The Pumpkins Come to Sactown

While wandering the streets of Sacramento (you may know it as "Sactown") during last month's Second Saturday Art Walk (AKA Free Wine!), I came across a flyer hanging upon a lamp post. Normally, I walk past these without a second thought... but this one caught my eye. It read... Smashing Pumpkins, live at the Crest Theater. Um... huh? First off, the Crest is an indie movie theater in downtown Sac that occasionally hosts live events (such as a Henry Rollins appearance some years ago). Second... the Pumpkins are still around?!

Now, before we move along, let me take you back to a simpler time. A time where Nick at Nite had black-and-white shows, Bob Saget was considered a wholesome family entertainer. and Michael Jackson was alive but only kinda creepy. I was in 7th grade art class, when a fellow student offered to sell me a pair of CDs he no longer wanted. Aerosmith's Get a Grip and The Smashing Pumpkin's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness for $5. I was gonna have to skip a few lunches, but I was down. Within the next year, The Smashing Pumpkins became one of my two favorite bands in middle school (Pearl Jam dominated the second half... sorry Aerosmith).

Back to present... I had to find out what this show was about. So I grabbed me up a pair of tickets, and some 14 years later I was ready to check out one of the great 90's depressing music bands.


Now, mind you... Today's Smashing Pumpkins isn't quite the same as it was back in my day. That is to say, it is Billy Corgan and a bunch of new people. But to be fair, he still has a chick on bass, an Asian dude on guitar and a (I can only assume) coke-head on drums. I was sad to see it wasn't the same line-up, although I do recall seeing guitarist James Iha playing with A Perfect Circle when I was in college (at the Salem Armory, which is an awful place to see a show... acoustics are terrible). Still, it's pretty darn close, so I'm in! It's certainly better than the modern day version of Guns N' Roses!

So, I gotta say, they sounded awesome.


After a bit of new stuff, they hit us with plenty of classics- Today, Ava Adore, Cherub Rock, Tonight Tonight... and they sounded fantastic.

I was very pleased to find that the small theater they were playing had excellent acoustics. Here's a quick taste of Bullet with Butterfly Wings:

The only thing that seemed kinda strange was that for the first hour or so, none of them addressed the crowd, aside from a "Sacramento!" thrown out amidst a song I didn't recognize. They just kinda played one song after another, as if we weren't there. And it was clear that Billy was in charge, pointing to the other band members and telling them to do things here or there. So after that hour of rockin', he finally started talking to the audience (he's friggin' huge, by the way). "So, do you guys really call yourselves Sactown? There was a magazine called Sactown in my hotel room, and I gotta say, that's not a great tourist draw. 'Hey, we're hangin' in Sactown!" Funny stuff. After that, the audience seemed a little more receptive, and the band seemed to have a little more fun, breaking into jams (featuring a bit of Led Zeppelin), a drum solo, and such.




They played for a solid 2 hours, and that's great. But for the last 20 minutes or so, they went into some sort of psychadelic jam session. It was cool and all, but after about 10 minutes I decided to take my seat and wait until they finally hit us with the 2 songs blatantly missing from the set-list: Zero and 1979. As the wild guitar solos came to a close, everyone stood up and started cheering, so I could only assume it was time to tear up the last two classics! So I stood up, to find that everyone had put down their instruments and were leaving the stage. The house lights came up, the exit music started, and people shuffled out. What the hell?! Where are the last two songs?? That's like if Metallica didn't play Enter Sandman... if The Rolling Stones didn't play Brown Sugar... If Prince didn't play that song about partyin' like it's 1999. It kinda put a damper on the whole party, at least in my eyes, and I walked out in shock. I hadn't been this upset since Bon Jovi forgot to play that song from Young Guns 2. C'mon, Billy! C'mon.

That aside, I really couldn't complain. The band sounded way better than I thought they would. They pounded through a good number of classics, and the songs that I didn't know, including some of the new stuff, sounded pretty damn good (A Stitch in Time is worth listening to). It was a great show, and very cool of them to tour in small venues that could be easily sold out. In a place like the Crest, there isn't a bad seat in the house (although we did get some pretty money seats).

I'm happy to finally check off the Pumpkins on the list of bands I've seen in concert, and I hope that Corgan can craft together a quality album with his new line-up so that we can get some stuff on par with... well, with the songs that they forgot to play.