It seems like just yesterday The Smashing Pumpkins announced that the band was breaking up, and the band members would be venturing out to do their own thing. James Iha joined The Perfect Circle, Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain formed Zwan, and I have no idea what Darcy ended up doing with herself (though – she quit the band prior to the band formally calling it quits). While these side projects were good, they definitely didn’t fill the void that was left when the pumpkins broke up. So when Billy Corgan took out a full page ad to announce that the pumpkins would be reuniting late last year, I was stoked, and planned to attend one or more of the reunion shows.
My first chance came this week when the pumpkins played a two night stint at the lovely Fox theatre. I was fortunate to get tickets to both shows, and am extremely glad I did! Billy opened night one with four acoustic songs, including my personal favorite “Disarm.” After the acoustic set, the other band members (Jimmy Chamberlain, Ginger Reyes and Jeff Schroeder) joined Billy and his electric guitar to play a number of new songs, as well as some of the classics. In addition to the four acoustic songs Billy played to open the show, the band played “Bullet with butterfly wings,” “Hummer,” “Drown,” “Glass and the ghost children,” “1979,” “Cherub Rock,” “Tonight Tonight,” “Today,” “Tarantula,” “Set the Ray to Jerry,” “Heavy metal machine,” “Perfect” and a few songs I didn’t recognize. The opening night was awesome, and I was hopeful night two would be just as good!
On night two, the band came out dressed in white and immediately went to town on what turned out to be one of the best sets I have ever heard them play. The band opened with their mega-hit “Today,” and followed that with “Stand inside your love,” “Ava Adore,” “To Sheila, “Bullet with butterfly wings,” “Tonight Tonight,” “1979,” “Cherub Rock,” “Tarantula,” “Bring the light,” “Rocket,” “Drown,” “Zero,” “Thirty-Three,” “Starla,” and a drawn out version of “Heavy metal machine” (the songs are not listed in the actual order they played them). Night two was definitely the better of the two nights, but I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t play “Disarm.” I can empathetically say the band sounded incredible live, and it appears they didn’t drop a step from when I saw them on their Machine fair-well tour several years ago. While I have no idea what the future holds for the pumpkins, hopefully Billy will decide to keep making and playing music under the pumpkins name. Viva la rock and roll!