Usually I only use Groupon for cheap belts, cheaper shoes, and surprisingly solid utility pants, but it comes with its surprises (though not quite enough to balance getting so many e-mails of the same junk every day). Concerts offered are a rarity, sometimes a glut when they’re glomming on to a corporate discount elsewhere, but there’s no reason they couldn’t put up a show (and not an escape room). But wherever you get it, and especially these days, a concert for $30 isn’t a bad deal, especially if it’s someone reasonably worth seeing. I doubt I would have paid much more than that for a Smashing Pumpkins show, even with guests, but being that price, especially for a couple of big bands, was a deal that deserved some support, or at least some comfort if they were truly that desperate. Jane’s Addiction playing with the Pumpkins would probably be a monumental pairing in another era, but now they’re just two nostalgia bands that still get enough so they can keep going, even if only doing it more isn’t necessarily addressing any effort to age gracefully or combat being well past any prime. When it comes to the Pumpkins I’m a selective fan, enough to know some of their obscurities are better than their hits, but more interested in what they did back in the day since the newer stuff doesn’t have the same impact to want to explore more to see how worth it is sticking with them. So the show should have been a hit, since they focused on their older stuff, but it was also a second-hand disappointment, if I had been a true fan (or the fan I nearly was back when). For an arena show they need to stick to the hits, since it would be disappointing to too many fans if they got too challenging, and there’s a narrow line to walk to be too artful. They still dropped in a few obscurities, from the Mellon Collie era that had some heat at the time for the shallow ‘90s nostalgia, but none of it had the range of the shows they did that focused on a fuller view of their catalog and the stronger parts of it. It also didn’t bother with any newer stuff, pretty much just one song from this post-reunion period (which was almost as good as the old stuff did when it really rocked out), being crushing to any fan from the past few decades, which they would want to assume to have picked up by putting out new material, which they have done to a volume either impressive or foodhardy when they needn’t have bothered. Playing new stuff is widely derided, especially to casual fans that an arena show would include, so they stuck to the hits as much as they had to, assuming it was mostly the original fans, but none that bothered to go beyond what was and has still been playing on KROQ to this day. Luckily most of those songs still stand up and rock out, even if anyone sensible would be sick of them by now, enough to not even have to bear hearing them one more time even if it’s in concert by (most of) the original band (enough to make it legit). Even with a range of songs over decades they had enough to play, but somehow they wanted to venture into a too-arty cover of “Once in a Lifetime” that didn’t work, especially when the guitar attack of any of their better songs would overtake it. Throughout, there was only a simple screen in back so no great visuals, in contrast to the days when the production might have sought to match the majesty of the music and volume, now keeping it conservative and tight, to make the most of a tour and package that might have existed just to recoup costs lost during the pandemic. The band filled out with a background vocalist, when those songs didn’t need it anyway, but she was more interesting than the band’s trope of a girl bassist (though they've always done well with that). And Iha did most of the talking, even though he could have been left more to the guitar, but better to have Corgan rocking out than having to say anything (though less nasally than he’s known to be). There was also Jane’s Addiction, not really a co-headliner since it was clear the Pumpkins were the draw, and still not more incentive than the price, so, a nice bonus. Jane’s might be legends (enough to tour on no new material), and fundamentally helped the alternative music and culture movement from the ‘80s on, but they’ve never much moved me. There’s not a time I couldn’t do without “Been Caught Stealing,” and the rest of their stuff was too druggy to interest me much. Even “Jane Says” always came across as a dopey ballad, though it’s fun to mimic Farrell in the most exaggerated way. “Stop” and “The Mountain Song” were okay, but no one is expecting them to rock out those tracks like back in the day, and as they deserve to. Now they’re worse than a druggy mess, trying to replicate the druggy days, when they had more luck for being exactly what the underground needed to transcend its place than deserving to go as far as they did (though that’s more on Farrell. The rest of the band are solid (call it the Red Hot Chili Peppers syndrome, of having a great band but a doofy frontman (and proving Navarro to be too interchangeable with Josh Klinghoffer))). So I didn’t rush in, and I took my time coming from home, when we only lived four exits from the Honda Center, then finding my seat, which was in the same area that we’d sit in when my nephew took me along for his other season ticket for Ducks games, as well as a return to the same venue where I saw the Pumpkins for the first time back in ‘95, when it was the Pond and they packed out two nights, when they were more relevant and dedicated, and I had a +1 who made that night memorable even without the show. I settled in to watch the second half of Jane’s, not lamenting missing some or trying too hard to remember seeing them before to compare, then the Pumpkins, while stretching out in a section mostly empty, with not enough fans taking up a Groupon offer, not entirely extraordinary for the quality but for the fact they did it. Poppy opened the show and might have only have done better for being something fresh and new, but I wasn’t going to bother with it so much. And done at 10:50, well before the witching hour, as if there was no greater expression that we all might have aged out of rocking out all night.
"Atum"
"Empires"
"Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
"Today"
"We Only Come Out at Night"
"Cyr"
"Once in a Lifetime" (Talking Heads cover)
"Solara" (extended)
"Eye"
"Ava Adore"
"Tonight, Tonight" (Billy and James acoustic)
"Stand Inside Your Love"
"I of the Mourning"
"Cherub Rock"
"Zero" (preceded by Billy Corgan guitar solo and “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” tease)
"1979"
"Happy Birthday to You" (dedicated to Billy’s son Augustus)
"Beguiled" (with Augustus onstage)
"Silverfuck" (extended)
"Do I Love You" (The Ronettes cover)
"Kettle Whistle"
"Whores"
"Ain't No Right"
"Ocean Size" (with Josh Klinghoffer)
"Then She Did..." (with Josh Klinghoffer)
"Jane Says"
"Stop!"
"Ted, Just Admit It..."
"Mountain Song" (with Josh Klinghoffer)
"Three Days" (with Josh Klinghoffer)
"Been Caught Stealing"
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