The Smashing Pumpkins Live @ the Charlottesville Pavilion

"The world is a vampire" and so is Billy Corgan, pale, menacing in stature, and blessed with an unnatural presence. He didn't lead his band onto the stage until the sun set. While we waited for two hours without an opening band, the Pavilion became Vlad the Impaler's castle, and we wondered where our host was. Our legs grew tired and anxious. Then out came Corgan, wearing a silver skirt, made from 13th century armor or, upon closer examination, Klondike Bar wrappers, and the pose he struck before strumming his guitar on Saturday night, with his arms parallel to the stage, was like a bat measuring its wingspan.

Vampires are nocturnal. Billy Corgan and the rest of the Pumpkins "only come out at night/ The day is much too bright." These lyrics, from the song "We Only Come out at Night," were part of an encore that was more sing-a-long than a rebirth of American gothic. They followed this song with a cover of Mungo Jerry's classic "In the Summertime," which they proudly sang over the sound of live kazoos --Dracula has a sense of humor.

Dracula is also a shapeshifter, much like the Pumpkins over the course of their career. He can take human form, turn into a bat, and walk on all fours as a wolf. He is immortal.

Music is immortal. Good songs transcend time and generations, and the audience in Charlottesville spanned a wide range of ages, and the Pumpkins' classic songs still strike a chord with their audience, both young and old. Songs like "Tonight, Tonight," "Today," and "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" all prove that what the Pumpkins did in the early '90s will not turn to dust when brought to light because these songs are embedded in their audience's hearts, like the ribcage was some sort of coffin, using melodies and guitar riffs as plush velvet. These songs expose deep human emotions that are often held in check and out of sight.

The band even did a small acoustic set midway through the show that centered around the song "Once Upon a Time." Vampires always were ones for intimate settings. In fact, it is in these settings that they sink their teeth into their victims, draw out the blood, and slowly transform what was once human into something more like them.

The Pumpkins opened with some newer songs, like "Tarantula," that got everyone's attention and then played their classics. The entire audience was ready to expose their necks as Corgan pointed to the audience and pulled at his mic cord, like it was a ball and chain keeping him from the audience, during "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning." He was practically sucking the audience's blood, as he asked, "Does it make you happy you're so strange?" Most of the audience probably would have said yes, but then something strange did happen. The Pumpkins quit playing songs.

The best part of the show was followed by a half hour of pointless jamming, where one rethought the idea of joining the undead.

A good jam session comes out of a song that is liked by the audience and then goes back into the original song or into another song. There are rules to the chaos that is a concert. A successful jam session does not just appear, but bad ones do. The beauty of Bram Stoker's Dracula is the suspense, and suspense is something that builds. Jam sessions function on suspense, but this one had no suspense. The entire band seemed somewhat bored, except for Corgan, who slapped his guitar alone on stage for God knows how long after every other band member had left--Dracula is selfish and vain too.

"We can watch the world devoured in its pain," and we can watch Billy Corgan devoured in his as well, pulled apart on stage by the opposition of his ego and his self-deprecating, midwest humor.

The Pumpkins have always been a strange band. They have battled through death, vanity, and breakups to give their audience a mixed bag of songs, some genius and some that would have been better left to garage experiments.

In most vampire stories, the premise is good vs. evil. Vampires are one of Satan's abominations against God, clearly creatures of evil intent, undone by symbols of Christianity, like the cross and holy water, but what if this premise is mistaken? If the world were full of vampires, then wouldn't humans be the unnatural creatures? For Billy Corgan and his band to only come out at night, there has to be a day; and for everyone else to come out in the day, there has to be a night. If these things are true, then maybe "today is the greatest day I've ever known" because it's not filled with distortion, bird whistles, and unmentionable sounds that wear thin on all thresholds of patience. Of course, what meaning would it have without them? Maybe, the knowledge that "Today" sits in such close proximity to a tangled mess of veins, sheets, and kanines is what helps make it such a great song, like a cage bringing beauty to a rat.

"There's no more need to pretend
Cause now I can begin again

Is it bright where you are?
Have the people changed?
Does it make you happy you're so strange?"

The Smashing Pumpkins are still strangely intertwined with being horribly good and incredibly bad, but judging from their kazoo-filled encore, they are happy with their state. I can't say as much for their audience. Vampires are cool and all, but that's a lot of blood, enough to make me think twice about them and their bands.


(It is fitting that a film built around characters that are neither hero nor villian would feature a band that captures that very idea.)