We planned a trip to Nashville to see them at the Ryman Auditorium. Most of the local sites were closed so it was a bummer of a trip... but it still was all worth the 15 hour trip just to see the Smashing Pumpkins. We planned it 6 months in advance. I called before the concert just to hear that it was cancelled. We were all crushed. We drove 15 hours back and I was one of the lucky ones that was fortunate to see them two days later in Greensboro as they just happened to pencil in a trip to NC. I was totally blown away at the concert. The best I have ever seen!! I guess some things do work out in life. If I could send any message forward.. please come back to NC. We would love it. Thanks Brian

I was on the first row in the mezanine, it was an amazing view of the stage, The first half of the pumpkins set seemed as if the sound mix was alittle off, maybe distortion or feedback was alittle high.But it seemed after the acoustic break half way through when the band returned they had cleaned it up. Overall i loved the show. I saw them in 98' and BC is still passionate about the music. You can see he really enjoy's himself. I know it may never happen, but a live performance of "aeroplane flies high" would be the greatest. I think the audience in greensboro was great. I just moved to greensboro a month before the show. and the fact that the majority of the fans there knew all the words was refreshing. You could really tell that the band was feeling the love. And Billy showed appreciation with a fist pump to his heart when he stopped between songs to catch his breath. I surely hope that the band will return to greensboro someday in the future.

This was my first time seeing the smashing pumpkins. I am highly satisfied and can't wait to go to another pumpkins concert. ME and my friend didn't get to see Explosions in the sky but i heard they suck. we didn't care. THe sound in the auditorium was amazing. I really loved Drown and United States. The only songs I wished they would have played were "Zero, "Disarm", and "I am One". After the show when we were walking out Some of the college students had dropped pumpkins of the roof. They also were smashing them with there feet. Me and my friend took some of the pumpkins that were not used and saw how hight we can throw them and watch them smash. It is was the perfect ending to the perfect show.


And this is the actual Setlist:

-Where Boys fear to tread(The Bomb)
-Cherub Rock
-Drown
-Bring the light
-Tonight, Tonight
-Tarantula
-Home
-Hummer
-Bullet
-God and Country
-1979
-To Sheila
-Set the ray to Jerry
-Today
-Stand inside your love
-United States
-Heavy Metal Machine
-I love rock and roll

Encore: Starla

The show was amazing. I am only 13 but new almost all the songs they were playing. I really loved drown. The only songs I wish they had played that they didn't were "I am one" and "Zero". I am still trying to find the set list. This is not perfect but I think this is sort of close.

-Where boys tread to fear.
-Cherub Rock
-Drown
-Bring the light
-Tonight, Tonight
-Bullet with butterfly wings.
-United States
-For God and country
-1979
-Tarantula
-Today
-Heavy Metal Machine
-I love Rock and Roll

Encore: Starla

I was blown away that they played both Drown and Starla in same show; was hoping for at least one of those songs. Throw in Hummer, and those 3 songs were worth the price of admission alone. Only disappointment was that they played for only 2 hours. I saw them in New Orleans towards the end of the MCIS tour in '97 and they played close to 3 hours. Only 3 songs from Siamese Dream and 4 from MCIS; also, only 4 from Zeitgeist. Maybe JC's health had something to do with it as he exited quickly after the 1 song encore, which was Starla. Billy looked like he wanted to stay longer. The crowd was very much into the show all night, especially during United States. I could have done w/out the "I Love Rock and Roll" crowd sing-a-long part during Heavy Metal Machine. After the first few songs, the sound mix got much better. Bullet was unbelievable. Overall, they rocked! Far exceeded my expectations after not seeing them in over 10 years.

i though the pumpkins rocked but explosions in the sky were terrible in my opinion.....they played the same song for an hour. none the less the pumpkins were great

review by Parke Puterbaugh.

that Parke describes this musical journey "among the most memorable ever" of his experience deserves our attention, as he shares a rich and vast history of music experience to draw from to make this distinction noteworthy.


past senior editor and writer for Rolling Stone... "He has been a freelance curatorial assistant and writer for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland since its inception. He has annotated more than 30 albums for such labels as Rhino Records, Time-Life Music, and Sony Music. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Puterbaugh holds bachelor's degrees in English and Sociology and a master's degree in Environmental Science, with an emphasis on the study of shorelines."

from: http://foghorn.com/authors/puterbaugh_bisbort.html

*keeping with the ocean, sea imagery here*


http://news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071110/NRSTAFF/711100303

when "the god's" took "hold":

"But then something changed.

The sound quality in the auditorium began to improve. A three-song acoustic interlude seemed to settle and focus the group. Corgan and Chamberlin locked into a tight groove, guitar and drums moving as one with an indomitable force.

The music evinced a greater sense of dynamics, and when the Pumpkins did accelerate into some ferocious, ripping song or section, it seemed more controlled than chaotic.

The second half of the concert was the best hour of rock music I've witnessed all year, and among the most memorable ever.

And those lights! During the dicey first half, the light show threatened to upstage the band.

Once the group found their groove, the lights complemented the music and intensified the overall experience almost to the point of synesthesia.

Eight triangular lighting rigs hung overhead, with four more on the floor. They'd flash different patterns -- triangles, dots, patterns -- in a rapidly oscillating array of neon-bright colors.

The overall effect was to make the audience feel as if they'd tripped through some portal into the future...."

it's not "trying" trust me. its just "ainanna consciousness" (for lack of a name) and it existed long before bc did, and any attempts to contain it.

So you see, of course, i could never write a "typical review" - I just don't can't perceive realities in those ways, and why try to. So I must bring my own version of perception to wherever i am. I enjoy life much more that way...

More interested and tuned in to the unseen, what is often not noted, yet is so key. making the strange familiar, the familiar strange.

and

i love it.

that and that you hated it as a "review." which it was not. thank you. i have done my work here.





*shattering that glass category*

*blocks slap*

*and i do speak like i write too. just with more embodied intensity and flow. i hold back here.... just a tad.*

The setlist for this show was great in my opinion. Opening with "Where Boys Fear to Tread" and following that with "Drown" two songs later left a bunch of the young kids around us scratching their heads.

As always, Billy & Jimmy seemed completely unpretentious and seemed to convey a genuine appreciation for the fans. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, and the changing setlists on this tour really kept their energy up and the audience on edge to see what was coming next. They never seemed to be on autopilot, just gigging for the cash.

Unfortunately, the sound mix was not that great in my opinion. Drums and bass were good, but the guitars (except for the acoustic solos) were lost in the mud at times, along with the vocals.

My only problem with it was that the Pumpkins didn't come on until about 9:15. The opening band "Explosions in the Sky" were OK for about 10 minutes, but then it felt like one continuous, repetitive, boring song that would not end. (In case you don't know, there are no vocals with this band, and in performance there were no noticable stops.) Every time I thought it was over they would swap out a guitar or something and start right back up. People around us later described them as "Coldplay without the lyrics". I appreciate uniqueness and creativity in music, but not when I'm a captive audience for a 45 minute set. If this doesn't sound like your cup of tea either, and this band is scheduled for your show, you may want to arrive late. I wish I had.

I lucked out and got front row seats to this show for the regular price off of ticketmaster the night before the show...I still don't know how that happened...I guess God was on my side. Anyway, I was close enough to touch Billy when he walked to the edge of the stage, and my girlfriend got one of his guitar picks, so, it was a great time! I still can't believe I was in the pit...it was amazing! GREAT SHOW!

liked the review... i understood the feeling of being there thru what ainanna said... i feel it was way betta than the same ol
setlist blah blah blah they rocked ginger looked hott
cb violence is not the answer... stop chewin the bubbledumb and open your mind
yo

That was quite possibly the worst review I've ever seen. You are trying WAAAAAAAAAY to hard. With that said, I'm not even sure what it is you are trying so hard to do... To sound like Billy? To try and impress people by trying to be abstract and profound? I hope you don't speak the same way you write. I think I'd have to slap you if you did.

*still blissing...*

















liquid blue guitars flow a cross
gold honeycomb walls
melting.

catching breath

hearts drum
belle
beats
















*struck speechless until at least saturday.*

and blessed...very blissed.


and love.




The Pumpkins came to play with us in the Piscean city of Greene, the healing water city with deep underground networking streams. Home to revolutionary blues and rebel reds alike. Railroads above and underground.

They blew into the Gate City on the winds of social changes already stirring these times of heightening contradictions. Yet amidst these worst droughts emerged deep fresh springs coupled with a crisp awakening autumn chill, as if to say, “I am arrived.”

Inside the War Memorial Auditorium we came for music and each other, and in different ways perhaps, to commemorate, create, a future-now present-time when all war is, indeed, an anguishing past history from which we have moved forward and beyond.

I arrived amidst Explosions in the Sky, moving into a space of energy and tone already set by audience and artist together. It was a soothing one, fluid and liquid, without words – and bringing together the blend of very different elements – languaging in other waves of sound, light, and senses. Those who chose to be present merged in bliss – and even others engaged socially in conversation with each other, seemed to merge as well with the resonance that enveloped. All was in flow across the crowds, the music taming any savage beasts we had brought (with or within us), now surrendered in the moment.

The Pumpkins arrived on the stage unpretentiously and humble.

There seemed to be a delicate opening restraint from each of them – perhaps a needed one cultivated by artists who strive to be open and sensitive to the energy emerging from the greater experience with the audience. Unpredictable, subtle, mysterious. To be alert and open to that, to not impose a preconceived “performance” is a gift, and seems to require a humility with a playful, improvisational consciousness that lets go of ego and plays lightly with personas to allow this mysterious energy in, to play through us.

A new orientation of being – like that Cornel West describes – that merges a blues sensibility about life with a responsive and improvisational jazz and hope. An idealistic-realism, working together to create something new, something needed.

And it rose and came through. The “god’s energy took hold." Created.

It arrived.

And discovered great pleasure and enjoyment in “being experienced.”

Coming to ask and invite us in music, “Are you?”


(to be continued and experienced later too.)



Zeitgeist opened with a strange familiar, yet unidentifiable, opening show tune (not the other two that I have heard throughout the tour). As with the Spirit of any age, carried along, all becomes strangely familiar, and what was familiar strange. Entering a deep space where some may fear to tread, (others of us have no choice about it), we crossed over into the waves of cherub rock. A close friend, and guitarist, describes what its like to embody the unique cherub rock “chords,” comparing the rolling movement to a sufi trance-like oceanic dance of hands, and hips. Since imagining this, I now feel music differently as well, so to speak, as the one who is creating and embodying it.

This night, no less.

Moving with Drown to Bring the Light the band uncovered the flow with the audience and within and among themselves. The audience, never seated from my view, caught up in the movement to find the subterranean rhythm, and often creatively responsive without the initiatory call from Corgan – a surprise which seemed to catch him off guard, and quite please him at the same time. Particularly surreal moments of this appeared early during Bring the Light for what was to come.

(to be continued and experienced later too.)

oh! a great piece by Parke Puterbaugh
http://news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071110/NRSTAFF/711100303