untainted.
last thursday (11/8/07), i drove four hours to greenville, north carolina (anything for the mighty sp) to finally cross a lifelong goal off of my list: to see the smashing pumpkins live. the smashing pumpkins have been my one of my "top" bands for years (if not the "top") and when they reunited last year (well, half of them reunited), i literally cried from joy. this past summer, i had three opportunities to see them in concert, but couldn't because of money, time, and/or family obligations. so you can imagine my excitement when they added a "random" or "surprise" stop to their tour in greenville.
the (sometimes boring) narrative details are as follows:
tire paranoia at sheetz/wawa...broken air pumps...behaving like a damsel in distress
85>301 when it comes to boring-ness
nc=one big ashtray filled with potholes
arriving at 5 pm (two hours before doors open at 7)
parking next to the tour buses (teehee)
being asked if i "needed help" while wandering
thinking i'm oddly the first person there
peeing in wendy's
arriving back to finally find some other people there...random guy asked me where i was from and if i knew "becky akers"...i said no and asked, "why...was she bad?" he said, "as a girlfriend."
random venue employee handing out parking tickets/passes and charging ten dollars for parking (btw, this is THE most unorganized place i've ever been to in my life, i think)
parking confusion, resulting in me driving around for 30-45 minutes trying to find a fucking parking spot that won't result in me being towed. i finally get a parking pass and park in...the same exact spot where i was earlier. kind of humiliating to keep walking back and forth amongst the staff next to the tour buses...i just tell them that i'm not from around here.
i get back to the line, where now even more people are waiting...i place myself towards the front of the line (cutting, that's right) and oddly, no one seems to object.
finally, we're let in, searched, etc. earlier, i spotted a sign that said "no professional cameras...no lenses of any kind...etc etc." at first, i figured, "okay no professional cameras...i'm good." but then i see the "no lenses of any kind" and decide not to risk having my camera confiscated. later on, i see plenty of people taking pictures in front of the security guards...so i ended up not getting any pictures of one of the most defining moments of my life, go figure.
i was extremely excited because i was one of the first ten people to be let in, so i KNOW i will get a good spot up front...but then i'm escorted to my seat. the entire fucking place is 100% seated...normally, "orchestra" means standing below the stage. but i guess not in this case, which was disappointing. i did have a decent seat though. (i want to go back and see sp again when i can actually stand next to/below them one day.) also, imagine a high school auditorium...because that's what the place looked like. so needless to say, it was an odd place for a smashing pumpkins concert.
explosions in the sky were the opening band, which was a nice surprise. reed's very envious of me for that one. i was standing near a family of 8+ while in line, and, unknowingly to me, they were bffs with one of the guys from e.i.t.s...and he was standing two feet away from me for around 30 minutes haha. i also walked past one other member several times when i was lost walking around that damned venue.
there was a drunken idiot several rows in front of me who kept pumping his fist into the air during explosions in the sky...he also started a conflict with someone else over his seat and then was escorted out later on by security. based on what he was wearing (white thug+redneck) and how he acted, i have NO clue why he was even there lol.
i sat next to a little eight year old boy and his mom most of the time. when i asked if this was his first concert, she said, no, they just went to lollapalooza and some festival in austin (south by southwest, i'm assuming) last year. wtf.
i ended up not minding the small/weird auditorium too much because in the end, it felt as if they were playing FOR us instead of TO us, if that makes any sense.
they had blinking triangle light effects...
sp was glorious, of course, and i really really wish i could put my elation into words, but honestly i'll never be able to describe it. so i guess i'll just say it was a moment in my life i won't forget. sound+light+feelings+memories+nights+peace+veins and, like i mentioned, i really want to see them up close again someday.
set list (for memory's sake, i scrawled the song titles on the back of my ticket and later on revised it based on what i found online...shamefully, i couldn't remember the names of some of the new songs):
1. where boys fear to tread (sometimes known as "the bomb")
2. cherub rock
3. drown
4. bring the light
5. tonight
6. tarantula
7. home
8. hummer
9. bullet with butterfly wings
10. god and country (acoustic)
11. 1979 (acoustic...i recorded a bit of this on my cell phone...it's all of have)
12. to sheila
13. set the ray to jerry
14. today
15. stand inside your love
16. united states
17. heavy metal machine
18. starla
...starting with h.m.m., they started doing a weird mash-up of fuzz, covers (rem's "the one i love") and then ended with a "i love rock n' roll" sing a long hahaha.
i was worried during this experience that driving for four hours and all of that nervous bullshit would kind of "ruin the magic" for me...and i guess to a degree, it affected it, in some aspect, hence part of the reason why i want to see them again. what i really wanted to say in this blog (which i guess kind of "taints" it), is this:
music has always been a major part of my life, to be very general and to say the least. this experience reiterates that for me, along with every song i play, every artist interview i read, every night i spend lying awake in bed for hours just listening. on a superficial level, i don't understand things like "the scene" and, naturally, make fun of its hardcore (ha) participants for their misuse of the beauty of sound. however, this experience helped confirm it on a deeper level to me--i don't understand its shallow dynamics and never will. music is something that means so much to me and i despise whoever started turning/exploiting it into just a status symbol or a way to get laid. yes, these things have been around forever, but more recently, they've exploded all over the place and it's disgusting to me because they're ruining a good chunk of something that should be pure and rare to find. (ear heroin) however, in some ways, i still have hope (this is starting to only make sense to me) because of what it's done for me since i was a child. so here goes a shoutout to all of my old friends: kiss, ac/dc, led zeppelin, janis joplin, reba, martina, hanson, backstreet boys, spice girls, alanis, (here begins the ascent) marilyn manson, trent reznor, billy corgan and the mighty sp, courtney love, kurt cobain, robert smith, conor oberst, elliott smith, radiohead, and mewithoutyou (and many countless others): thank you because you made a lasting impact on my life that you'll never know, and may you stay untainted<3
the (sometimes boring) narrative details are as follows:
tire paranoia at sheetz/wawa...broken air pumps...behaving like a damsel in distress
85>301 when it comes to boring-ness
nc=one big ashtray filled with potholes
arriving at 5 pm (two hours before doors open at 7)
parking next to the tour buses (teehee)
being asked if i "needed help" while wandering
thinking i'm oddly the first person there
peeing in wendy's
arriving back to finally find some other people there...random guy asked me where i was from and if i knew "becky akers"...i said no and asked, "why...was she bad?" he said, "as a girlfriend."
random venue employee handing out parking tickets/passes and charging ten dollars for parking (btw, this is THE most unorganized place i've ever been to in my life, i think)
parking confusion, resulting in me driving around for 30-45 minutes trying to find a fucking parking spot that won't result in me being towed. i finally get a parking pass and park in...the same exact spot where i was earlier. kind of humiliating to keep walking back and forth amongst the staff next to the tour buses...i just tell them that i'm not from around here.
i get back to the line, where now even more people are waiting...i place myself towards the front of the line (cutting, that's right) and oddly, no one seems to object.
finally, we're let in, searched, etc. earlier, i spotted a sign that said "no professional cameras...no lenses of any kind...etc etc." at first, i figured, "okay no professional cameras...i'm good." but then i see the "no lenses of any kind" and decide not to risk having my camera confiscated. later on, i see plenty of people taking pictures in front of the security guards...so i ended up not getting any pictures of one of the most defining moments of my life, go figure.
i was extremely excited because i was one of the first ten people to be let in, so i KNOW i will get a good spot up front...but then i'm escorted to my seat. the entire fucking place is 100% seated...normally, "orchestra" means standing below the stage. but i guess not in this case, which was disappointing. i did have a decent seat though. (i want to go back and see sp again when i can actually stand next to/below them one day.) also, imagine a high school auditorium...because that's what the place looked like. so needless to say, it was an odd place for a smashing pumpkins concert.
explosions in the sky were the opening band, which was a nice surprise. reed's very envious of me for that one. i was standing near a family of 8+ while in line, and, unknowingly to me, they were bffs with one of the guys from e.i.t.s...and he was standing two feet away from me for around 30 minutes haha. i also walked past one other member several times when i was lost walking around that damned venue.
there was a drunken idiot several rows in front of me who kept pumping his fist into the air during explosions in the sky...he also started a conflict with someone else over his seat and then was escorted out later on by security. based on what he was wearing (white thug+redneck) and how he acted, i have NO clue why he was even there lol.
i sat next to a little eight year old boy and his mom most of the time. when i asked if this was his first concert, she said, no, they just went to lollapalooza and some festival in austin (south by southwest, i'm assuming) last year. wtf.
i ended up not minding the small/weird auditorium too much because in the end, it felt as if they were playing FOR us instead of TO us, if that makes any sense.
they had blinking triangle light effects...
sp was glorious, of course, and i really really wish i could put my elation into words, but honestly i'll never be able to describe it. so i guess i'll just say it was a moment in my life i won't forget. sound+light+feelings+memories+nights+peace+veins and, like i mentioned, i really want to see them up close again someday.
set list (for memory's sake, i scrawled the song titles on the back of my ticket and later on revised it based on what i found online...shamefully, i couldn't remember the names of some of the new songs):
1. where boys fear to tread (sometimes known as "the bomb")
2. cherub rock
3. drown
4. bring the light
5. tonight
6. tarantula
7. home
8. hummer
9. bullet with butterfly wings
10. god and country (acoustic)
11. 1979 (acoustic...i recorded a bit of this on my cell phone...it's all of have)
12. to sheila
13. set the ray to jerry
14. today
15. stand inside your love
16. united states
17. heavy metal machine
18. starla
...starting with h.m.m., they started doing a weird mash-up of fuzz, covers (rem's "the one i love") and then ended with a "i love rock n' roll" sing a long hahaha.
i was worried during this experience that driving for four hours and all of that nervous bullshit would kind of "ruin the magic" for me...and i guess to a degree, it affected it, in some aspect, hence part of the reason why i want to see them again. what i really wanted to say in this blog (which i guess kind of "taints" it), is this:
music has always been a major part of my life, to be very general and to say the least. this experience reiterates that for me, along with every song i play, every artist interview i read, every night i spend lying awake in bed for hours just listening. on a superficial level, i don't understand things like "the scene" and, naturally, make fun of its hardcore (ha) participants for their misuse of the beauty of sound. however, this experience helped confirm it on a deeper level to me--i don't understand its shallow dynamics and never will. music is something that means so much to me and i despise whoever started turning/exploiting it into just a status symbol or a way to get laid. yes, these things have been around forever, but more recently, they've exploded all over the place and it's disgusting to me because they're ruining a good chunk of something that should be pure and rare to find. (ear heroin) however, in some ways, i still have hope (this is starting to only make sense to me) because of what it's done for me since i was a child. so here goes a shoutout to all of my old friends: kiss, ac/dc, led zeppelin, janis joplin, reba, martina, hanson, backstreet boys, spice girls, alanis, (here begins the ascent) marilyn manson, trent reznor, billy corgan and the mighty sp, courtney love, kurt cobain, robert smith, conor oberst, elliott smith, radiohead, and mewithoutyou (and many countless others): thank you because you made a lasting impact on my life that you'll never know, and may you stay untainted<3