Given my distaste for public events, most music, and general loud noises, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I have been to just two concerts in my life. My third was at the Auckland Town Hall to see The Smashing Pumpkins.
Well, really it's not The Smashing Pumpkins. It's Billy Corgan plus three people who were born about the time The Smashing Pumpkins first started making music. But they were here to play SP music, and I bought a ticket.
I made my way in to the hall after demonstrating to security that I was in possession of nothing more dangerous than a willingness to rock. A cursory glance around told me that there were two types of SP fans: those who grew up, and those who occupied some kind of twilight alternative universe where smelly black T-shirts qualify as business-formal. I navigated the maze of stairs and balconies to my designated level and stepped inside. The warmup band was playing. They were making various loud noises to a fairly indifferent crowd. I left to get something to eat before the main event.
I returned with that rarest of timings: perfect. I found my seat beside a stiff-looking goatee just as the band was coming onto the stage, to a roar from the pit. They went immediately into one of their new songs, and I became aware of something deeply disturbing. To my left appeared a woman in her mid-20s dressed in clinging black tragicware, the folds of her lumpen torso flopping around as she danced with the balletic grace of a rhinoceros who urgently needs to get to the urinal after fifteen beers. She punched the air and flailed about; she twisted her body and closed her eyes; she strode with confidence and staggered with lurching uncertainty. It was with a particularly ambitious lunge and retreat that she fell into the arms of her partner, a man who looked like Russell Brand but on cocaine instead of weed. As he relaunched her I gave him a sharp glance and looked back to the stage.
A thumbs-up appeared an inch in front of my face. I looked at the owner and he grinned. Or rather, he showed his teeth in the Joker-ish way that someone who is incredibly coked-up does when they can't relax their face. I turned back to the stage and there was another thumbs-up, slightly closer to my nose. I was then distracted by the beer being spilled on my shoes by the resident Mata Hari, and, all things considered, decided to change seats.
By some miracle I was not evicted from my stolen seat, which was excellent and gave me a great view of the stage. The band alternated between new songs and old songs—and by 'old songs' I mean songs that were written nearly 20 years ago. I can't imagine what it's like to play ancient music to crowds for 20 years, but Billy Corgan gave short shrift to much of his back catalogue, adopting a twee sing-song tone. Well, as much as he could, anyway.
When people go to hear music this old, they don't want to be entertained; they just want to remember. During "Perfect" I thought of Hamilton and the flats I lived in there. During "Tonight, Tonight" I thought of driving in my high school days. During "Zero" I thought of late-summer parties, and during "Stand Inside Your Love" I thought of long, boring classes. I never thought that I would ever have the chance to hear these songs live, and being there and feeling these things again made me realise how fully this music captured six or seven of the most turbulent years of my life, and how they possessed a vocabulary for expression that I lacked at the time. It was a time when I believed, when I thought things were important, when there were things to be for and against, and when I was still becoming.
And so, for ninety minutes, I leaned forward and stared and listened to this pulsating, brutal rendition of the songs that littered my life. It was fantastic.
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