Smashing Pumpkins

Crest Theatre, Sacramento, Calif.
Monday, Sept. 6, 2010

At 7:30 p.m. the corner of 10th and K streets was littered with hundreds of Smashing Pumpkins fans waiting in line to see Billy Corgan and crew in one of Sacramento’s most beautiful venues, the historic Crest Theatre. As fans poured into the building (and especially into the beer garden), Chicago’s Bad City attempted to get the crowd ignited with their ‘80s hair-metal influenced tunes. SPIN.com called them “a modern day Whitesnake,” and I’d say that’s a pretty spot-on description.

At 9:01 p.m. the lights dimmed and the crowd roared as Corgan and his current lineup, which includes 20-year-old drumming prodigy Mike Byrne, lead guitarist Jeff Schroeder and bassist Nicole Fiorentino, took the stage. The first song they dove into was “Astral Planes,” a newer song from Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, where Corgan sings “Everyone gather, warm your soul,” on top of a grungy, slightly Fuguzi-esque guitar riff. Indeed, everyone had gathered; and rest assured our souls were warming, as did the energy in the room. The song “1979” off the nine-times-platinum album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness had the crowd reciting every lyric back at Corgan, as did songs like “Bullet with Butterfly Wings,” and “Tonight, Tonight,” which sounded fantastic despite the apparent lack of a string section like on the original recording. In the same manner, the song “Eye,” released on the Lost Highway soundtrack in 1996, which is very electronica, translated great into this guitar-driven performance with live drums. Speaking of drums, it needs to be noted that Byrne was an absolute beast all night and at one point soloed for a solid four minutes onstage by himself and left any drummers in the crowd wanting to quit immediately.

At one point about midway through the show, an acoustic guitar was brought out for a change of pace. Corgan even played ukulele on one song. With the change in pace came the first real crowd interaction on Corgan’s behalf. He mentioned how in his hotel room there was a copy of Sactown Magazine. “Sactown!” Corgan yelled. “Isn’t that what they call it?” He poked fun at the term “Sactown” a little more and muttered that maybe it wasn’t a good term to use if our town was looking to attract tourists. People laughed. He also thanked those in the front row who were smoking pot. People laughed more. It was refreshing to see Corgan, now 43 years old, having a little fun with the crowd. After an epic encore, the band left the stage to screeching feedback, waving to the crowd while throwing picks and drumsticks along the way.

At 11 p.m. the crowd was pouring out of the theater, electrified. Every one of us knew we had witnessed something special, something to brag about. It’s not every day Billy Corgan is in town.

Deftones are back at the top of their game

Sacramento’s own marquis band, Deftones, have come quite a way since their inception in the late ‘80s. From gigs at backyard barbecues to sold-out shows at the Cattle Club, to landing a record deal and headlining huge tours all around the world in support of chart-topping, genre-busting albums, these guys have been through thick and thin and have maintained momentum, as well as a rabid fan base, along the way. During a recent interview with Submerge, drummer Abe Cunningham reminisced on the old days. “We’ve surpassed any expectations,” he said with a chuckle. “We wanted to play the Crest Theatre; that was the huge goal.” After agreeing that they’ve achieved that goal and then some, he went on to say, “Every day from this point on, not to be corny, is a blessing. We’ve been so wild over the years and just fucked off so much and just been out of our minds fucked up on everything, just having the rock ‘n’ roll time of our lives. And I’m not saying that we’re angels now, we certainly have a blast to this day, but we’ve chilled out a bit.”

In the following interview, Cunningham chats about their new record, Cheng’s current status, the band’s new lineup and more.

I’m curious, who in the band still calls Sacramento home?
Stephan [Carpenter], our guitarist, he moved down to the Los Angeles area a while ago. Chino [Moreno, vocals] lives in the L.A. area too. He moved down there maybe about three or four years ago. Frank [Delgado, keyboardist] and I are still here, and Chi is here. Sergio, our buddy who is playing bass with us is from New York. But I mean, we’re still a Sacramento band, we still claim it.

That’s cool because you guys have become such an international force over the years. It’s nice to see you still claim Sacramento. I feel like some bands that blow up from here end up claiming the Bay Area or L.A. or something.
I am sporting a Giants hat, but hey, you know? [Laughs] I mean shit, it’s where we’re from. Everybody’s from somewhere. And it’s not even that bad, so what the fuck, you know?

How is it performing the material off of Diamond Eyes? The record was conceived, produced and released in a very timely fashion, how does that affect the way the songs are translated in the live setting?
I mean everything is new still; the songs are still all very new. This is really the first record that we went in [to the studio] with the material all done since probably Around the Fur, actually really since our first record. Since then, we’ve mostly written everything in the studio, which can be really cool, but it also can be just fucking crazy because it’s super expensive and if you’re not gelling and getting shit done, it can just be insane. It can be a really costly, mentally draining experience all around. So that’s the way it’s kind of been for the past four records, at least up until this one. We just went in and blasted it out. We wrote it so quick and had a blast doing it despite everything that had been going on with Chi. It was a catalyst for us getting down to it.

So it was a more organic approach than you took with previous albums in that you guys were able to completely play all of these songs live in your rehearsal room before ever hitting record, right?
Yeah, dude! We can’t even play some of the songs on some of our records [laughs]. We’re actually like, “Wow, we’re a real band again. We can play our own shit.” Not that we couldn’t play all our other shit. In the studio we’ve never tried to do anything so outlandish that we could never really perform it live. Studios are great for that. You can get down and you can make the most insane masterpiece, but can you pull it off live? That’s why we always tried to limit ourselves a bit, because we’ve always wanted to be able to do it live. This time around we just blasted it out and had a great time doing it.

If you don’t mind, I’m sure it’s a touchy subject, but I’d like to talk briefly about Chi and that whole situation. When’s the last time you saw him?
Chino and I went down right around Easter; we were taking off for tour for quite some time. He’s back down in Stockton.

So he’s at home now, not in a hospital, right?
Yeah, he’s been home for a while. It’s way better than being in a hospital somewhere.

How is he doing? I read on www.oneloveforchi.com that he is undergoing some crazy “wake up protocol” and being looked after by top-notch doctors. What can you tell me about that?
These doctors that took him on are apparently involved with a lot of people coming back from the Iraq war and Afghanistan. There’s been a skyrocketing number of people coming back with traumatic brain injuries–roadside explosions and shit like that. Anyway, these doctors I guess have had tremendous success with people that are in exact or similar states that Chi is in, bringing them back to some degree. Because, I mean, he’s awake, he’s there, but he’s trapped. It’s kind of like the Metallica “One” video.

I just got the goose bumps, because I was thinking the exact same thing. It seems like he’s come a long way already, though, like his eyes are open now and he looks more aware and you can talk to him and he engages, right? How encouraging is that, being one of his closes friends and band mates?
All I want is the best for him, man. I think about his son, he’s got a son. I think about his whole family obviously, but he’s got a 12-year-old son who’s just the raddest kid and that’s really on my mind. He needs his dad back. Fuck him playing in the band again, that would be awesome if that could happen, but…

When it came time to make the call to bring in Sergio on bass and to continue playing and writing music without Chi, was that a tough decision?
I mean not really, and I don’t mean to be insensitive. Obviously we took time off to just try and figure what the fuck we were going to do and why this happened, and you just realize that some things you can never ever no matter how hard you try find an answer for, and this is one of them. Well, I’ll tell you why it happened; he wasn’t wearing his fucking seatbelt. So, of course we were trying to figure out what’s up with the band, and we took a couple months just to breathe and figure some stuff out. We just said, “Shit, this is what we do, we play music, we make music and we play it. We’ve been doing it for a long time now and it’s really what we do.” It was as simple as that. It’s what we do.

Was everybody in the band on the same page or was there some struggle between members?
Well yeah, it eventually came back to that struggle. At first Stephan wanted to just like start over again with a new band and all this stuff. Hey, I can dig that but come on, you know? Everyone was just kind of juggling ideas around, and it just came down really to getting back into our little spot out in West Sacramento. We have this studio we’ve had out there for a really long time. We just wanted to get out there, and we started jamming again, just for the sake of playing music. We actually had a record pretty much done called Eros. We’d been working on that for over a year already, and that was pretty much done. The whole thing with Sergio is, we had a show booked and we had this one thing we needed to fill, this one obligation. He had played with us before, he’d filled in for Chi way back, but he also came from this band Quicksand that we loved and was totally a huge influence on us, so we were all buddies over the years.

Was there ever anyone else in the running or was it Sergio all the way?
Yeah, it was kind of funny. He’s all neurotic, all New Yorker and shit. He came out here and I think he thought in his mind there was going to be 50 or 100 people in line to try out like that Metallica movie. He came out and he was all nervous, and we were like, “Dude just come out here, fuck this, come kick it.” We kind of shot the shit for a little bit and in actuality we were like, “Dude, you’re the only person we had in mind. There was nobody else.” He was just like, “Phew” and took a deep breath.

Can you tell me a little about the decision to put Eros on hold and start the writing process all over again for what would become Diamond Eyes?
It was really a huge decision for us. When it was brought up, I was like, “Yeah, I’m down,” when inside I was like “Fuck, I really don’t know.” I knew we could do it, but I had some reservations. We had just done this Eros thing. We were totally tapped creatively and all this shit. I was like, “We can do it! But wait, can we really do it?” But everything just came, you know? And with Eros, honestly, if we would have put that record out right now, it just was not the right time for that record. It’s not that it’s bad, there’s some good stuff on it; it just wouldn’t be good for us, man. And really it was out of respect for Chi, too. We spent all this time writing and recording and making these songs with him, and for us to go out on tour with those songs without him would be a trip. We just said, “Fuck it, let’s not shelve it, let’s put it on simmer on the backburner and let it chill a while and Chi, hopefully he can join us.”

You worked with a new producer on this one, Nick Raskulinecz. How much of an influence did he have on this record? Was he there during a lot of the writing?
Oh yeah, he was in there every single day with us from the get-go until we finished the record.

Was that new for the band, to sort of have that outside influence when crafting a record? Have you ever let anyone in creatively like that?
Never. We did most of our records with Terry Date, who is a dear friend. He’s a producer, but he’s more of an engineer. If he had an opinion, of course he’d say it, but he never was hands-on up in our shit. Normally we don’t like that shit, we’re like, “Fuck man, we can do this. We’re doing OK, leave us alone,” but Nick is just a rad dude and is so much fun to be around. He was right up in there with us. Everyone totally gelled and trusted him. Our biggest hang up is we’ll be jamming for hours and hours and hours and have cool shit come out, but nobody will ever stop and say, “That was tight, do that.” What he did was just float around the room and encouraged us to do what we were already doing. He just made everyone confident, like, “Wait, I’m doing rad shit, cool!” It was like fire, man.

It seems like everything was in place, you know? Nick was a fan of the band and on board to produce, Sergio came out and fit right in, you all started creating music again together in your old band room. It’s pretty uplifting, and frankly I think Chi would be pretty proud.
That’s our whole goal; there will always be some people that don’t get it. They ask, “How could you? How dare you?” You know what, fuck you, you have no idea how this works. You can sit on your keyboard on the Internet and talk shit. It’s really not been like that though. For the most part everyone’s been very supportive. We’re out doing our thing in Chi’s name, in his honor. He’s right there with us in spirit. I know he’s around.

Crest Theatre, Sacramento
Sept. 20, 2008

Arriving 30 minutes before the show started, I was surprised to see almost every seat in the Crest Theatre taken. I love Musiq Soulchild, but almost every time I dropped his name to someone, they’d never heard of the R&B singing soul man. So, you can imagine me entering the splendor of color and contour of the mid-sized Crest and seeing so many people.

Hometown guy MarKnoxx kicked, or rather danced (like Usher), things off at 8:30 p.m. Mr. Knoxx seemed to have a fan base who were not dissatisfied with the amount of clothes he lost as his set went on. His songs were heartfelt and backed up by two singers, guitar, bass, pianos, trumpet and a bangin’ drummer that a local fan told me was only 16 years old.

The folks at Conscious Vibes Productions made sure to raise anticipation of Musiq’s performance with an intermission that felt like 45 minutes. But in that time, I got to learn why everyone at this concert was eating popcorn (I’ve never before seen anyone eat popcorn at an enclosed concert) when my boyfriend returned holding a large cup of popcorn saying, “This popcorn was only a dollar!” Of course.

Then, the lights dimmed and on came the back-up singers, drummer and guitarists to start it all off. But when Musiq himself, standing all of about 5-foot-6 and looking urban-immaculate in pants, vest, tie, button-up shirt, aviators and well-groomed fro-hawk, fans (myself included) rushed down toward the stage. Musiq Soulchild played all the of fan favorites including “Buddy,” “Just Friends,” “Teach Me,” “Betterman” and “Time” while bouncing from side to side onstage. During a wardrobe change, two talented back-up singers enthralled the audience. Specifically, a lovely lady and true songbird named James Madison caught my attention with her chirping-ly elegant and soulful voice. When the Musiq man returned he sang his new hip-hop single “Radio” for the Sacramentan crowd.

The show was overall entertaining, but the sound quality was disappointing. For whatever reason, the back-up singers and instruments drowned Musiq’s vocals. To add to all that, there was some scraggly sweaty girl with a bad weave in a pink top who insisted on singing along to every song; which wouldn’t be so bad except she sang so loudly and at so high a pitch that if you were in the front, you couldn’t hear Musiq Soulchild. It was so bad that the back-up singers even noticed and kept shooting the scraggly girl warning looks. I really wanted to throw something at her, or at least tell her that I paid $40 to hear the guy on the stage sing and not her.

But, Musiq Soulchild still had that R&B je ne sais quoi and musical mystique up until he abruptly ended his set and bid Sacramento fans farewell.