Catching up to Corgan
Thank God for Last.fm. When the Internet radio station alerted me that Smashing Pumpkins would be playing in Houston in a matter of weeks, I was beyond excited. Understand that I've been waiting to see Billy Corgan and the Pumpkins live ever since my cousin burned me copies of all their albums back when I was in seventh grade. For a good while they were the only CDs that I owned (besides the Harry Potter and Spider-Man soundtracks, but that's a different story), and needless to say, I listened to them nonstop.Unfortunately at that point the Pumpkins had been disbanded for close to two years, so there wasn't the normal process of discovering a new band, listening to all their music and then eagerly anticipating their next show or album - hell, at that age my parents didn't even let me go to live shows. Still kicking myself for missing the newly re-formed Pumpkins when they came to town in 2007 for Buzzfest XX, I scratched together the cash to buy a ticket to their show at Warehouse Live this past Tuesday and enjoyed every deafening second of it.
Today's Pumpkins are quite different from the group that smashed into the mainstream with Siamese Dream in 1993. Only frontman Billy Corgan remains from the original lineup of guitarist James Iha, bassist D'arcy Wretzky and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, and while the distinctive heavy-hitting layered-fuzz sound of the Pumpkins can still be found in many of their songs today, Zeitgeist and the in-progress Teargarden by Kaleidyscope represent a shift away from the electronicaheavy Adore and Machina albums back to the more traditional alt-rock roots of the band.
The average age of the crowd at Warehouse Live on Tuesday to see Smashing Pumpkins was roughly 10 years older than me, but you wouldn't have guessed that based on the way they jostled and shoved like a bunch of tweens at a Passion Pit concert to get closer to the stage. It's a testament to the staying power and relevance of Corgan and the revitalized Pumpkins; haters be damned.
A quartet of four girls from Los Angeles who didn't look much older than 15 and performed under the moniker Cherri Bomb kicked off the show with some not-bad-butnot- too-great-either girl punk rock, playing mostly original songs but also doing a decent cover of Foo Fighters' "Pretender" toward the end of their set.
Following Cherri Bomb, Chicagobased band Bad City, which sounded like a cross between The Darkness and Aerosmith (with an equally lively lead singer who reminded me a lot of Link from The Legend of Zelda) took the stage with some hard rocking tunes that also sounded pretty decent. The lead singer screamed a lot and eventually tore off his shirt, but the backing vocals and rhythm guitar provided for some great listening.
Then the lights came back up, and people began jockeying for positions in front of the stage in anticipation of Smashing Pumpkins. I found that old people can be just as big of douchebags as skinny-jeaned hipster kids when it comes to shoving to the front; the only difference at the concert on Tuesday was that old people use the ruse that they are looking for their wife to give her a beer. Low, friends. Low.
But then Corgan and company took the stage to raucous cheers, screaming and applause. There was a stark difference between this show and several other recent shows that I've seen in that Corgan didn't spend time bullshitting with the audience - the Pumpkins came out and immediately busted out their set-list, and it wasn't until a good eight or nine songs in that Corgan finally paused to make the obligatory [insert name of city and make a joke here] comments. This definitely isn't the Pumpkins' first rodeo, and it was nice to see the band come out and give the people what they wanted, namely a lot of the old classics like "Adore," "Today," "Drown," "Eye" and "Bullet With Butterfly Wings."
The new material from Teargarden by Kaleidyscope sounded tremendously good live, and I can't wait to hear what the Pumpkins come up with next. Vowing to never again produce a traditional album after lukewarm sales of Zeitgeist, Corgan is working on Teargarden one track at a time, releasing each one for free as he finishes it via the band's official page. So far six of the planned 44 tracks have been released, with plans to sell physical copies of the album once all the tracks have been finished.
The band played for just over two hours, covering a good spread of Pumpkins goodness throughout the years. Surprisingly, "1979" was not played during the main show or the encore, but then again they didn't play anything at all from Gish or Machina. Corgan definitely isn't one to live in the past, and he's really pushing the Pumpkins' new material. And so far that new material is top-notch. I can't wait to see what you come up with next, Billy. Thanks for making my eight-year wait worth it.
Joe Dwyer is a Wiess College senior and Thresher A&E Editor
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