Smashing Pumpkins. Not worse, I guess, just really, really weird. Billy Corgan is allegedly a little awkward anyway, so I expected that, but he was going through some things in his life that it carried over into his stage presence & gave the entire audience such a disassociated vibe that no one understood their cue to sing when he held the mic out during a song. By the time they were expected to sing, all group participation had waned, no crowds of people singing along, no swaths of dancing people, no mosh for the harder songs - it had all dwindled to people standing there, many of them strangely transfixed. It was surreal; the only other time I’ve seen that happen was in the theater during the scene in the Mr Rogers movie where Fred says to stay perfectly still & silent in the cafe, & this was a much larger crowd. On one of the last few songs of the show, he sang a line & stuck the mic out to dead silence. The look of utter shock on his face. So he sang the next line & stuck out the mic to silence & looked amazed. So he waved an arm of encouragement as he sang the next line & stuck the mic out - again to silence. He shrugged & looked totally heartbroken & defeated then spent the rest of the concert slowly meandering around the stage, singing the notes but looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there, which crossed into the audience vibe, as well. The concert ended on a “huh” note where something just feels off, but you’re not quite sure what. That’s the only concert where friends & I didn’t boisterously talk on our ways back to the car. We barely even spoke for the first 10 minutes of the ride home. It was just weird. Very somber. It felt more like we were heading to or just leaving a funeral, not a concert. All of us agreed that was the strangest concert we’d ever been to & left us all feeling… well… bad.

I’d love to give them another chance, though, because I hear their shows are usually amazing. I guess Billy was just having a really bad night &, instead of the audience cheering him up, they all just went down the spiral with him in a unified misery-loves-company. I think they deserve another chance.