We attended a couple of concerts during the last week. The first was quite an amazing, unique experience. It was put on by Billy Corgan (front man of The Smashing Pumpkins and hero from my teenage-plus years) and a few of his friends (Dave Navarro from Jane's Addiction included) at a coffee shop named Muddy Waters here in Santa Barbara. Yeah, a coffee shop. I couldn't believe it at first either. Tickets sales were limited to 100, making for an intimate show with an artist I once saw headline in front of crowd of 100,000 on the streets of Minneapolis in the late 90s. I've seen him play a few other times as well and waited all day to "meet" him once at an autograph signing, but last Thursday sort of makes all of that irrelevant.
R and I arrived 20 minutes before the show and ran into actor Paul Walker on the street talking to somebody about how he wanted a ticket. That's right -- we were going to a show that Paul Walker couldn't get into. I had bought our tickets online a week earlier after seeing an announcement about them on Twitter. Strangely they were on sale two hours before they were supposed to be, giving me an advantage over anyone who didn't bother to check early.
The venue for this concert was not much bigger the living room of our condo. Billy and the band suddenly appeared at one end of the room, warmed up for a few minutes, and started playing. There were no stage lights (practically no stage at all) and little amplification. The sound quality wasn't perfect, but it was better than I expected for the space.
The first set of songs was on the quieter/folksier side. Maybe I'm getting old, but that's the way I prefer it these days. Billy was trying out new tunes and playing some covers rather than relying on Pumpkins hits or even his previous solo material. He is known for moving forward rather than repeating himself, even if it displeases the crowd. He didn't have to worry about that in front of this group of mega-fans. At one point somebody shouted "Play whatever you want Billy!" rather than requesting a tune. That was refreshing. I'm more than willing to put my faith in an artist to pick out the right tunes.
The second set was electric and pretty much set the place on fire (we had the sweat to show for it). One thing I always I liked about the Pumpkins is that even their harder rocking songs have strong melodies behind them. That's what sets them apart from a metal band. They also have such dynamic range – slow to fast, soft to loud; sometimes within the same song – that makes for an incredibly compelling listen, even the first time through.
The entire show is available for listening here, if you're interested. There are a few places where I can actually identify R chatting between songs in the recording. We were only three rows back after all.
The complete performance was outstanding, but if you’re going to pick only a few songs to check out, I really recommend "Widow Wake My Mind" and "Freak." Those were two specific instances when I became totally lost in the music, eyes welled up and heart full. Finding moments like that is the goal of every concert-going experience for me. It's unfortunate they occur as rarely as they do.
On top of all that, we got to meet Billy afterwards. He was standing around outside, chatting it up with people, posing for photos... no security, no lines, just a gathering of people cooling off after a warm show. What a night it was! A week later I still can't get the experience out of my head.
See a few more of my photos from the show here.
And read a review from the local paper, as well as some additional audience comments, right here.
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