Live At The Ambassador, Dublin

Billy Corgan didn’t get to be Billy Corgan without a serious sense of the perverse, and these days it’s there for all to see. It’s in the little things; like his tour stage design of grotesque twisted reptilian metal, Alien-esque; or his insistence on arriving on the Ambassador stage in a trenchcoat, winter scarf and knee-high army boots, while the midsummer heat has everyone else in the venue evaporating.
It’s in the bigger things too, like his selection of June 21st, the day after he officially launched his first album in his own name, as the day to take out full-page ads in the Chicago daily papers announcing his plans to reform Smashing Pumpkins, thus rendering TheFutureEmbrace and his supposed solo career immediately inconsequential; a hiatus, a footnote.
How is this relevant to a live review? Well, because during this show, on the day the album came out in Ireland, four days before the full-page ads, Billy Corgan spent his entire set denying any knowledge of Smashing Pumpkins — and not for the want of reminding. A third of the way through came the first plea for ‘Today’ and the rehearsed reply: “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Irish”.
Of course, Corgan can play what he wants and he owes nothing to anyone who shows up to see him, despite what they think; he’s not a jukebox. Plus, what you sometimes get in return for missing out on old favourites is the electric shock of the new, but this was dull stuff. The new songs, all Joy Division Vs. Nine Inch Nails, harsh and corrosive and monotone by design, may work on record; but live, in a sweltering cinema with muddy sound, you could barely tell them apart. It just wasn’t happening.
High points of the album, ‘A100’, ‘All Things Change’ and ‘Mina Loy (M.O.H)', arrived early. ‘To Love Somebody’, sung straight but funny anyway, ensued; but maybe the most truly memorable moment was the encore. Corgan sang by himself, mic in hand, pacing the stage, curiously vulnerable, and threw out this old line: “I wasn’t born to follow”. Translation: I know you’re not enjoying yourselves, but you knew I was an awkward shite when you paid for the tickets. You had to admire the bloody-mindedness of it: and then he went and caved and reformed the band.
And that was it. Never has a more silent, despondent crowd drifted out of a show. As we left, my girlfriend, a big fan, caught the mood: “It feels like we went to a match and we lost”. But still: I hear the Pumpkins are playing in the replay.