Smashing Pumpkins Public Service Annoucement
By L. Russell Allen - Nov 13th, 2008 at 1:49 pmI bought tickets to see the Smashing Pumpkins play a club on Halloween. The show was advertised as an acoustic reflection on the groups 20 years as a band.
Make fun of me if you want, dropping 50 bucks that I can’t afford on a band that hasn’t had a good album in 12 years (though I am an admitted Zwan apologist). Whatever. I grew up with this band and if you don’t think Siamese Dream is one of the most important and greatest rock records ever, then we don’t really have much to talk about.
And a Halloween show! Those are the best! My favorite concert ever was seeing They Might Be Giants perform in a club on Halloween in 2001. They opened for themselves pretending to be a TMBG cover band. They played Flood, the first album I ever owned, in order. It was amazing. So my hopes were high for the Smashing Pumpkins.
And oh my God was the show horrible.
The opening set started with the Smashing Pumpkins playing covers of songs like “Monster Mash” and Louie Louie.” Awesome! Then, as some kind of horrible joke, the band faked a fight onstage, played terribly on purpose, and mocked the audience. Music fans can mock me for buying a Smashing Pumpkins ticket. The actual Smashing Pumpkins don’t have that right.
Then the band played its regular set and it was awful. It wasn’t acoustic. And it wasn’t a reflection of the past 20 years. They played three songs from before 1999. And they sounded awful. The encore was Billy Corgan jamming for 30 minutes. It was hell.
When I pointed out to club management that the show was about as acoustic as an AC/DC concert and was therefore falsely advertised, I was kicked out of the venue. I really was trying to be respectful until a Smashing Pumpkins roadie told me I should be honored to see the Smashing Pumpkins perform. That’s when the obscenities started and a bouncer had to threaten to break my jaw.
I didn’t write about this because, really, who cares? But my former roommate, the biggest Smashing Pumpkins fan I know, just saw two of their concerts in Washington, DC. His e-mails:
the last 45min of the show was ambient noise and bird chirping followed by an encore of “we only come out at night” played only on kazoos by the band. Most of the crowd was baffled/skeptical, but a few were downright pissed. one of which decided to flip billy off. Billy called the so called “Tucker Carlson” (evidently there was a strong resemblence) out and an unexpected and long exchange followed. “Tucker” was given a chance to speak and yelled out “you sucked” then asked where James Iha was. Billy responded by calling Tucker out on his tense, pointed out that this isn’t Iowa and then had a really sarcastic conversation with Jimmy about selling out. Then he invited a willing female from the audience onto the stage who claimed she was James and proceeded to ask her where she had been since the breakup. Billy then sent everyone home with plenty of “god bless you” s. Very wierd. Not sure what will happen tonight, but I will let you know
And then:
Well, last night wasn’t much better. There is too much to rant about.
Highlights like Soma transitioning to Cherub Rock gave way to appalling head-in-hand moments like a 20 min jungle drum session or Billy’s timpani/melodica solo (prompting yells of Zappa from the audience) from Tuesday night. Overall, I felt like there was a lot of wasted time and the two nights could have easily have fit into one. If you feel the need you can pass this on, but I found quite a bit of the same sentiment circulating online already.
So, the thesis of this post is: If you have Smashing Pumpkins tickets for this tour, scalp them now. Do not attend. You will leave angry and disappointed. If the band is going to steal money, don’t let it be yours.
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