Smashing Pumpkins – 11/11/2008 – D.A.R. Constitution Hall

Robin made chicken cutlets for dinner. Baked. They were pretty good. We drank iced tea with the meal. After dinner we made our way to the metro, took it to Farragut West, and walked seven blocks down to DAR Constitution Hall. We’re walking up the steps to the venue when we see a guy on a motorcycle spill and slide halfway down 18th Street. Another guy in a pick-up truck gets out, asks if the motorcycle guy is alright, says he didn’t realize “it was a one-way street.” We couldn’t figure out what just happen, who was going which way and who almost hit who, but we made our way inside thinking that would be the only anomaly to an otherwise perfect evening.

Boy, were we wrong.

We get drinks at the bar. Robin gets a Bud Light, I get a Heineken. We can’t drink the beers at our seats so we hang outside the auditorium, people-watching. I’m amazed at how the Smashing Pumpkins fans are all in their 30s. At first it looked like a fanbase that grew up with the band but on closer inspection, seeing all of the sports coats and polo shirts, I realized this was a nostalgia trip for most of the audience. Chances are this is the first time most of these folks would be hearing songs from Adore, the Machina albums, or Zeitgeist. For the sake of the show, I was hoping they wouldn’t be hearing too many of those songs for the first time.

Boy, was I wrong.

We take our seats and there’s this girl sitting in front of us. She reeks of sour milk and she’s as high as a kite attached to a fucking rocket. I think she asks us what seats we’re in, I can’t be sure. Her boyfriend comes over and gobbles her up into his arms, gets her hair off her neck, asks if she’s alright. She responds by projectile vomiting on the guy in front of her. The dude has metal hair and now it’s covered with chunks of white vomit. It’s all over his shirt. The girl’s boyfriend quickly escorts her out of the auditorium. The guy with puke all over him runs after the two of them and says something along the lines of, “Dude, she puked in my fucking hair.” The boyfriend says something like, “What the hell am I supposed to do? Say I’m sorry? I’m sorry!” Robin goes to get someone to clean the shit up. The guy with puke all over him takes his shirt off and reveals the most mother-fucking metal tattoo of all time across his entire back. No-one’s coming to clean up the puke – it smells rancid. I figure they’ll get to it before the music starts.

Boy, was I wrong.

The lights go out and Jimmy Chamberlin starts pounding on the drums. The rest of the band comes on stage. There’s puke everywhere and people standing in the aisles, waiting for someone to clean it up. As Billy Corgan begins wailing into the microphone someone comes out with a mop, a dustpan, and a paper towel. That’s what’s used to clean the puke. It doesn’t do the job. The Pumpkins are doing all post-Mellon Collie songs; no-one knows what the fuck’s going on except for a select few. The applause are restrained, the crowd is bored. It tracks like “Tonight” and “Today” to get people into it. And then it’s back to the Machina and Zeitgeist tracks and the audience never really comes back. But the girl that puked came back and she was so fucked up that she didn’t even realize she was standing and dancing in her own puke and rubbing her body against the puke-covered chair. The Pumpkins keep rocking, they sounded so tight. They did “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning” and the nerd in me couldn’t help but picture Dr. Manhattan destroying Vietnamese soldiers. They end with a noise art track that would put Sonic Youth to shame and then walk off. I imagined they’d never grace this lame-ass audience with an encore.

Boy, was I wrong.

I firmly believe that most bands consider three options for the encore. The rocking encore, the no encore, and, if the audience really sucks, the “Fuck You” Encore. If this wasn’t a Fuck You encore I don’t know what is. They did “We Only Come Out at Night,” a great track but not an encore track. Oh…and they didn’t really sing the whole song – they used kazoos for half of it. Then Billy Corgan got heckled by an audience member, he heckled right back (UPDATE: Some more on the heckler here. Also, reading through the site's archived post I'm realizing the Pumpkins are happily becoming the Andy Kaufmans of rock). He then starts talking about how they haven’t sold out in over twenty years. About how they spent three weeks rehearsing for this two-night show where they were spreading 48 songs out over five-hours of playing. And how that’s not what sell-outs do. It was awkward disguised as funny. And that was their encore. It was, without a doubt, a “Fuck You” encore.

Don’t get me wrong, the Pumpkins put on a great show. But between motorcycle accidents, puking girls, and a dead audience everything was just kind of killed. And to make things worse, McCormick & Schmick’s wasn’t having their usual late-night happy hour specials because it’s a holiday. And the calamari sucked. And Robin and I got into a mini-fight.

So, on the whole, a complete let-down of a night. I’ve been looking forward to it for a couple of months but, you know, shit happens. And that my Smashing Pumpkins concert review: shit happens.

Labels: music, review

follow JayRodriguez at http://twitter.com