Life In A. Minor: How to Tour Past Your Prime

By Broadside Style Columnist Andy Minor

Two summers ago, at the Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts, Steven Patrick Morrissey, famed lead singer of The Smiths and his own successful solo career, played a birthday concert for me. Well, it wasn't really for me, but it was on the day before my birthday, so I'm going to consider it a birthday concert.

It was an amazing show, probably one of the best I've ever seen, even considering Morrissey has a bit more gray hair and a few more chunky pounds than he did in his heyday. He interacted with the crowd, danced around stage, even took his shirt off, though the shirtless maneuver was about 20 years too late. He also played a beefy set containing songs that spanned his entire career—Smiths and otherwise—which says a lot because everyone knows
Morrissey hates The Smiths and his associations with them.

Regardless, he didn't back away from those songs which made him famous. He sang with the same intensity on all his numbers and really connected with his audience. Top rate show, even for a guy who could have easily stopped touring in 1992.

These wonderful Morrissey memories really put me off this week when I heard about the atrocities committed by the Smashing Pumpkins at their DAR Constitution Hall show last Tuesday—they played another show with another set Wednesday, but I haven't talked to anyone who went to that one, yet.

But before I begin to tear down the Pumpkins for playing a terrible show, let me just reaffirm that I am an enormous Smashing Pumpkins fan. I doubt I would have made it through my sixteenth year of life without constantly listening to the Pumpkins. To every immature, awkward emotion I was feeling at the time, my Pumpkins had written a song about it. I watched the videos, I memorized the lyrics, I wore the infamous Zero shirt, I did it all.

Obviously, most of these obsessions have carried through to today, where I still enjoy hearing the Pumpkins every now and then, partially as a nostalgic look back, partially because it's damn good music. When I heard a few years ago that the band was getting back together, I was ecstatic.

I thought I might be able to fulfill my teenagehood dreams of seeing my beloved Pumpkins live in concert. Then I found out they were producing a new album, and my heart sank.

It was this new album, Zeitgeist, which made me vow that I would never see the Pumpkins without the aid of a time machine. Why? Because the last thing I want is to go see a band I love play songs I hate.

I know they would probably pump through a few old classics, but if I know Billy Corgan, Mr. Early-Decade-Failed-Solo-Projects, he would only want to play his new songs in an attempt to force the public to like them more than his old hits. Not only that, he would probably play his old hits in his new style, which is more distorted, heavier and louder than I care to hear. The beauty of the old Pumpkins was how they straddled the three way line between alternative, metal and punk, and still came off sounding polished and clear. With age these skills were lost, and we were left with the songs on Zeitgeist; muddled, ugly and speaking to none of my leftover teenage angst.

Naturally, I wasn't surprised when I talked to a friend who went to see the Pumpkins last Tuesday night, and she proclaimed that it was one of the worst shows she had ever seen. Looking at the set list, I can easily understand why: only about a quarter of the show were actual Pumpkins hits.

The rest of the songs played were “new” Pumpkins which seems entirely inappropriate, considering this is supposed to be their 20th Anniversary Tour. In my mind, an anniversary tour celebrates your past, through which you gained success, not how great the current music you make is.

So when frontman Billy Corgan opted to play four songs before even approaching one of his classics, the audience was less than impressed. People were sitting down bored, which apparently pissed off Corgan to the point of making backhanded jabs at the fans who were already expressing their disapproval. At one point he got in a fight with a fan who criticized the band for playing a terrible show.

Corgan did nothing to connect himself to the audience who came to hear their favorite band play their favorite songs, so he played a terrible show.

This awful concert is a good example of a band or a person ignoring the fans who made them famous and made it possible for them to be career musicians. Usually I see this sort of behavior out of classic rock bands from the late ‘70s.

“Queen and Paul Rogers” is a good example; I could not imagine enjoying a Queen concert with anyone but Freddie Mercury at the microphone. I understand that the other members of Queen want to play their songs again, and that's fine, but recording an album and going on tour without your famous frontman is like having Christmas without presents.

Paul Rogers sounds nothing like Freddie Mercury, and the new Queen sounds nothing like Queen should. This alienates fans and is nothing but a selfish endeavor by a group of men who can't get over the fact that their success is done with. I'm angry that the outward connections bands have with fans get severed like this so often, and I'm even more peeved that it happened to the Smashing Pumpkins, but sometimes you've just got to accept it. At least I've still got all my worn out CDs and tons of great Pumpkins memories.