What about the mess it makes?

So, on Tuesday, me and Susie wearily went to see the Smashing Pumpkins at Shepherds Bush Empire.

We (well, she) had already found out there wasn't going to be any support at this one, which suggested they would be playing for a while, which they certainly did with an almost three hour set, making it the longest single artist gig I had ever seen (oooooooooooo).

We actually rolled up at 6:30 for 7pm doors as we were in the seats (thank god) and they were unreserved so we needed to be early to get good ones, which we did, although not front row as there was already quite a queue when we turned up. One of the early things we spotted was a few people with Pearl Jam t-shirts, and it was quite obvious that a lot of the crowd had been to both concerts, which makes sense seeing as they became popular around similar times in the early nineties.

Back to the music, and it was pretty good. The band has taken on various guises over the years (Billy Corgan called them Smashing Pumpkins Mark IV), but I think he has such a distinctive voice that it doesn't really matter who is playing the other instruments as the collective was not as important. They came out all colour co-oridinated in white, with Billy wearing some kind of robe (which he later discarded, but still had white underneath). To be fair, he is a bit of a weirdo anyway.

I had heard people say they were not very good live, and I guess if you go to concerts to have the band interact with the audience then you would be disappointed (he introduced two songs from the new album, and made a little joke about David Beckham at the end, but that's about it), but musically I thought they were very good. Again, in the three hour set I recognised only five songs, and could probably sing along to bits of three of those, but unlike the night before, it didn't seem to be as long as it was, which was good, and they played my favourite of theirs, tonight, tonight (below)



As an aside, tickets were going for £250 outside.....that is just mental, they weren't THAT good