Date: Fri 08-Nov-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A12

Quick Words:

concert-Smashing-Pumpkins

Full Text:

(rev Smashing Pumpkins concert at Hartford Civic Center, 11/8/96)

Concert Review-

The Best Way To Wrap Up Halloween Week?

A Date With The Greatest Pumpkins Of All

(with photo)

BY SHANNON HICKS

HARTFORD - With Mischief Night on Wednesday and Halloween on Thursday, how

else to achieve closure for a spooky work week than to attend a concert by the

band Smashing Pumpkins? Even Linus would have left the pumpkin patch for this

show!

Pulling into Hartford to perform, even with two of the band's key players

battling illness, Smashing Pumpkins - a band that has been honored with Album

of the Year kudos by everyone from Time magazine's editors to readers' polls

in Rolling Stone and Request magazines, scored cover stories this summer on

both Spin and Rolling Stone , and took home seven MTV Video Music Awards last

year, including Best Video and Best Alternative Video - performed for nearly

two hours, even providing good Halloween scares themselves.

Early into the November 1 show, lead singer and guitarist Billy Corgan -

sporting a shaved head and his infamous black "Zero" T-shirt from the band's

award-winning album cover for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (he owns

more than one copy of the shirt, obviously) - announced he was having trouble

with his ears. He couldn't hear a thing, he insisted, and didn't have a clue

how the show was sounding.

Luckily for the band, the performance was not only ear-bleedingly loud, but

fan-pleasingly good. Corgan's ear problems didn't seem to affect his singing,

which sounded as strong as it does on any given good night. Which helps

explain why, along with Corgan's intense and at times beautiful songwriting,

Mellon Collie... has become the highest selling double-CD of the Nineties

(seven times platinum in the US alone; another ten times platinum in Canada,

with countless multi-platinum sales in another handful of countries).

Corgan put another good fright into the Pumpkins' rapt, wide age-ranging

audience when he announced about an hour later that D'Arcy, the band's bass

player, was fighting the flu. When he paused for dramatic effect, it worked:

It looked like the show was going to be over, just seventy minutes in, but

D'Arcy pushed on, along with Corgan, guitarist James Iha, touring drummer Matt

Walker (who was the band Filter's drummer when Filter opened for the Pumpkins'

European leg of the current tour), and touring keyboardist Dennis Flemion.

Before closing up shop for the night (and getting a few hours of some

well-earned sleep), the band covered much of its new album, opening the show

with Mellon Collie 's title track, performing "Tonight, Tonight," "Bullet With

Butterfly Wings" and "1979" - the released singles to date - with unreleased

songs; "Cherub Rock" and "Today," among other cuts from 1993's Siamese Dream ;

"Landslide" from 1994's Pisces Iscariot ; and even sneaking in "Drown," a huge

cult favorite the band put onto the Singles movie soundtrack.