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Post by kiwibird64 on Apr 7, 2008 22:41:46 GMT 7
So glad I got to hear the "Everlasting Gaze", they didn't play it during the main set and i really didn't think they would play it in the Encore.....but they came back out and was so happy as a result, definitely by far the best night of my life!!!!!!!!
There was lot of Billy Respect out and about last night, he stood applauding all sections of the crowd at the end...
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Post by brianward81 on Apr 8, 2008 8:26:11 GMT 7
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Post by Josh on Apr 8, 2008 8:53:06 GMT 7
asks us to login. boooooo
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Post by brianward81 on Apr 8, 2008 9:44:09 GMT 7
asks us to login. boooooo Fixed! See above.
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Post by hypersomnia on Apr 8, 2008 13:25:27 GMT 7
bree/simon/vic - i kept seeing billy head over to that side of the stage.. wish i was with you kids for that! i rocked out in my own little space 2 back from the barrier infront of ginger. i thought i was going to get smashed in that mosh so i put my camera down infront of the barrier instead of taking video. pro - i rocked out like a mofo to absolutely everything. con - i didn't get smashed at all and i'd have had some sweet video footage if i'd kept my camera on me. darn. ah.. shit.. what a way to end it on.. fun fun fun and i know i'm off topic.. but... 78 records is awesome!
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pete
cherub rocker
Posts: 86
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Post by pete on Apr 8, 2008 14:32:01 GMT 7
Pretty crappy review in the west today. About what you'd expect from simon collins tho. Never liked his reviews much.
Good show though. keep smiling.
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Post by blue_june_destroyer on Apr 8, 2008 15:38:39 GMT 7
Pretty crappy review in the west today. About what you'd expect from simon collins tho. Never liked his reviews much. Oh god. Simon Collins hasn't been bludgeoned to death by angry music lovers yet? That's disappointing. WIll see if I can grab a copy of the paper from parentals or work. bree/simon/vic - i kept seeing billy head over to that side of the stage.. wish i was with you kids for that! Yeah, Cowboy Bill gave us a lot of attention on the tour. It was very much appreciated too as you may know. He gave us a big thumbs up and bowed at the end of the show. Also, I ended up with the setlist thanks to one of the security managers who'd been watching us sing every word throughout the show. Is nice to have a piece of the night that the Pumpkins played your home town.
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Post by soundslikequiet on Apr 10, 2008 10:06:15 GMT 7
wow, i haven't been on here in a long time : ) suffice to say i still love the band more than any other and it was a very difficult decision not to travel round Oz following them. i'll be living overseas for the next few years though so figure i'll get plenty of chances to see them, including the theme shows hopefully. to everyone that did the Oz round I've kept reading a lot of the stuff on here, so glad to hear everyone had an awesome time (stuff like the lair and lunch dates with bill). to bree and simon particularly stoked you guys had a brilliant time and to hear the band seemed to really appreciate your efforts - well deserved for sure. I reviewed the Perth V fest for fasterlouder if anyone is interested (had to be neutral as possible when it came to the pumpkins and acknowledge they're not the greatest "festival" band): www.fasterlouder.com.au/reviews/events/12918/V-Festival-The-Esplanade-Perth-060408-Review-2.htm
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Post by Josh on Apr 10, 2008 11:46:36 GMT 7
i feel like banning you for that review. lol. i dont like it, and being neutral? your dissing like the best things of their set, superchrist, cash car star and US...? not cool.
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nezz
zero
Revolution is solution.
Posts: 204
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Post by nezz on Apr 10, 2008 20:56:56 GMT 7
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Post by soundslikequiet on Apr 11, 2008 9:45:40 GMT 7
i feel like banning you for that review. lol. i dont like it, and being neutral? your dissing like the best things of their set, superchrist, cash car star and US...? not cool. fair enough you don't like it, but as for not being neutral? i have to review from the perspective of an average punter (as best i can, still couldn't stand to review Duran Duran), and i can guarantee you 99% of people in a FESTIVAL crowd would rather hear Zero, Disarm, Rocket, Ava Adore, Thirty-three, Where Boys, JellyBelly, Cherub Rock, Perfect, SIYl, etc... than those 3 songs. if you genuinely think otherwise then you are naive to the point of stupidity. if you paid attention you'll note cash car star was MY highlight of the set. i don't think that US is a paticularly brilliant song, in light of the calibre of songs they used to jam out to. superchrist is the only one from that bracket i think is an out-and-out unimaginative and rubbish song. i loved the gig as a whole but there's nothing i hate more than the uninformed opinions of fan-boy reviewers who just say "this is the besteva ZOMG!1" without stopping to think how others might have seen it. saying is was better than the second coming of jesus wouldn't have been neutral.
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Post by blue_june_destroyer on Apr 11, 2008 10:26:37 GMT 7
Hey Ben!
Yeah I can understand what you're saying but I guess I might be one of those concert goers that likes to hear something different rather than the band trotting out all the hits and crowd pleasers - take silverchair for example: they've been playing the same damn set for what seems like 4 years now. Sure they might change a few around but the core of the set is mundanely predictable (a good reason why sunky and myself haven't seen silverchair for a while - the same old setlist debacle and in Daniel Johns' case - the same old jokes night after night like reading from a script).
I personally love Superchrist and find that United States is a good bedfellow - sitting alongside it like a not so distant relative.
I understand too that you wanted to maintain neutrality - but how many reviews these days do manage to take a neutral stance? It's near on impossible and even you didn't manage this feat. if I'd read this and not known it was written by a (once) Pumpkins fan, I'd take it that you in fact despised the band and resented their every move since Adore. You may as well have interviewed the morons in the crowd who kept yelling out 'Play Zero! Play XYU! Play Rocket!' because they seemed to think that the old songs 'would have gone down a treat' too.
The band has evolved. The current personnel lineup evolving every single show and with every note. Billy Corgan is back with his beloved Pumpkins and we can expect much greater stuff to come. Billy described festival shows to us as 'like visiting the dentist... you know you have to go, but you'd rather not' - the bands end up playing for unappreciative music tourists for the most part. There's so much focus in reviews at large on the negative points. No wonder a lot of people get put off by reviews of events and concerts.
Not sure what you meant by 'acknowledge they're not the greatest "festival" band' because I'm not exactly sure what a 'festival band' sounds like... is it a band that bows to the every request and whim of the assembled throng of drunken fools and scenester posers? Or a band that is just mindlessly entertaining?
I apologise if this comes off as harsh (since when is that a new thing?) but I am totally confused by your review and justifications.
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Post by soundslikequiet on Apr 11, 2008 11:18:00 GMT 7
Hey Ben! Billy described festival shows to us as 'like visiting the dentist... you know you have to go, but you'd rather not' - the bands end up playing for unappreciative music tourists for the most part. I'm not exactly sure what a 'festival band' sounds like... is it a band that bows to the every request and whim of the assembled throng of drunken fools and scenester posers? sadly, yes to the 2nd post, and seemingly as Billy himself has acknowledged. i don't want to discuss whether what is expected of a festival band is right or wrong, but it is what it is. if he knows they are playing for largely casual fans, then its not unreasonable to expect that he will play the songs that casual fans want to hear. though everyone will never be satisfied, there are certain things expected (e.g. nearly every single person would have expected zero, and would have gone nuts, from the uber fans to the drunk poseurs as you say). again, whether its right or wrong, it's just the way it is. thats why touring bands do sideshows as well - the shows the fans can go to and they can play a much more varied set. perfect example was qotsa. there was a reason they (to my mind anyway) went down the best with the crowd during the day. they played mainly hits, josh was affable, and the jams were relatively concise. same as RATM earlier this year. again, my personal opinion on the gig was that i loved it. i cried during tonight tonight and sang every word throughout. it was a dream come true. i wish i could have gone to all the sideshows. the reason i love them so much is because they do evolve as you say, over every album. i still don't like superchrist. if my review read that i was *once* a fan that's honestly not the case. bear in mind you are reading it as one of the most passionate SP fans around, so you will have a different angle on it. as i said in the review, SP are an incredibly polarising band that largely depends on someone's personal opinion of them. i certainly don't want to see them wheeled out as dinosaurs playing the hits, but the sad fact of the matter is that festival crowds do. that was the basis on which i reviewed them.
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Post by Josh on Apr 11, 2008 11:27:02 GMT 7
bree you said what i wanted to say, lol
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Post by sunky on Apr 11, 2008 13:33:47 GMT 7
Just read the review in X-Press and a few people writing in ... seems to be the common thing "They didn't play Zero / Disarm - therefore = shit show" ... it has been a while since the Pumpkins where here, so I do think that the casual fan the band has done nothing since then and they are still the band that they were 12 years ago. Which ANY music fan should be able to see as complete bullshit ... would Pearl Jam play a festival set that was the same as a festival set in 1996 - geez remember all those years Pearl Jam didn't play Alive ... yet people still loved their shows. Im sure Radiohead would pull out Creep at a festival ... pfft yeah right ... yet they've had other hits.
The only band that would play a hit parade would be a band that was trying to relive the "former glory" and were in it for the $'s .... like Rage Against the Machine. A band who have done the biggest cash grab by getting back together, yet not releasing any new music at all. Yet everybody laps it up and talks them up as the great return of the past few years ... so since they gave the fans what they wanted, they are awesome, but yet they (in my opinion) have sold out on all the anti-corporation values they used to preach about. They've totally sold out to the man to make some money for one last time. Its a bloody joke, and if Billy did that I would have lost alot of respect towards him.
When has Billy and the whle Smashing Pumpkins done anything to make everybody happy - never. During the height of Mellon Collie at festivals they didn't always play Cherub Rock, Rocket or Thirty-Three or other singles .. sometimes those festival sets were filled with 15min-20min versions of Silverfuck or XYU.
So if anybody had seen the band all those years ago or listened to live shows they would know this ... the Smashing Pumpkins play what the Smashing Pumpkins want to play. So replace Silverfuck with United States, play 5-6 singles, plus other fan favourites (Mayo / Porcelina), throw in a few teases of covers and play a full cover and there you have a band doing the same thing they always did ... so I just don't get what people are complaining about or what in gods name they expected - besides hearing the songs they wanted to hear ... not thinking about the current fans and kids getting into the band now that really wanted to hear Cash Car, United States and Tarantula ... how selfish of those other fans wanting to witness a band playing in their current era.
This isn't an attack to your review Ben, just I've read the X-Press review here and it shits me. Each reviewer seemed to expect the same thing ... and its sad that its always like that - people just don't seem to get excited about the shows they attend anymore ... they expect so much from bands these days.
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Post by Cygnet on Apr 11, 2008 14:02:07 GMT 7
I get what he's saying, but yeah I always enjoy festival sets better when bands ignore conventio nanyway, look at tools bdo sets in 2006, that was hardly friendly to the casual listener... not that they really have that many big hits, but playing thru rosetta stoned in front of thousands of stunned punters who may or may not know the song, with maynard mumbling incoherently into a megaphone for a couple of minutes as adam and justin chug away is hardly festival friendly, yet people didnt really complain about it. I actually prefer this to yeah ratm... which felt like a bunch of old guys trying to pretend they were still with it.
Maybe its the sheer quantity of hits the pumpkins have contrasted with the hugeness of their backcatalogue and the relative obsurity of some of the songs people consider their favourite, and which are not necessarily universally regarded as thei best song... I feel like in making the same argument over and over... probably because i am. United States is fucking epic, and it should be played that way... id be a little disappointed if it wasnt drawn out at least a little from the album version, and as sunky said (i didnt want to say simon said, as it sounded unintentionally silly) new fans will want to hear new songs. You would have expected them to play a crazy version of xyu during mellon collie, thats then, this is now.
I get what you mean, but conventions were meant to be broken, isnt that what rock music is about in the first place? Fuck catering for someone who doesnt know what im talking about anyway, they're more interested in how hot rosin murphy looked in her skimpy outfit and pointing at themselves while Air play sexy boy, without any sense of irony... both of those things actually happened in close vacinity to me at v fest melbourne lol. But seriously, yeah theyll do what they want, like it? good. dont? fuck off and listen to the other version of piece of me.
The only thing i actually really take issue with in your review is calling zeitgeist "a desperate lunge at former glories" yeah hardly, but whatever, i cant be bothered going into the ways in which that statement irritates me here.
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Post by soundslikequiet on Apr 11, 2008 14:03:58 GMT 7
yeah simon's point and bree's are both spot on. and don't worry, not taking anything as an attack or overly harsh. but fact is, its the first pumpkins show in perth since 96 and they are festival headliners. despite it pissing the the more hardcore fans of the band off there are ABSOLUTELY certain expectations that go with that. good on the pumpkins for doing what they want, it's why we love them, but when what they want doesn't reconcile with a festival attending crowd's expectations, don't be surprised when people tune out and are annoyed (as happened most noticeably during set the controls and US), and don't be surprised when the reviews reflect that. i guess that's all i'm trying to say.
yeah, it's not "just" or "right" by a long-term fan's perspective, but it's reality. there are things this band do that piss people off, and you have to expect the criticisms that come in a festival setting. really, its starting to sound like i'm getting stuck into the band when it's not how i feel at all. i can just understand the criticism that came from the wider perspective. as a fan i don't agree with it. as a review i do.
ps: i think you'll find it's mainly the "noodling jams" that peeve people off. i mean, shave even 10 minutes off US - it's still a 15 minute song and there are so many amazing songs you could put in those extra 10 muinutes, from massive hits, to classic albums cuts, to b-sides, etc...
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Post by Cygnet on Apr 11, 2008 14:12:30 GMT 7
Oh also, theres no such thing as fair and balanced journalism, you should always write from your perspective and not cater for what people think, even if its what many people think. If you write truthfully, its always going to be better than if your just giving people what they want to hear. Your just validating peoples misguided opinions... and sometimes people want their opinions challenged. I for one know that if i disagree with something, but the argument is intelligent and insightful then i will listen to what the writer has to say, but if it just reflects popular opinion, i probably wont care to read it. thats my two cents.
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Post by PaRkA on Apr 11, 2008 15:55:24 GMT 7
Yeah xpress was shit so was drum media
Im impressed by this debate
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Post by de-tec-tive on Apr 11, 2008 16:45:18 GMT 7
hey i post on the FL forum all the time, how come you've never replied to any of the SP threads? i don't recall ever seeing you on there...
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Post by kiwibird64 on Apr 11, 2008 22:40:13 GMT 7
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rocket
blissed + gone
"Just what god needs, one more (fashion) victim!"
Posts: 687
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Post by rocket on Apr 13, 2008 10:18:10 GMT 7
THis has been one of the best threads I've ever read, honestly. Ben, it seems like you're really struggling to come to terms with what's expected of you as a reviewer (I was racking my brain for a better way to phrase that, but I just couldn't think of it!). I really think that the reason one is hired to review for an organisation, no matter what medium it may be in, is because the organisation has seen their work and trusts them with what they have seen. You are paid for your opinion, not to give people what they want to hear-since when have reviewers done that anyway? There's no need to pander to the great unwashed, people see through that straight away, as witnessed by the responses above. Simon and Bree obviously like and respect you, but at the same time they picked out straight away that you obviously compromised yourself to write this article. If you're concerened about coming across as biased, then maybe preface the article with a disclaimer that you are a massive pumpkins fan, just to put things in context.
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Post by Insanity's Horse on Apr 14, 2008 9:59:19 GMT 7
*Off Topic* but...
...if you look at those 2 film critics from sbs they review things based almost entirely on their own thoughts and feelings of the film - you hear them say things like 'well for me it...' and 'i really liked this film' etc.
And from my own perspective, i used to write music and film reviews myself and i always tried to review solely based on what i thought of it rather than what i thought other people might think of it. Incidentally i was lucky enough to review Mellon Collie when it was released - i gave it 6 out of 5 stars and my opening line was "This album is fucking brilliant" (it later got edited to "this album is quite brilliant" hehe - damn censorship).
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Post by Anahedonia on Apr 15, 2008 0:43:36 GMT 7
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Post by sunky on Apr 15, 2008 7:41:54 GMT 7
WOO! So getting that when I get home ... anybody got it - whats the quality like?
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Post by blue_june_destroyer on Apr 15, 2008 12:22:26 GMT 7
Downloading it now. Please be advised that the taper/uploader has requested that the show NOT be ripped to a lossy format!
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Post by sunky on Apr 15, 2008 13:19:26 GMT 7
For people that don't know, that means we ( and anybody else) won't be uploading MP3's ... so don't ask.
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Post by de-tec-tive on Apr 15, 2008 17:13:03 GMT 7
fuck.... i really need to work out this torrent shit
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nezz
zero
Revolution is solution.
Posts: 204
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Post by nezz on Apr 15, 2008 18:19:24 GMT 7
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Post by Cygnet on Apr 15, 2008 18:57:34 GMT 7
Damn, i dont have any programs that run flac. is there any free programs that will play them?
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