Belief Is Just Some Faith

The Smashing Pumpkins @ PNC Bank Arts Center, NJ 7/29/2015
Cherub Rock / Bullet with Butterfly Wings / Tonight, Tonight / Ava Adore / Drum + Fife / One and All (We Are) / The Everlasting Gaze / Zero / The Crying Tree of Mercury / Mayonaise / Disarm / Landslide / 1979 / Run2Me / Thru the Eyes of Ruby / Stand Inside Your Love / United States

As you can see, The Smashing Pumpkins are aiming to please on this tour. The timing makes sense – Jimmy Chamberlain is back on drums, this is a double bill with Marilyn Manson and they’ve got to play to a lot of people who may be there more for Manson, and a reminder that while Billy Corgan is never going to stop pushing forward and making eccentric decisions, he’s not totally against giving people what they want. The Pumpkins have played a lot of oldies and hits on their tours over the past few years, but it hasn’t been as much of a hits-centric set – you’d generally get a handful of the biggest hits, but not all of them. This show felt like a power move, like Corgan’s way of being like “yeah, I can do this any time I want” and making the audience feel lucky to hear almost all the big ones at once rather than kinda bored because it’s a totally expected thing. I think there’s also a strong implication that he’s doing this now because it’s less likely to happen later – for artistic reasons, and also for physical ones. Corgan and Chamberlain are still relatively young men in terms of aging rock stars, but there may come a time when some of this material either won’t hit as hard, or just seem strange to hear from guys in their 60s or 70s. Maybe you can always pull off “Disarm” and “1979,” but I don’t know if you can play “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” and “Ava Adore” forever.

The Smashing Pumpkins “Thru the Eyes of Ruby”

I’m happy to see The Smashing Pumpkins play the big hits, but as a fan, I’m a lot more invested in the non-hits of the classic era. Seeing them play “Thru the Eyes of Ruby” for the first time after 20 years of loving that song was a very big deal for me, and more emotional than I actually anticipated. “Ruby” is one of my all-time favorites, easily, and a song that’s shifted a bit in meaning over time. I remember what this song was for me as a teenager, and how it laid out this fantasy of epic, tortured love. This is a song that builds disappointment and despair into the foundation of its grand romance, and portrays marriage as a sort of shared delusion, and love as something that’s bound to mutate into contempt. My perspective on the song is different now – its bitter and romanticism both feel like things I’ve put at a distance from myself, and the most emotional part is Corgan’s final epiphany: Youth is wasted on the young. Or, maybe more specifically – young love is wasted on the young.

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Marilyn Manson @ PNC Bank Arts Center, NJ 7/28/2015
Deep Six / Disposable Teens / mOBSCENE / No Reflection / Third Day of a Seven Day Binge / Sweet Dreams / Angel with the Scabbed Wings / Personal Jesus / The Dope Show / Rock Is Dead / Lunchbox / Antichrist Superstar / The Beautiful People / Coma White

Marilyn Manson gives you exactly the show you’d hope for – abrasive and campy, and with a lot of visual tricks and set pieces pulled off on a budget. Manson’s got incredible stage presence, and he and his band’s total commitment to wearing full make-up and several layers of black leather, PVC, and fur in hot summer weather is commendable. This was another setlist heavily skewed towards hits and career overview, and I felt like I definitely got a strong Marilyn Manson concert experience even if I never deliberately set out to have that experience. The band’s relationship with melody and hooks are a bit hit or miss outside of their covers, but there’s just no fucking with “The Dope Show” – that’s easily one of the best glam songs of the ‘90s, and there was no shortage of wannabe glam tunes in that era.