I was there. There were relatively unknown then. I only knew one song, 'Siva'. Most of the audience thought James was a woman until he spoke and said something like "How are all the gentlemen in the audience today" or something like that.
Saw em 3 times all great..Billy's voice has aged well . Oh so bright tour MSG. Was 2 months into a 1yrs dope run. Had to lie to my friends saying..i wss getting off suboxone..I was two days in withdrawal...we get there and what does Billy start the set......but with ...DISARM and I broke out in tears. I was clean for 8 yrs and my friends had to leave me in 2010.. so that night affected Ms so much. The next day my withdrawals were over...SP
I was there!! As a drummer I'd often be at gigs watching the band and thinking "he's not all that, I could do a better job" but I watched Jimmy Chamberlain and couldn't believe it. He's still got the chops now and if anything is better than back then. Also, I know it's low hanging fruit to take digs at Billy because of a whole host of reasons but hats off to him, he's an awesome guitarist, something that is often overlooked.
Billy is an awesome guitarist, but a lot of his solos are just widdly-fast nonsense. He writes much better riffs than solos IMO and his best lead stuff is the little fills and layers he adds. His fast solos are just the same notes and phrases and modes over and over. It's not clever. PS. Jimmy is literally the messiah of drums. He's up there with any drummer that has ever lived
@@Chris_yes it's really really crazy to realize how completely fucked he was and still played like that.. so wildly underrated only because he didn't die
@@drfuck Yeah. I used to joke with my friends he spiked his heroin shots with steroids. hell maybe he did. sad lol. Its good to see him so fit now. I think he even quit drinking.
Richardo Frankie a lot of his sound comes from the fact he’s a lefty who plays righty. Giving him a strong fretting hand and an interesting strumming. It’s why when you try playing pumpkins sounds, sometimes it doesn’t sound quite right. The cherub rock solo I could never get to sound right.
@@Duzz14 Thx for the info. Didn't know that but i think it explains a lot about his playing. It seems like even when he's going wild there's still a huge amount of control in his left hand. Since i started to take rhythm work more seriously and practice with a metronome daily, i basically can't do anything out of control like something that's out of the rhythms i can play, but the left hand still goes out of control if i get careless and starts to cramp up (yeah and also pulling strings sharp). But no matter how crazy you see Billy on stage, that left hand seems always in complete control. It also seems he's barely using any muting from the right hand these moments, yet the sound is much cleaner than you might expect. Also i think he's quite underrated as a guitar player.
Jan Doe he’s an amazingly under rated guitar player. One of the few guitar players who sing and play lead guitar with another guitarist in the band. I can only think of him, Rivers Cuomo and Cobain (obviously after when Pat Smear joined) who did that. Another thing that might help you is Billy uses a 7.25 radius fretboard. It’s funny on his sig strat he didn’t even use the neck it came with he switched it to one of those David Gilmour orange looking ones from the 60s. There’s a you tube video out there I’ll try to find it for you
I love the Pumpkins but I have to say I don't think they would have been as famous without Jimmy Chamberlin (which is the correct spelling btw). He's one of those rare drummers that you can identify when you hear him play.
Duggalo her and Billy always had a complicated relationship. I don’t think she would have dated him although she did call him one of her closest friends around 96-97 I think.
Damn!! Remembering that youth.... anger, sadness, just lost and so overwhelmed by existence... but so happy and overwhelmed by being able to resonate on those feelings with the pumpkins... nice!!
what a great band!! I saw them in the Fall of 1991 in Seattle at a small club for like $6. What a freaking intimate and intense show!! The energy at that small club was just like this festival all crammed into a small club
I loved the Pumpkins so much as a 90s teen and early 20s, but it realize later only WHAT A FUCKING MONSTER JIMMY IS . and how he shaped the sound so much.
:( im 21 end of this month. I was i was born earlier tho with the good music and no social media and shit. I honestly dislike all social media andstuff it messes up al thing social
@@sarahgaillaskoski406 Hahahahaha, vaccines that can alter gender?! Gender's not even biological you utter cretin! What are you talking about? And I think you'll find most people in the 90s did it because they wanted to challenge traditional conservative gender roles, and spread the idea that masculinity and femininity are not exclusive to either sex.
Yyyyyeeeeeeeeaaaaaahhsssss!!! Oh my Lord, that voice... at 7.20, f'kin yowzers!! That voice, i tell you is such a huge part of why i fell in love with Billy & the Pumpkins so very long ago as a kid. I will never forget hearing Gish for the first time in highschool, back of the bus on a buddies walkman... & it is still my most loved album to this day. To finally see them live back in '94 was my dream come true (but this gig, Oh my gawd, these kids were so lucky to be there.. i would've happily have given away (at least) one of my kidneys away 2 be at this) & then came just so much more brilliance, amazing music from SP to follow on from Gish...SD, is just an amazing album, then ..well, so much more unbelievable music still came after these..Adore, Machina, Oceania.. Thankyou, & love you always, to the genious Billy & the amazing Smashing Pumpkins! xx
I was right in the middle of that mosh pit. When Billy smashed his guitar after first song he through it my direction part of it landed right on me what a scrum that was :)
Ahhhhh... I remember going to gigs in the 90’s & jumping up & down crammed between people, losing all your mates!!! No damn phones, life & music was so much better in the 90’s!! The last of the Real world. Everything since 2000 been getting more & more fucked Up steadily!!!!!
maybe stop looking at the very top of pop culture and dig down a lil... you'll find it worth your time when you see that there is still plenty of good music to go around. ;)
@@RobHalde511 Yeah, sure but I don't think that's the point he was making... maybe "dig down a lil" there, Bambi. He wasn't talking about the quality of music he was talking about the quality of EXPERIENCE. ;)
6:22 Whoever edited this and/or shot this really didn't want to let us see James Iha in a sparkly white dress... He's 25% of the people on stage and has 1% of the screen-time.
@@65neu52 But music (by SP at least) was never about technical playing, and ability to play very accurate to the studio versions Also, unlike her, James and [especially] Billy were SP songwriters, and it was Billy who wrote all those SP masterpieces
@@Faks.09 You’re definitely misinformed on what the Pumpkins were about and what MADE them ‘Smashing Pumpkins’. It wasn’t just Billy and Jimmy. It was the sum of all their parts. D’arcy was more than just some hot chick bassist who played what Billy told her. Sad you see her contributions to the group on such a strictly superficial level.
This is the real setlist: 1.Suicide Kiss (early version of Geek U.S.A.) 2.Rocket (alt. lyrics) 3.Bury Me 4.Window Paine 5.Hello Kitty Kat 6.KYP II / Siva 7.Hummer 8.I Am One / (jam)
Wow, billy and jimmy carry this band live... studio too... but seriously - I LOVE James and don’t think this band is the same without him, but live... good grief. It’s the billy and jimmy train and it’s leaving, and you better keep up with ot
According to Billy the Pumpkins nearly broke up after this gig due to malfunction of their gear and the poorly (I think it still rocks tho) performance. The outdoor circumstances made it nearly impossible to hear anything from the floor monitors making it pretty difficult to perform (there were no in-ear monitors at the time, an invention that had yet to be discovered). Of course their 1993 record Siamese Dream skyrocketed them into fame making this just a fun fact
anto hall I think that has to do with nostalgia being a factor nowadays. People want to record a concert to watch later and feel nostalgic, not to enjoy the moment while watching a concert. It's a different mindset.
That Green Day and Foo Fighters are in the Rock’N Roll Hall of Fame and not The Pumpkins in absurd. These 9 minutes are BETTER than ANYTHING Green Day or Foo Fighters ever did, and this was BEFORE Siamese Dream & Melancholy.
I know huh, I would love to see it to. I seen SP play at a club in Denver, Co the night before Lolla 1. WOW what a show!! It was mayhem at its finest. Both Dave Nav and Perry Ferr were at that show too. Dave told me when I asked him about SP and he said, "These guys are fuckin good." Well the did end up as a headliner later. God what a show!!!
imo best Pumpkins live footage ever! perfect balance of being snooty and just rocking out and having fun . often their performances sided with the former and tended to get a little boring. also this version of Siva is better than the album version
Any one have any footage of the October 1996 concert in Chicago at the Rosemont Horizon. I was there my first Pumpkins concert.Hoping somehow it was taped. Thanks. Mark Keszler