HU Podcast #26: A Tale of Two Cities
November 2nd, 2008 by christags: podcast, tour
Despite plans to the contrary, Jason and I recorded an impromptu podcast this week after what turned out to be quite an eventful weekend for Smashing Pumpkins fans. In an effort to get the podcast out in a timely manner, I did virtually no editing this week, so like a 4-track demo this is the raw podcast, warts and all. If you’re trying to avoid spoilers, be warned that we do talk about some of the songs that were played during both the Columbus and Cleveland shows.
Listen to the whole show (47:54)
(download)(iTunes)
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:54 pm
*If you had thought you were trying to avoid spoilers, you must have surprised yourself when you loaded up this website.
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Hey, Billy does say it as “oh-what-a”:
rC: “post- Graney”
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Here’s the one for Mrs. Todd Palin…
rC: “forego ily”
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:41 am
jjb, minor correction: 99 Floors WAS played outside of Fillmore in SF — see 8/12/2007, Stockholm:
http://www.spfc.org/tours/date.html?tour_id=1255
Cleveland was a fantastic show.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:37 am
song for a son IS genius
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:47 am
i’m one who found the Columbus show greatly enjoyable from a safe distance, i.e. through the liveblog, videos, and such. don’t tell me Monster Mash was pedestrian, that’s good shit! but yeah y’all who were there have every right to be disappointed. i think of something like that one Lollapalooza show that ended in kind of a clusterfuck of Billy and James openly taunting the crowd. it’s funny to listen to now, but i’m sure that too was embarrassing/infuriating for many fans in attendance.
i liked what was said about Billy’s possibly overgeneralized perceptions of the audience. i suspect he vastly underestimated how eager some fans would be for an acoustic show. like he described Sunkissed as the kind of song where people start throwing shit. so set 1 was the “trick” and set 2 was supposed to be the “treat” - wow, we get a real rock show after all! bit of a miscalculation.
thanks for the podcast, appreciate the vibraslap shoutout. peace.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:30 am
i was at the columbus show and it wasn’t embarrassing/infuriating at all. you just have to have a sense of humor, which i guess most people don’t these days.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:30 am
@JR: I said 99 Floors had never been performed “outside of San Francisco’s the Fillmore Fillmore in the United States.” That’s a true statement.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:28 am
@david: So you would rather have gotten the amusement of the one hour joke set rather than what could have been a one hour set of acoustic Pumpkins songs? If so, you’re more than entitled to your opinion, but surely you can understand why the majority of people may not see things the same way, regardless of their “sense of humor”, no?
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
@chris: i would take an hour of acoustic pumpkins songs, i would take a joke set. either way, it was going to be a unique night. it ended up being a lot more unique than people were expecting, and i, for one, count myself lucky to have been there.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 am
oh yeah, great description of Song For A Son.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
@david: Next time you order a daybed, I hope you are happy when they ship you a recliner ;)
rC: “objections 35″
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Here’s part of “Gingger’s Raga” from the “acoustic” set in Columbus. Notice how there isn’t anything happening that sounds like an acoustic guitar…
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
@jjb: that’s a bad analogy. what about “special acoustic halloween show” was inaccurate, exactly?
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
david: what about “special acoustic halloween show” was inaccurate, exactly?
I’ve already said my piece, on the podcast. It would be more useful for everyone if you would explain why you think “Special Acoustic Halloween Show” was fair billing of what transpired, if in fact you do think that.
rC: “Richard Harington”
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:04 pm
i think the phrase “special acoustic halloween show” perfectly sums up the night. i don’t know what more to say than that. what would have been “halloweenish” about playing an hour of smashing pumpkins songs acoustically? not to say i wouldn’t have liked that, but i don’t think there was any false advertising going on here at all.
special, as in different than normal.
acoustic, as in the acoustic instruments they were playing, which, by the way, would need to be plugged in or at least miked in order to be heard. and they did not have effects on all the time, just during solos. it was most definitely a traditional acoustic sound for about 90 percent of the set.
halloween, as in the holiday this show occurred on, which is a holiday that celebrates, among other things, taking on the persona of someone or something you aren’t.
and show, which is self explanatory, i think.
we got exactly what was advertised. whether it was enjoyable or not is up the each individual, but there is no need for all the outrage.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
@david: I don’t take issue with your enjoyment of the show, but the characterization of any part of it as “acoustic” is a misnomer. The Bridge School Benefit performance was an acoustic performance, Friday night was not. Once a decent-quality recording becomes available, everyone will be able to judge for themselves.
And I think inherent in the “special acoustic halloween show” is “Smashing Pumpkins”, since it was their name on the marquee. The problem with a straight-up comparison to, say, a Starchildren show is that concert, which also featured goofy covers, was not billed as a Smashing Pumpkins concert. If Friday’s show was not billed as a Smashing Pumpkins concert then I think it attracts an entirely different audience and is received much more positively. Billy has talked on sp.com about expectations of the band, but I think one baseline expectation is that the Smashing Pumpkins play (primarily) Smashing Pumpkins songs.
If we only look at the Smashing Pumpkins portion of the show, it was not special (the setlist was virtually identical to the August tour, albeit shorter and with a few new songs thrown in the mix) and it was not acoustic (as I have mentioned a number of times, no acoustic SP songs were played).
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:31 pm
i want to focus in on the “acoustic” as a supposed misnomer for a second. i don’t understand this argument at all. what isn’t acoustic about both jeff and billy playing acoustic guitars for the entire set? are you upset because jimmy wasn’t using brushes or ginger didn’t play an upright or something? yes they were plugged into their amps, but how would they be heard otherwise? you could mic the acoustic guitars themselves, but that would preclude moving around and just isn’t a very professional setup. i guarantee you that most bands playing acoustic shows are still playing through amps and even with effects.
if you’re talking about the second electric set, that most definitely was not acoustic. but the first hour of covers was acoustic. i don’t see how anyone can argue with that.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:19 pm
david: acoustic, as in the acoustic instruments they were playing, which, by the way, would need to be plugged in or at least miked in order to be heard. and they did not have effects on all the time, just during solos. it was most definitely a traditional acoustic sound for about 90 percent of the set.
having seen videos of Louie Louie, Hang On Sloopy, and Monster Mash, it does seem to me that they had distortion on their acoustic guitars throughout those entire songs. i assume this was part of the joke.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
David, no one is arguing that Billy and Jeff weren’t holding acoustic guitars. The argument is that the totality of what transpired should not have been sold as an “acoustic show”. Obviously acoustic guitars are going to be plugged in and miked, but like Chris said, the sound they made was not an acoustic-guitar sound (when the recordings come out I would encourage anyone who cares to contrast any of the Columbus “acoustic” songs to the sound of the acoustic songs performed in Cleveland), none of the “acoustic” songs were Pumpkins songs, and more than half of the concert was overtly electric. If that’s a “special acoustic show” then this comment is a special acoustic show, feat. reverberating sounds from my keystrokes…
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:45 pm
@tcm: i’m sure there’s a good chance the cameras that recorded this concert were overloaded to some extent and so it might sound like there was distortion on the acoustics. but, i can promise you, when you run an acoustic through a distortion pedal and into amps like billy and jeff use, you will know about it, not least of all due to all the feedback. and if you noticed, there was occasional feedback when the guys would add some gain to the signal for a solo. but for the most part, it was a pure acoustic sound. it was just loud, which it had to be to get over jimmy’s full kit. i was up close enough that what i was hearing was more stage noise than what was coming through the PA (i could barely hear billy’s vocal). never once did i think, “hey, they’re using distortion on their guitars,” except for solos. and i’m a guitar player so i pay attention to these things.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:53 pm
The special “joke” show at Columbus indulgence sounds so f*kin’ awesome. I wish I was there (inadvertent Floyd reference). I hope Corgan has turned off enough ‘casual’ fans so that SP can revert to playing clubs…Love it!
Four new songs at the Cleveland show?! I love the American Gothic rock machine – even when it is a bit referential on the Heavy Metal, e.g. the Sounds of Silence. We should refer to it as the Sounds of Silent Metal.
“Song for a Son” references the Stones’ “Angie” fur shure.
Random thought: It would be great if Corgan takes a stab at “I kissed a girl.” HA! *-)
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:05 pm
I have a feeling that since this was a Halloween show, the Pumpkins went with the “Trick or Treat” theme of the holiday and decided to play a trick on the audience… It would have been nice if they would have given the audience a treat at the end or at least acknowledged that it was a trick to allow others in the audience to get it.
Oh and yes as you said in the podcast Billy has returned on the stage before to thank the crowd. He actually did it at the last pumpkins concert I went too in Santa Cruz last year.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:20 pm
reports i’ve read say that Billy did explain when they came back that the first set was a joke, did he not?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:42 am
@tcm: yes, he explicitly said it was a joke. not sure what he was referring to…the meltdown or the set itself.
also, as far as billy saying an extended thank you to the crowd at the end of shows, i’ve seen the pumpkins 4 times, the earliest going back to 2000, and he did that every time. i assumed it was pretty common.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:10 am
What was the title of that song again you mentioned that only got played four times live and has never been released officially? I didn’t quite get it. Thanks!
November 4th, 2008 at 10:13 am
@Spag: That would have been Chrysanthemum
November 4th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
@Chris: Thanks! I’ll check it out.
November 4th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Chris - Any chance that you know a good recording for Chrysanthemum? I only found one and it has so much yelling in it, its impossible to listen to.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
@Phoenix: All 4 shows have multiple versions on archive.org (http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3AZwan%20AND%20year%3A%222001%22), I would assume at least one of those would sound pretty good.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
[…] 9:04pm: “Is this A Song for a Son?” Yes. “It sounds like Alice in Chains meets Pearl Jam.” Okay, that is not the description I gave on the podcast… […]