No Frost On Pumpkins in Fleet Center blitz
By Jim Sullivan
Boston Globe
November 6, 1996
Thanks to Artmode@ix.netcom.com
"Did everyone vote?" asked Smashing Pumpkins singer-guitarist Billy Corgan from the satge at the FleetCenter Tuesday night. "We didn't, so we can't say to much about that. We were too busy being a rock band...We're sardonic/ironic."
Of course, they are, but it was said as if they weren't, just as Corgan always wears his "ZERO" T-shirt on stage-signifying the true nothingness of rock stardom?-but the vendors peddle the shirt in the lobby. That's just one part of the conundrum in Pumpkinland. Two more, both of which resounded during Tuesday night's 105 minute assault(on the ears and eyes):
1.The Smashing Pumpkins are a much better-more melodic, more complex- band in the studio than they are in concert.
2.They are too concerned about putting forth a gnashing punk rock grind-four straight thrashers at the onset after the grandiose piano intro of "Melloncollie and the Infinite Sadness" and back to the sound later on.
The pumps are aware of their semi-spurious in the alt-rock world-many of the Nirvana/Bush crowd find them too darn arty or melodic, their roots questionable.
Fair enough, but so what? Tuesday night, it seemed the Pumpkins wanted the matter put to reat and attempted to do so by putting the hammer down. Problem: They can be a steamroller- with Corgan, guitarist James Iha and bassist D'arcy flattening most everything faintly melodic into a pancake. They played in front of an Apollo-like light tower with large video screens.
When they were good, they were very, very good. And when they were bad...well, you know the rest of that one. The Pimpkins swerve between being hardcore punks(WBFTD) and Pink Floyd wannabes(Disarm, Porcelina), as they boarded the express train to noodleville. In concert, Uncle Fester look- alike Corgan has a caustic, braying vocal quality-he can sound as if he's hectoring even as he's trying to uplift.
But, yes, they can be clever, bitting pop/rock band as "Today," "Tonight, Tonight,"and, especially "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" showed. If you dig futility, this is your anthem. But, as a wholein concert, the Pumpkins were a hard rock to swallow. A little too abrasive, a little too overbearing, a little too in-your-face and all-out.