Well, besides the bias of a Pumpkins fan, I'll do my best to give a decent review.
First, the setlist:
1. Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness
2. Where Boys Fear To Tread
3. Zero
4. Fuck You
5. By Starlight
6. Tonight, Tonight
7. Today
8. Cherub Rock
9. Thru The Eyes of Ruby
10. Galapogos
11. Disarm
12. Bullet With Butterfly Wings
13. Muzzle
14. Porcelina of The Vast Oceans
15. La Dolly Vita
16. X.Y.U.
17. Landslide
18. 1979
19. Siva
20. Silverfuck
They started out really strong and really fast! I was suddenly in SP Goes Metal land, which kicked serious ass!!
There wasn't much talk for the first four songs, they were justplowed through.
By Starlight was arguably the best song, done powerfully and electric. It had a force not really there on the album, but blew my balls off live!!
Anyway, there were a lot of highlights during the concert, notably the much longer versions of XYU (11:18), Thru The Eyes Of Ruby (11:22) and Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans (15:23).
Porcelina was especially notable because, well, a minute of the song (right in the middle) was spent berating some asshole who threw metal at Billy!! The little bastard was quickly evicted.
Disarm had a solo in it, which was cool, and The Frogs came out to help with 1979.
For the third (and last) encore, there was a Silverfuck-based jam. They had a bunch of screens in the back on a huge metal pyramid that looked an awful lot like a christmas tree. On it, they had been projecting stuff. For the Silverfuck jam, the amount of psychedelia would put a Greatful Dead concert to shame! Well, Silverfuck lasted 29:10!!! A half hour of mindblowing jammin' and psychedelics will melt yer mind! I felt sorry for anyone unfortunate enough to have wacky weed, they're probably STILL stoned from this.
Anyway, I'm glad to have caught them so late in the tour, this was a truly great concert. Siva was a bit shaky, and they sounded bored doing Tonight, Tonight (who wouldn't night after night), but it was an inspired performance, and memorable.
I was also lucky enough to get a first-gen copy of the concert (that's how I know the exact time for each song) from the founder of the magnificent Smashing Pumpkins Live Recording Association (http://www.starla.org/splra/ ). I converted those tapes to MP3, so if anyone wants a CD copy (I have a burner) or a MP3 copy let me know, we can arrange something.Hi to anyone who was there, it was memorable like nothing else. Oh, this was also my first major venue concert, and it blew away all notions of how the Pumpkins suck live.
They RaWK!Love peace pi & Pumpkinssteve (impulsenine)