, freedom of speech...it all had to do with if you could say fuck or not. Because it is, it's a word worth fighting for. You know, you say like, fuck him, fuck her, fuck me. Fuck. And then great ways to say it, you know: That's fuckin' beautiful. Fuck! And I personally can't say that I ever said it this way, but I'm sure you could say: Let's fuck.

"But now, freedom of speech, it has a lot to do with some much bigger issues. And somehow we played a show the other night and it's all of a sudden been misconstrued. They said 24 people left because they were upset at an anti-Bush administration remark.

"You're booing the story right? You're not booing me. Let's clarify that.

"You know, you could've written that story differently and you could've said 11,972 cheered and applauded at what the singer said. And we did support, pledged our suport and love to the troops. You know, how could we not be for the military? Look at this fuckin' haircut.

"So, no matter what it is, no matter how you feel, I think it's important for people to be able to protest, say what they feel, and put public pressure...put pressure on politicians and government just so that they will do a better job. There' snothing anti-patriotic about that. Because their job affects our families, our safety, our security, our relatives who are in the military, our friends, it affects everyone so we have a right to be a voice and be part of that, I would think, as part of a democracy. That's all we wanted to say.

"This is Given to Fly."