Smashing Pumpkins: Erwin Center: July 16, 2018

Oh man.  There are very few bands who could better recapture a significant amount of my feelings from high school.  In fact, trying to come up with one right now, I'm not sure I can.  Maybe R.E.M.  They are probably the closest.  But so many of the songs on Gish and Siamese Dream were the soundtrack to my world at a time when I was trying to figure out who I was, and therefore truly feeling those lyrics of confusion and misunderstanding.  I mean, everyone listened to "Today" on a loop later on, but it was the songs like "Mayonnaise" and "Hummer" and "Soma" that gutted me.  Oh, and "Drown" from the Singles soundtrack.  Siamese Dream may be my favorite album ever.  Still holds up well for me.

They played all of those tracks, plus excellent renditions of "Cherub Rock" and "Landslide" and "Rhinoceros" and "Siva" and "Zero" and "Porcelina."  

The band had released something saying that they would only be doing tunes from their first five albums.  Which was very appealing to me.  Unfortunately, we didn't get "Geek U.S.A." or "Window Paine," two of my favorites, but we got a bunch of great tunes anyway.  As well as some weird covers - "Stairway to Heaven" was pretty good, "Space Oddity" sent me to look for another beer.  They also did the bad song from the Batman soundtrack, and a few mediocre songs from Adore, as well as some really weird video interlude speeches from the lead singer for Smashmouth (or Sugar Ray?  Not sure, he definitely looked familiar).  So it wasn't a perfect show by any means, but I caught all the feels during some of my favorite songs.  Being able to belt out "I JUST WANT TO BEEEEEEEEE ME!  WHEN I CAN." and "I'M ALL BY MYSELF, AS I'VE ALWAYS FELT!" with a big crowd of like-minded fans was extremely satisfying.

This was the fourth time I had seen SP live.  It's honestly hard to remember if the other times were better, back in 1991 and 1993 and 1994, but this was still just as satisfying to my old man heart.  I'll fully admit multiple instances of goosebumps and a few bits where singing became hard because my throat wanted to shut down for some tears.  Great show.