SMASHING PUMPKINS – Oslo – Oslo Spektrum

"Latex paints dries to touch in about one hour. This isn’t the same as it being cured. Latex paint can be painted with a second coat after about 6 hours. It takes about 30 days for the paint to fully cure; meaning that you can wash spots off your wall without damaging your paint finish. Paint cures by reacting with oxygen in the air to form a skin over deeper, still wet layers. Eventually, oxygen reaches the deeper layers as well, drying them; thus the 30 day cure time.

Oil paints take longer to dry, to re-coat and to cure. The first coat will take 12 to 24 hours to dry enough to apply a second coat. Oil paint also cures by binding with oxygen. I have read if you thin your oil paint, you can paint 2 thin layers instead of 1 or 2 thick layers. The thinned paint dries in less time."

As far as I am concerned, this information is accurate and it would be justifiable I think to leave the entire commentary on the night there but in the hope of backing up my curt summary of Smashing Pumpkins live in 2011 I will elaborate. Billy Corgan either does not care or does not know. I saw the band in 1998 in what was a semi acoustic performance or it was billed as such. My initial feelings post pseudo performance centred on Corgan and company being so dull (distressed dishwater folks) that they felt the need to drag their livelier moments down into the pit of personality poverty with them. They succeeded  and reduced an entire audience to what could have been the largest gathering of people balancing question marks over their heads I have seen.

Tonight was a band who were back to the safety of their multi platinum day job, all post Pumpkin pursuits having returned negative results in the eyes of the bean counters (Melissa Auf Der Mer being an exception of sorts) – this led me to believe that years in celebrity wilderness camp had made Corgan at least thankful for those long loyal legions of fans and in return for the chance to feel viable again he would pull out the stops and make some kind of an effort to thrill or at the very least tease all those paying a pretty penny for the privilege of the Pumpkins.

Not so. Sorry.

The band apart from the drummer seemed to be the very definition of disinterested. IT was a performance to rival the performance of the same band some thirteen years ago in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre.
The set was one that would make sense to the more hardened fan and this is another bone of contention – Corgan has obviously restarted the band in order to capitalise on the current trend for reformations and classic albums being, generally, whored out then subsequently milked. In other words, with the music world in a general state of flux there has never been a more sinister display of artistic pause and cash in cowboys and I find it hard to believe that many would try and argue the contrary in the case of this lot. Yet Corgan continues to play hard ball and fronts a set that simply does not cater for the casual fan,  he or she who is here precisely to hear a few of the old hits and that very same he or she now lining the pockets of The Pumpkins.

Shitty performance. Shitty gig.