TSP Media - Another Sun-Times Review

Corgan shares his Chicago 'snapshots' in solo debut.

April 21, 2004

BY JIM DEROGATIS Pop Music Critic

Given that he's already penned one of the best songs ever written about Chicago -- the Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight" with its majestic evocation of "the city by the lake" -- Billy Corgan placed the bar pretty high when he decided to write an entire set of tunes about the city he calls home.(More...)

In keeping with much of his career, Corgan's premiere performance as a solo acoustic act before a sold-out crowd at Metro on Monday night was a mixture of musical brilliance and bombastic self-indulgence. But the Great Pumpkin did indeed succeed at crafting a body of work that captured the soul of this city, complete with its many subtleties and inherent contradictions.

Lyrically, the 12 songs that Corgan grouped together as "the Chicago set" (which were being recorded and filmed for release as a concert DVD) were mostly impressionistic snapshots of the Windy City taken from different vantage points in history and narrated by a number of alternating voices.

Some of the best were modern folk songs inspired by the 37-year-old's voracious reading and historical curiosity: "Bobby Franks" paid homage to the 14-year-old Kenwood boy who was murdered by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924; "Black Sox" lauded the Cubs while deriding the infamous scandal that plagued that other Chicago baseball team located on the South Side; "The World's Fair" celebrated a much prouder moment in Chicago history, and "Riverview" recalled the amusement park at Belmont and Western that was torn down the year Corgan was born.

Other songs -- such as the sad ballad "Friends as Lovers" (about his failed relationship with photographer Yelena Yemchuk) and the infectious pop song "Say Goodbye" -- were "about" Chicago only in the sense that Corgan must have been thinking of home as he wrote them while on tour with the Pumpkins or the short-lived Zwan.

In his typical fashion, Corgan couldn't just present these songs in the stripped-down manner of, say, a solo acoustic performance by Jeff Tweedy. Instead, the stage at Metro was elaborately adorned with a backdrop of glowing "stars," a carpet of silvery confetti, several gothic/baroque stage props and a regal purple throne for the rock star to sit on as he performed.

But in contrast to many other shows that he's played at Metro -- including the Pumpkins' epic farewell -- this was a relatively humble, gracious and extraordinarily good-humored Corgan who held court, joking with his worshipful fans and readily mocking his own "tyrannical" reputation as he rehearsed the wordless chorus for "Black Sox" so that the crowd could sing along.

The spare arrangements actually benefitted Corgan's sometimes strained and homely voice -- his singing hasn't sounded so pretty or appealing since his lilting cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" --and his acoustic guitar playing was surprisingly restrained, varying from some lovely finger-picking a la Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair," to some chooglin' and very Chicago-sounding blues (though he did briefly channel Steve Howe of Yes on an overly long song called "Columbus," the only real misstep of the night).

Corgan resisted the temptation to encore with "Landslide" or solo acoustic renditions of some of the Pumpkins' greatest hits, choosing to keep the focus on new material and move forward. But he did give a heartfelt shout-out to Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin (who watched from the balcony), promising that the two would rock together again, and he vowed that the solo album he's currently crafting (which is scheduled to be released before the end of the year) will be something very different.

"It's going to be alternative music," Corgan said. "Do you remember when music sounded different?"

The alternative-rock era that the Pumpkins helped define may be history. But Corgan showed that he's determined to remain a vital and vibrant musical force in the third phase of his career, following a different path as always, and doing things his own different way.

CONCERT REVIEW

BILLY CORGAN

AT METRO

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