Date: Fri 31-Jan-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A10

Quick Words:

concert-Smashing-Pumpkins

Full Text:

(rev Smashing Pumpkins concert @New Haven Coliseum, 1/31/97)

Concert Review-

Another Smashingly Good Show

BY SHANNON HICKS

NEW HAVEN - Your band has already won everything from Best Video of the Year,

Best Alternative Video and Breakthrough Video - among the seven awards (of

eight nominations) taken home from the 1996 MTV Video Awards; received Album

of the Year nods from Time magazine, and in the readers' polls in Rolling

Stone and Request magazine; not to mention Best Album Cover from readers of

the same magazines; had your latest album named Best International Album from

a well-read Portugal publication, Blitz ; and was named Best Band by readers

of Beat magazine and the editors of Puls magazine, both from Norway.

Additionally, your first album ( Gish , 1991) has gone gold; your second album

( Siamese Dream , 1993) has been certified quadruple platinum; and even a

collection of B-sides and rarities has exceeded platinum sales levels. Your

latest album - a double-length collection called Mellon Collie and the

Infinite Sadness - has sold over seven million copies in the United States

alone, making it the highest selling double CD of the 1990s. Plus there are

the worldwide sales of Mellon Collie which continue to rack up the figures -

ten times platinum in Canada, three times platinum in Australia and New

Zealand, another double platinum's worth of sales in Ireland, platinum in

Portugal and Belgium, and gold in another eight countries.

Not to mention you have just been named Best Alternative Band at the 1997

People's Choice Awards.

What are you gonna do now?

If you are an athletic figure, you get your name plastered on everything from

the front of cereal boxes to the bottoms of sneakers. Or you make commercials

for Disney World.

If you're Billy Corgan and his band of musicians, you continue to conquer the

world by adding dates to your tour schedule. Originally planning to play over

100 dates across North America during the last six months of 1996, the band's

current tour has turned into a 1996-97 world tour.

Last Saturday night, Connecticut fans were treated to a show by The Smashing

Pumpkins for the second time in less than three months. And judging by the

number of people that turned out - nearly a full house - it wasn't soon enough

for the return of the great Pumpkin.

A word of advice: If you want to get onto Billy Corgan's good side, don't sit

in your seat - especially if you are on the floor, within the first dozen or

so rows from the stage - and yell out "Landslide!" about 500 times during a

Smashing Pumpkins concert.

Not at all a good idea.

For one thing, if the Pumpkins don't usually play "Landslide" on the road, a

song covered on Pisces Iscariot , they certainly weren't going to be playing

it last weekend, no matter how much someone kept yelling for it.

For another, by annoying Corgan with the ridiculous request, not only was

someone reminded of the fact Smashing Pumpkins doesn't play the single - one

of the band's most popular songs, right up there with "Drown," the band's

envied contribution to the Singles movie soundtrack - but, said Corgan, "This

pretty much guarantees we won't play [that song] any time soon... so stop

yelling," Corgan admonished.

However, Corgan and his cohorts - bassist D'Arcy, guitarist Jimmy Iha, touring

drummer Matt Walker and touring keyboardist Dennis Flemion - not only returned

to the state for another smashingly good show, the band expanded its

performance to include more songs this time around from Mellon Collie , fewer

from Siamese Dream .