SMASHING PUMPKINS/GARBAGE
Rolling Stone Online - November 15, 1996
Carolina Coliseum,
Chapel Hill, N.C., Nov. 11
Where to begin to capture the essence of Monday's careening, elusive odyssey of a performance by the Smashing Pumpkins? At the start of the band's sprawling two-and-a-half hour concert at the Carolina Coliseum, when the stark, plaintive piano intro of "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" bathed the audience in dramatic darkness? At the end of the band's three encores, when the Pumpkins drove to new and utterly staggering dimensions on an extended psychedelic reading of "Silverfuck"?
Or perhaps somewhere in between, when head Pumpkin Billy Corgan and his retooled outfit put their coat of many colors and moods on audacious display: warmth and distance, focus and confusion, rage and vulnerability?
Clad in his tour uniform of silversurfer pants and black shirt with "Zero" emblazoned across its front, Corgan was, on this night, many things to many people -- 7,000 people in fact -- and he played each role the crowd had assigned him (and he assigned himself) with equal authority. In one guise he was the picked-on geek kid finally getting his revenge with a guitar; in another, the brooding artisan no one understood; and finally, the sardonic rock star mocking the cliche of his own existence.
Fiery, extravagant and commanding, Corgan conveyed a sense of balance and strength that was somewhat surprising considering recent events that included a fan being crushed to death at a concert in Ireland; the heroin overdose death of touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin in July; and the subsequent firing of original drummer Jimmy Chamberlain for drug-related problems. The band, in deciding to continue its tour, are using drummer Matt Walker from the band Filter and Frogs keyboardist Dennis Flemion as replacements. Each performed well in their new jobs Monday night.
In fact, the Pumpkins' recent tragedies may have given them the impetus to prove something to the crowd, and maybe to themselves. And not just through the brutal force and sheer intensity with which they set out to deliver their 20-song set, but also in the band's attempt to reach out and connect with its audience (at one point, with Corgan and guitarist James Iha acting as cheesy emcees, the Pumpkins plucked six kids from the crowd to dance on stage during their cruising anthem "1979").
Overall, the show's only drawback was the tendency of the band's most bludgeoning songs to blend together and become indistinct pounding underneath Corgan's caterwauling screech. Thoughtful melody, not pummeling rhythm, has always been the Pumpkins' real strength, and their most arresting and ambitious songs by and large draw from the quieter places in Corgan's mind. The orchestral, epic grandeur of "Tonight, Tonight," for example, was given a lavish and authoritative reading rendered with delicacy and power. The dynamic melodic shifts of "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans" and the "grunge-era nugget" (as Corgan sarcastically put it) of "Drown" made songs like "Tales of A Scorched Earth" seem pedestrian in comparison.
Catharsis came at evening's end, during avant-garde, stratosphere-skipping versions of "Silverfuck" and "Hummer" that found the band holding onto fragments of the original songs' structures even as it sketched out new sonic territories and explored shimmering worlds beyond its familiar terrain. Indeed, by not being content to settle for concert staples like "Today," the Smashing Pumpkins proved they're a band for tomorrow as well.
The glitter-trash outfit Garbage opened the show with a 10-song, 45-minute set that featured crunching, dynamite versions of just about every tune off the band's self-titled debut album. Although the stacked layers of full-bore distortion blunted the sound a bit, there was no hiding the irresistible pop sensibilities buried underneath Garbage's technological toys and industrial-meets-trip hop roar. Lead singer Shirley Manson was a strutting, sneering focal point and drummer-producer Butch Vig seemed to get as big a kick out of his band's maelstrom as the rest of us.