Halloween came early on Saturday night at the Charlottesville Pavilion. A booming and sometimes scary sonic landscape, stunning visuals, a few creepy costumes, and of course, Smashing Pumpkins. It was quite the treat.
[ Photos by Tom Daly ]
Self-admittedly, Billy Corgan does not like to play his old hits. This is completely understandable and respectable, and shockingly, it seemed as though the young audience didn’t seem to mind. The joy of seeing one of the top bands of the 90’s in our hometown seemed to be plenty pleasing for the fresh faces of UVA students peppered among the slightly-balding heads of aging Pumpkins fans. Billy Corgan, 41, stuck a few jabs at the fans who came and expected to hear SP’s Greatest Hits from front to back. I believe only three of these songs were actually played (Today, Tonight Tonight, and Bullet with Butterfly Wings), with Today dubbed specifically “a gift for you guys” from Corgan. Praising the youth of America, and even throwing in a brief version of The National Anthem brought the Pumpkins right up to the border of politicizing the show, but tactfully not quite over the line.
SP’s new tunes, the majority I presume from their latest album Zeitgeist, seemed fairly similar to the classic Pumpkins style. A small acoustic set sandwiched between Corgan’s soaring and layered electric guitar-based songs was a welcome respite to the heaviness, but also quite unexpected. To make it simple, the main difference between the new songs and the old hits was that the young audience didn’t seem quite as familiar with the newer material.
Speaking of youth, the Pumpkins were an extremely welcome addition to this season’s Pavilion lineup. With the line for the show reaching back to Five Guys on the Mall before gates opened at 6PM, it was quite obvious that the younger side of Charlottesville has been itching for a band like the Pumpkins to come to town. With any luck, the seemingly strong ticket sales from the show will help bring more young acts in the future.
I personally thought the visuals were one of the strongest aspects of the show. Perhaps because I’m more of an early Pumpkins fan, or maybe just because I have a natural penchant for the visual side of concerts. Either way, the Pumpkins were hands down the best light show the Pavilion has seen since The Flaming Lips in 2006. This lends itself quite well to photos, so enjoy!
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Tagged as: charlottesville va pavilion, concerts, smashing pumpkins charlottesville pavilion, smashing pumpkins photos
[…] Daly of the cvilleMUSE blog has more, along with his sometimes-inaccurate commentary on the show: SP’s new tunes, the majority from […]
Tom, great pics! What lens/camera combo did you use?
Nice work, Daly.
Mr. D. Superb pics. Thanks for taking care of business.
bad ass, Tom. I heard some really terrible reviews of this show from several different groups, but I’m glad you had fun with the camera.
At one point, Corgan mentioned playing to a lot of older audiences and pointed out that the audience at the Cville show was a younger crowd, which turned out to be a preamble to his trying to claim that the younger audiences don’t mind not hearing the hits/old stuff and are fine with the new stuff.
Unfortunately for Corgan, after praising the younger audience, he then brought up the topic of the hits/old stuff vs. the newer Pumpkins and the younger crowd didn’t follow his lead and erupted into applause at the mention of the hits/old stuff. Corgan even pointed out that if the crowd knew him at all, they would have known that that was the wrong time to cheer.
Luckily, he shut his mouth soon after and got back to rocking.
Thank god for Jimmy Chamberlain. Without him, the Pumpkins would truly be a shell of their former selves.
Tom, you and your camera did a much better job of catching that show than I did–keep the essays coming!
Nice post, Tom. I don’t care what the stupid Hipster United jerk says, your writing is great and is the perfect accompaniment to your amazing photos. Keep doing what you’re doing.
[…] Pumpkins came to Charlottesville last night. I’ll have more in a photo essay on CvilleMUSE soon. They had an amazing light show, which led to some cool […]
[…] Greg Sloan on drums, MUSE contributing photographer Tom Daly on bass [here’s Tom’s Smashing Pumpkins photo essay for starters!], and former MUSE contributing writer NewmaN on guitar [his 23-part Chronicles of […]