The Smashing Pumpkins - Festival Hall

Okay well before i talk about the gig let's get some things out of the way so we all realise the gravity of the situation...

The Smashing Pumpkins were without a doubt, one of the greatest and most influential bands of the 1990's. And when i say "one of" i mean like...top 5. Releasing their debut album Gish in the same year as the epic Ten and the era-defining Nevermind, these guys were the late bloomers of the bunch. But boy did they bloom, their second album Siamese Dream is still regarded as the seminal alternative rock album of the 1990's, and their epic, genre defying 28 song magnum opus, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness brought them the highest selling double album of the decade.

Not bad ey? But as all the great bands do, they fell from grace after a drug scandal forced drummer Jimmy Chamberlain to quit the band and enter rehab. In his absence The Smashing Pumpkins recorded a down-beat introspective record called Adore, which was slammed upon release and lost them half their fan-base. Only recently in retrospective articles have critics back-stepped, regarding it now as a masterpiece with fans finally accepting its avant-garde beauty...Kid A anyone...?

In 2000, they released a piece of shit covered in wankery, named Machina/The Machines of God, but to tell you the truth none of us were surprised. If you were a true Smashing Pumpkins fan, you always knew Billy had it in him, that wank was just dying to come out. Unfortunately it killed them and they broke up shortly afterwards.

Fast-Forward to last year. Reformation at Last! And an announcement in November that they would headline the 2008 V Festival. After all my praying and (i'm not joking) dreaming of seeing them live back in high-school, the Pumpkins were back! Granted, it was without James Iha and D'Arcy Wretzky, but it was rumoured they were so drug-fucked Billy had to play all their parts on Siamese Dream anyway. So that was no loss in my mind. As long as Jimmy and Saint Corgan were there, seeing them would be a box on my 'life to-do list' ticked.

Firstly. Shit venue. Festival Hall? For all the ethereal beauty and ornate melodies that encompass Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, why perform them in a soul-less, dank tin shed? Secondly, if you're not going to have a supporting band and plan on beginning your show at 7.45 on the dot, it would be wise to have that info on the ticket so at least half the crowd can arrive in time for the opening song. I was lucky enough to find out about the dinner-time start on the blogs but judging by the empty stands when the Pumpkins graced the stage, many others missed out on what was a spectacular opening, the sprawling 9.5 minute, Porcelina of the Vast Oceans.

Now, you would think any well-meaning band would play a 'greatest hits' set list after being on hiatus for the last eight years and not having toured the country in fourteen, but the Pumpkins had never liked to conform to people's expectations. Taking four songs to reach a crowd favourite, we finally smiled and sung with all the air we could muster for the beautifully string-laden, Tonight, Tonight.

This circumstance would epitomise the concert. When the band gave the crowd what they wanted, Festival Hall was transformed into a gathering of love, nostalgia and admiration not unlike the hippie communes of the 1960's. But more often than not, the egos of the Pumpkins just wouldn't give that to us.

It may seem controlling and obnoxious of me to want a band to only play crowd favourites, but when you have the ability (which not many bands do) to have an entire set of hits and anthems (which they haven't played in 8 years)...why play unknown or obscure trash? Superchrist an 8 minute unreleased heavy metal affair was interesting, but it was hard to see past the potential for that 8 minutes to be filled with something a little bit more crowd satisfying.

And alas, such early disappointment was only a hint of what was to come. Bad song choices such as Lily (my one and only), easily the worst song off their otherwise brilliant Mellon Collie album, when chosen over so many other classics led this reviewer to feel that the band was specifically trying to piss off fans. A feeling that was cemented after they ended their concert with a B-side to their 1996 single, Thirty Three called My Blue Heaven, a piece of broadway piano pomp. Perhaps choose the A-side over the B-side next time Billy...

That is not to say the entire concert was a crushing disappointment. A beautiful and heartfelt rendition of Mayonaise was both unexpected and touching in a way that literally had tears streaming down my face, and acoustic versions of 1979 and its sister song Perfect were nothing short of magnificent. Today received a similar overwhelming reception to Bullet With Butterfly Wings, both of which got a semi-decent mosh-pit going. The highlight of the concert though was Drown. Written for the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe's movie Singles in 1992 but also featuring on their greatest hits Rotten Apples, its melodic beauty using their trademark loud-soft dynamic was just gorgeous, truly mesmerising stuff...

But these points of emphatic glory only served to highlight the unnecessary large amounts of shit that surrounded them. Personally, it was hard to appreciate the moment knowing that it was most likely going to be followed by an obscure, nothing song or piece of guitar wank. I'm certain that the Pumpkins wanted to do whatever the fuck they wanted that night and merely gave the crowd some scraps to chew on. As soon Billy felt that he'd given us the mandatory 5 hits, that was it, time for the inevitable trip to to BillyWorld....the land of songs only he knows, filled with gross amounts of distortion and feedback.

And that's the awful thing about inevitability because after dumbfounding the audience by ending the concert on a song that sounded like it came from Guys and Dolls, the house lights went up and I found myself surrounded by a few thousand angry Pumpkins fans. Billy returned after about ten minutes (which seemed like an eternity), and quickly placated the crowd with The Everlasting Gaze, a single of mediocre brilliance. The crowd were rapturous though, by now, obviously the frame of mind was to enjoy anything that was the least bit familiar...

The next 30 minutes of the concert was a waste of my valuable time. After playing another B-side, this time one from their lowest selling album of the 1990's Adore, they segued into three teasing covers; Britney Spears's Piece of Me, Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth and AC/DC's Let There be Rock. After ten minutes of that unnecessary rabble, Billy had obviously noticed the yawns emitting from Festival Hall, giving us one last oldie, Crush, an album track off their debut Gish...hardly the monster hit, but still more satisfying than the previous four songs put together.

So just when we all thought he might end the concert with a few treats to have us all smiling and feeling warm on the way out....he went and pissed us off a little further. There was so much noise surrounding me at this point, a cover of the vocal-less Pink Floyd song Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun was played without me knowing, and must've melted into their utterly deplorable song off last year's release Zeitgeist, the ten minute long United States.

Honestly, United States is the most boring and despicably repetitive piece of shit I've ever heard, and just for kicks, they like to drag it out to twenty minutes when they do it live. I would actually rather be at a Delta Goodrem concert than The Smashing Pumpkins while they play that song. It just never ends. The fact that i didn't even know they had played the Pink Floyd cover until i looked up the set list on the band's website is indicative of the length of unrecognizable guitar distortion and feedback we had to endure. And then. It was over.

No old-school track to finish on. No classic anthem to have everyone sing-a-long with. Nup. That's not the Pumpkins way. After over 30 minutes of mindless guitar trickery (which anyone with expensive effects pedals could do) they left the stage, never to return. And then came the boos...

And i don't blame them, the concert had the potential to be a reaffirmation of great 90's American Rock Music, but instead it was a conformation that Billy Corgan is one of the biggest tossbags in the music industry. A message to the giant himself: Come back to Australia if you ever take the time to squeeze that big, bald head of yours out from your rectum. And one last thing Billy, if you've made millions of dollars over the past decade by merchandising your iconic ZERO shirt, and thousands of people turn up to your shows wearing it, play the fucking song.