And yet, live, it was magical. Black magic, to be sure, a sinister potion brewed deep inside Billy Corgan’s special circle of Hell…but still magic.
The first thing I noticed when I got to my seat was the blinding light. My seat was to the side of the stage to begin with, never technically a good place to be, and now I had neon bulbs blasting directly into my eye!
And yet, strangely, that was a positive sign. As I tilted my head to avoid a direct blast, I noticed that the colors bent. If I shifted slightly to the left, red beams collided with blue beams. If I shifted slightly to the right, blue collided with green. As I continue to shift and tilt, I noticed more and more intricate combinations. After a few minutes, the thought hit me: I was about to watch a concert through a kaleidoscope!
Once I grew accustomed to the colors schemes, I noticed that the music was just as trippy. It’d veer from jagged guitar to rumbling piano to manic drums and back – often within the same song. The only constant was Corgan’s menacing voice and demonic presence. He’d whisper, shriek, groan, sing in tune – anything to put the audience on edge.
And yet, strangely, that was a positive sign. As I tilted my head to avoid a direct blast, I noticed that the colors bent. If I shifted slightly to the left, red beams collided with blue beams. If I shifted slightly to the right, blue collided with green. As I continue to shift and tilt, I noticed more and more intricate combinations. After a few minutes, the thought hit me: I was about to watch a concert through a kaleidoscope!
Once I grew accustomed to the colors schemes, I noticed that the music was just as trippy. It’d veer from jagged guitar to rumbling piano to manic drums and back – often within the same song. The only constant was Corgan’s menacing voice and demonic presence. He’d whisper, shriek, groan, sing in tune – anything to put the audience on edge.
As the show wore on, it seemed as if he was consciously going a step further – trying to alienate certain segments of the crowd. It brought me back to college, studying this guy Antonin Artaud, architect of Theater of Cruelty, who felt that the world had become so distressed and divided, the only way to fairly approach art was to alienate your own audience. I doubt this is exactly what Corgan was going for; Artaud seems like a more pretentious maniac. I do think he was trying to cast off any casual fans, however – i.e. the type that sat one row behind me griping, “What is this? When is he going to play a hit?”
The thing that was bizarre about the whole situation was that I was neither casual nor devoted. I had listened to the band’s entire discography and still hated them! At least with Rise Against, I’d liked an entire album beforehand (Audience of One). With Smashing Pumpkins, it was a limited to one song (“Everlasting Gaze”)! Equally strange was the fact that I’d lambasted Ben Folds a month earlier at the same venue for the reason cited by the guy behind me: “What is he doing? When is he going to play anything known?”
And yet, there I was, having a drug-free out-of-body experience. The performance was just so bold, so different, I didn’t see how anyone with half an imagination could refuse. Blackness would envelop the entire auditorium; then a dozen neon bursts would shine through. Vocally, he’d thrash through five bone-chilling verses and end on a falsetto. The scary part was, the falsetto was more frightening. The three-minute baseline, the five-minute guitar riff, the eleven-minute tribute to Pink Floyd…..it was indulgent, outrageous…and irresistible.
Corgan did not say a word to the audience before, during, or after the encore. He simply came back on, performed three especially Satanic / euphoric songs, and walked off. Some probably considered his behavior profoundly arrogant – especially when he walked off to massive guitar feedback – which seemed designed to drown out audience applause. After months of cookie-cutter concerts, though, I found it inspiring. You get so used to fake band-crowd connections, to forgone-conclusion final songs, that you want someone to go against the grain. You want to leave a concert and revel in the infinite strangeness of it all…
The thing that was bizarre about the whole situation was that I was neither casual nor devoted. I had listened to the band’s entire discography and still hated them! At least with Rise Against, I’d liked an entire album beforehand (Audience of One). With Smashing Pumpkins, it was a limited to one song (“Everlasting Gaze”)! Equally strange was the fact that I’d lambasted Ben Folds a month earlier at the same venue for the reason cited by the guy behind me: “What is he doing? When is he going to play anything known?”
And yet, there I was, having a drug-free out-of-body experience. The performance was just so bold, so different, I didn’t see how anyone with half an imagination could refuse. Blackness would envelop the entire auditorium; then a dozen neon bursts would shine through. Vocally, he’d thrash through five bone-chilling verses and end on a falsetto. The scary part was, the falsetto was more frightening. The three-minute baseline, the five-minute guitar riff, the eleven-minute tribute to Pink Floyd…..it was indulgent, outrageous…and irresistible.
Corgan did not say a word to the audience before, during, or after the encore. He simply came back on, performed three especially Satanic / euphoric songs, and walked off. Some probably considered his behavior profoundly arrogant – especially when he walked off to massive guitar feedback – which seemed designed to drown out audience applause. After months of cookie-cutter concerts, though, I found it inspiring. You get so used to fake band-crowd connections, to forgone-conclusion final songs, that you want someone to go against the grain. You want to leave a concert and revel in the infinite strangeness of it all…
Grade: A+
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