Tsp2000-08-24

The Smashing Pumpkins
Date	2000-08-24
Venue	Hammerstein Ballroom
Location	New York, NY, US
Venue Type	Ballroom
Capacity	3000
Lineup	Corgan, Iha, Chamberlin, Auf der Maur, Garson, Holmes
Order of Bands	The Smashing Pumpkins
Surfaced Recordings
AUD #1
Source	AUD
Format	DAT
Equipment	SS-DSM-6S > PA-6LC3(175) > M1
Length	150m
Complete?	Yes
Lowest Circulating Generation	DAT-M > CDR
Live Music Archive	16-bit download
Notes	15 feet left of soundboard, 40 feet from left stacks. Circulating DAT-M version has some time in beginning of show missing, as well as being matrixed with AUD #2. Complete DDC-1 > CDR audio transfer circulates (non-matrixed).
AUD #2
Source	AUD
Format	DAT
Equipment	SPPB > M1
Length	142m
Complete?	Yes
Lowest Circulating Generation	DAT-M > CDR
Live Music Archive	16-bit download
Notes	10 feet from left stacks. Second Stand Inside Your Love was recorded in 32khz mode. Some time in beginning of show missing (before actual music). DAT-M version circulates matrixed with AUD #1, DDC-?>CDR versions circulates unedited.
PRO #1a
Source	TV
Format	d8mm
Equipment	Unknown
Length	45m
Complete?	No
Lowest Circulating Generation	d8mm-M > DVD
Notes	Today, Snail, Try Try Try, 1979, Thirty-three, With Every Light, and Stand Inside Your Love. d8mm-M > SHN audio transfer also circulates.
PRO #2
Source	PRO
Format	VID
Equipment	Pro-Cam (One)
Length	140m
Complete?	No
Lowest Circulating Generation	VHS-? > DVD
Video Link	YouTube
Notes	Single cam, cuts after second Glass and the Ghost Children. Circulating copy estimated at 2nd or 3rd gen. Higher generation VHS-? > VCD transfer also circulates.
Unsurfaced Recordings
AUD #3
Source	AUD
Format	DAT
Equipment	CSBMod > TCD-D3
Length	Unknown
Complete?	Unknown
AUD #4
Source	AUD
Format	DAT
Equipment	CSBMod > M1
Length	Unknown
Complete?	Unknown
Notes	15 feet from left stacks.
AUD #5
Source	AUD
Format	DAT
Equipment	DPA 4060 > M1
Length	145m
Complete?	No
Notes	5 feet from left stacks. Missing second Stand Inside Your Love.
AUD #6
Source	AUD
Format	MD
Equipment	ECM-MS907 > MZ-R37
Length	Unknown
Complete?	Unknown
PRO #1
Source	PRO
Format	VID
Equipment	Pro-Cams
Length	~145m
Complete?	Yes

Setlist

---

Set:

• Muzzle (tease)
• Glass and the Ghost Children
  • Le Deux Machina (tease)
• Today
• Snail
• Stand Inside Your Love
• To Sheila
• Thirty-three
• Blue Skies Bring Tears
• Try, Try, Try
• The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete
• 1979
• Raindrops + Sunshowers (abandoned)
• Raindrops + Sunshowers
• With Every Light (abandoned)
• With Every Light (abandoned)
• With Every Light
• Let Me Give the World to You (false start)
• Let Me Give the World to You
• (jam)
• Don't You Want Me [Human League] (tease)
• Let Me Give the World to You
• Glass and the Ghost Children
  • Le Deux Machina (tease)
• Zero (tease)
• (improv)
• Stand Inside Your Love

Notes

• VH1 Storytellers taping
• Acoustic
• First performance of Let Me Give the World to You since 1998-08-21
• Final performance of Snail until 2018-08-02
• Final performance of The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete

Banter

Muzzle (tease)
BC: Hello! This, uh, first song is not a song. ... Alright. I’m writing one right now, hold on. The night is bright, your hair is 1986 again....
Iha: Thank you very much.
BC: Everything is beautiful. You look like I just met you, James.
Iha: A spring chicken.
BC: You’re not allowed to talk. I talked to the VH1 people, they don’t want you to talk.
Iha: I can’t hear you.
BC: Alriight. Thank you, heh heh heh. This song we’re about to do, uh - yes, hello. The song we’re about to do is called Glass and the Ghost Children. (crowd cheers) Thank you very much. It’s number one in Malaysia. Now, to explain this song, I have to explain somewhat the concept of the album which of course I don’t want to do because no one’s got it right yet. But I will tell you that the whole album that we put out, Machina, which includes the album that hasn’t come out, is a concept album in which there’s a story and the lead character’s called Glass, so this song Glass and the Ghost Children is about Glass. The ghost children would be some combination of our audience, which would be you.... (crowd cheers) I wasn’t exactly thinking of you but people like you. The idea is that, you know, Glass sort of speaks for, to and about himself and the people he’s trying to speak to, which of course would be people like you. In the song, it’s sort of half about what it’s like to sort of seek for deliverance, drugs got(?), and the other half is sort of a love story. And people are always asking me what our songs are about, my songs are about, and this is sort of like a painting in that it doesn’t have a literal meaning but it does mean something.
Glass and the Ghost Children
> Le Deux Machina (tease)
BC: How is everybody? Welcome to VH1 Storytellers. This next song was written in a very difficult period of my life. We had put out our first album Gish in 1991 and (crowd starts cheering) we did a tour for - yes, the tour - we did the tour for about 14 months and I think the longest we’d ever been on tour before that was about 20 days so for all of us, it was a very sort of mind numbing experience. It was great but at the same time, we were really sort of fighting for our music and what we believed in which in 1991 and 1992 was not as easy as it seems today. So after we sort of built up all this momentum to tour on our record, we came back to Chicago and I was living in this very bad apartment with bad heat with a bad hippie...named Bob, for history’s sake. And I entered into probably the worst writing slump that I’ve ever had, I probably couldn’t really reasonably write a good song for about eight months. Also being in public in that particular period of my life brought out a lot of feelings that I had sort of repressed from childhood. You know, sort of this weird, abused child extension where I locked everything away and figured, well, I’ll never have to deal with that again and suddenly I found myself confronted with all these demons that I thought I’d locked away. And I entered into this very horrible period of my life, eventually ended up even at one point sleeping on D’arcy’s floor. I lived in a parking garage for a while and I was completely obsessed with killing myself, it became my primary preoccupation, I guess. Taking away songwriter, I became like a suicidal maniac. You can laugh, that was funny. So out of the depths of this despair, I sort of bottomed out and it literally came down to a simple decision, at least in my mind at that time, which was either kill yourself or sort of get used to it and work and live and be happy, so I wrote this song.... (crowd cheers) As you can see, I chose another form of death, which is rock and roll. But that being said, I wrote this song and another song, Disarm, I wrote this song at this sort of critical junction in my life and not only did these songs sort of give me hope for the future but they certainly changed the band’s lives. One other sort of ironic point about this song is although the main lyric is “Today is the greatest day...” (crowd cheers) No, it’s not the song you think it is, it’s a different one. It’s pretty much like a joke song about how I want to kill myself but of course nobody ever gets that ‘cause they get very fixated on the positive lines but if you actually listen, there’s way more negativity. But of course at this point in my life, it is a positive song because, you know, it’s about survival and certainly our survival as well.
Today
Guy in crowd: You rock, James!
Iha: Thank you.
BC: Yeah, um, that’s Mike over there on piano. Michel Garson, heh heh. That’s an old joke but it still works. And Chris Holmes on science. Speaking of Gish, this next song, hmmm...why did I choose this song? I was trying to ask myself, I was riding in the cab today and I was thinking “Why did I choose this song?” Because it doesn’t really have a good story. Oftentimes on an album, there’s a song where you sort of put off writing the lyrics, really getting down into the core of what a song means. You’ll have like, we call it bullshit lyrics, you know, like “The sky is gray and everything’s okay and, you know, your dad’s gay.” You just sort of sing things. Somewhere in there there’s a meaning but it takes a long time sometimes. And oftentimes, this song in particular, Snail from Gish and another song.... (crowd cheers) The cheering’s gotta go. I’m just kidding. You’re throwing off my nervousness. This song from Gish, Snail, and also Mayonaise from Siamese Dream were songs that at the time when I - at the time when I wrote the lyrics, I didn’t really think much of the lyrics and I thought that, again in my mind, the lyrics were sort of bullshit because I wasn’t really saying anything in particular. I thought, “Well this song doesn’t really have a particular message.” Now that I look back on this song in particular, I think the reason I’m so attracted to this song is because it really evokes the sort of the simplicity that we actually did feel at that time in our lives. In 1990 and 1991 when we were making our first record, we were much simpler people. You know, nobody knew who we were, not in Chicago really anybody knew who we were. So our views about our music and our views about the world were much simpler, almost sort of fey-psychedelic. So when I listen to this song now and when I sing this song now, it evokes to me a simpler time within the band and our lives where it really was about sort of getting up and playing and the sunshine, so this is Snail.
Snail
BC: Sound okay? ... This song, Stand Inside Your Love... (crowd cheers) I’m gonna trick you and then you cheer and then I can say it again. This song, Stand Inside Your Love (girl in crowd whoops, crowd laughs)... Every once in a while, you...you, me, somebody.... Every once in a while, a song comes and it comes so fast that you can’t even almost remember how it happened and you almost feel kind of guilty because you almost feel like you don’t own the song. Of course, you still take credit. This song, Stand Inside Your Love, I had written the music, the song was a little different, it sorta was more new wave. I can show you really quickly, it was more like.... (plays variation on Stand Inside Your Love riff for 5 seconds) And I envisioned it as a new wave song. When the band first came back together to record the Machina album, within about maybe the second or third rehearsal that we had, I sorta threw this up as an idea I had and we tried to play it the new wave way and it didn’t sort of work and so, suddenly it just mutated into what I would call classic Smashing Pumpkins in the sense that it sounds like it could come from any album. We immediately arranged the song top to bottom, so the song you hear on the album is basically the same musical arrangement but I didn’t really have a melody and I didn’t have any words. And I went home that day thinking, “Well, I really should try to write some words for this song, I really like it.” I woke up the next morning and I was reading a book and all I had for this song was the line “Who wouldn’t stand inside your love,” which, I can’t say I really knew what that even meant at that particular moment. It’s the strangest feeling because all of a sudden, it’s like a faucet opens up in my head and suddenly I can understand the whole song and see it all. So the lyrics to the song were - and I’m not joking when I say this - were literally written in ten minutes. I had the sheet of paper that I wrote the lyrics on and there’s - not one word is different, not one word was ever changed, it all just came out in a stream of consciousness. To talk about what the song is about, it’s probably one of the only rare - it’s probably one of the only love songs I’ve ever written. I dedicate it to my friend and partner, Yelena. (crowd cheers) She doesn’t like me very much right now so... (crowd aw’s) It’s true. No, but the reason I say that she doesn’t like me very much right now is when I sing this song, it reminds me of how precious love is and how important love is in all of our lives. Even though I wrote this song for a person, I would say to anyone who likes this song that I also write it for you in the sense that I’m trying to express that feeling that when you really try to explain to somebody how much you really care about them. This is - maybe she’ll forgive me.
Stand Inside Your Love
BC: Just gonna take a quick break, just one second.
[break of unknown length]
Guy: One two three, all cameras, headsets, everyone take your seats please.
Multiple people in crowd: Play [unintelligible]!
BC: What, what?
Multiple people in crowd: Play [unintelligible]!
BC: You know that’ll make the final air...release. You’re about 13 years late on requests. ... You good? Everything alright? Okay, storytime. Hmmm... To Sheila is was, thank you. To Sheila is was the first song on our 4th album Adore. (crowd cheering) You guys are grievous clappers. This song, To Sheila, which was the first song on our fourth album Adore really represents a turning point obviously in the band’s history. For those who don’t know, Jimmy had left the band before the making of that album, didn’t participate on the album, although his...laugh, he’s not even here right now so that’s perfect. He was there sort of spiritually which we later confirmed between each other. Besides that point, this was the first song that I recorded for the album and I just went in the studio and sang and played live and then, we later built the music on top of the song. But if I can describe two things about this particular song. One, the song is in essence a veiled love song but it also talks about the idea that all we truly seek in life is to sort of feel alive. You know, so the protagonist or antagonist - I’m never quite sure - is saying to the other person that “You make me real” which is a sort of simplistic line but it has so much hope in the idea that someone’s going to make you whole and complete. In a metaphysical sense, this song really symbolized to me at the time the breaking from the past. We were certainly trying to embrace new things and take a new direction with the band, which in some sense of the word proved to be fortuitous and in another sense of the word proved to be disastrous. The thing that I really think about when I play this song is I can see myself playing it in the studio and I know damn well that there’s going to be a lot of trouble to follow. When I finished this particular take that ended up on the album, I was shaking because I just knew that I’d stepped off a cliff from which there was no return. When we play this song now, it brings back the memory of that time and the defiance of that time and so this song still represents very much to me not only the idea that our fans - which, I hopefully count you in on that - represent to us as a band but also the defiance of our band to stand up for what we believe in no matter what. This is To Sheila.
To Sheila
BC: Ahhh. It’s very strange talking so much. I’m not used to it. I used to talk a lot and then I made a deal with the band that I would shut up...long time ago. I just, um - the year was 1994 and I just moved into...no clapping for the year? (crowd cheers) It was a good year, heh heh heh. The year was 1994 and I just moved into a new house, what was eventually going to be a purple Victorian house in Chicago. And I was like, okay, you know, it’s time to write this record, you know, this record that was gonna be called Mellon Collie, which I think it was gonna be called that... (crowd cheering) Yes, Frieda’s clapping. And this is the first song that I wrote for that album. This song really embodies the spirit of that time. I had just gotten married, I had just moved into a new house, the band was achieving the kind of success that people only dream of. I was really hopeful with the idea that I was eventually in some day and it looked like it was going to happen, actually have a happy life. Heh heh heh, didn’t quite work out that way. But I don’t think - that’s not what I really want to emphasize about this particular song. You know, hope is really the key component in life because one must have hope and faith to actually get out of bed and do anything in this world. In my mind at that time, I think I was 27 years old, I thought that I had arrived, I supposedly had everything that one would want: the wife, the cat, the house, the car and the money and oh yeah, the fame. But I think what I’m really trying to say here is all I really wanted was a happy home. To sing this song now, it doesn’t bother me because I really went into those situations with the best intentions and then when I found out that they weren’t really for me, then of course I changed those things. The other sort of component and people have often asked why I called this song Thirty-three... (crowd cheers) Actually, um, yes, the number 33, it is a good number. I actually had hoped to write three songs: Thirty-three, Sixty-six and Ninety-nine. I never wrote Sixty-six and Ninety-nine so...that’s for the internet. The reason I was attracted to number 33 at that particular time was I had a friend read my tarot cards and the person said that when you’re 33 years old - this is when I was 27 - when you’re 33 years old, your life is going to completely change. So as I sit here today at 33 years old, my life is going to completely change at 33. So, this song serves both as notice, prophecy and sort of a hope unhoped or unwished and I think that’s better. So this is Thirty-three.
Thirty-three
BC: I hope you like ‘em better when we play ‘em all over again. ... Um, you know, I gotta sit, sorry. Everybody okay? Hard to see so.... Yes. Back to the album concept for a moment. In this next song, which is called Blue Skies Bring Tears, please don’t clap... I know you don’t know this one so.... In this particular song - is it protagonist or antagonist? Antagonist is the causer, right? Okay, our hero, the antagonist... (crowd disagrees) It’s protagonist? See, you can tell I didn’t go to college. Okay, the protagonist, our hero, of course...he’s not a zero anymore, he’s a hero. At least he’s trying to be, yes. Um, heh heh heh heh, I know. See, they’ve never heard these stories so we’re all on a wonderful journey here. It’s all very Canadian. Our protagonist, the hero, no longer zero, has a dream and in the dream, he envisions that he is a soldier in the final war on Earth and he is so disconnected from everything that he seeks out love and connection from wherever he can find it. The things that he would take for granted - food and comfort and a home - no longer exist and all anyone is asking him to do is kill and not be killed. And in this dream, he envisions a life where there’s literally nothing left but a name and a number. And the way this ties into the story of the album is that the protagonist, the hero, no longer a zero, envisions that his world is basically coming to some sort of armageddon and he will end up basically like this character in the dream. So this dream serves - this song serves the dream not only as prophecy but as sort of destiny waiting to happen.
Blue Skies Bring Tears
BC: Very scary. ... James, you wanna tell any stories?
Iha: Uh...I just wanna rock.
BC: You just wanna...
Iha: Roll?
BC: No, look at the setlist.
Iha: Oh yeah. Well, I just wanna try and...try...try.
BC: See? You still got it.
Iha: Thank you very much.
BC: Hmmm...I don’t know what this song is about, honestly, heh heh heh heh. That’s a problem. Make it up? Yeah. Well, I can tell you that we were working on the album and started to go really crazy. The album was proving to be little more difficult for lots of different reasons. My girlfriend and I took a vacation to Long Island. I never in my life would’ve thought I would’ve taken a vacation on Long Island, that’s all I can tell you. We were out near Montauk or somewhere....
Iha: Dude, you gotta go to Long Island more often.
BC: We were jumped by a stoner and he stole my guitar but we were staying in a sort of a - we were in the wrong hotel, I can tell you that. The closest people to our age were about 30 years older and I think they thought we were there for some sort of goth convention or something. And so I brought along a guitar with the hopes that I would write what became - I thought this was gonna be the last song I wrote for Machina, I still wrote one more after this but...it was with the intention of writing one more song. So while we were sitting out by the beach and I’m playing guitar and I started playing the riff and I started singing like, you know, the bullshit lyrics “try to hold on, try to hold on.” And my girlfriend turned to me and said, “Must every song you write be so sad?” And I said, “No, it’s not ‘try to hold on,’ it’s like ‘go ahead and try to hold on to me.’” If you know what I mean. Good luck, that’s what I meant. It’s more of a good luck, good luck in trying to hold onto me. Or anybody for that matter ‘cause as we all know, it’s impossible to hold on to anybody because if you set them free and it returns, then it was meant to be, and if it doesn’t, it was meant to be free.
Iha: Have you ever been to Long Island though?
BC: So somewhere in between the very obvious lines of “try to hold on,” there’s these really existential lyrics which I think roughly approximate the way that I normally feel. I know I’m not supposed to go on the internet but I do occasionally. (crowd cheers) Don’t even, please, it’s so embarrassing. It’s sort of that high school thing, you know, where you really want to know what all the bad kids are saying about you. One sort of interesting criticism that I’ve seen recently about the songs that I’m writing is people say “You know the songs don’t seem as personal as they used to” and “They don’t seem as dramatic or emotional.” And what I would say about a song like this is I agree but that’s because I feel colder in my life. Everything that’s happened to me in my life has made me feel more distant from my feelings. And so when I write a song like Try, which is somewhere between “try to hold on to me” and crazy existential lyrics which somehow express the way that I feel, I am expressing the way that I feel, it’s just people don’t understand. So this is the cold version of me.
Try, Try, Try
BC: Well, we don’t have to redo that one. ...
(Jimmy solos)
Iha: Mr. Jimmy Chamberlin.
BC: Did anyone see us when we played here? Couple...? When was that, I don’t remember? Was it good or...?
Guy in crowd: 1979!
BC: Oh, you’re the same guy that was yelling that at the other concert. ... Sorry, guitar’s not tuned. ... I’m sorry? Yes, I will tell that story too. It’s amazing men always wanna know how I shave my head. Never women, only men. I think it’s some suppressed homoerotic thing. I think it’s called Stipe-ism. It started with him, not because of him. Got any funny stories? See, the symbolism here is she’s a girl, she doesn’t get a mic, she’s muted. (crowd boos) Oh, stop, always so fuckin’ PC I can’t stand it. That’s right, muted females rule. Now, please. Yeah, I mean when we first started - ‘course this is, um, you were still in high school - but I mean literally, the first four years of the band, every interview people would ask D’arcy what’s it like to be a girl in the band. And if any good’s come out of what’s happened in the last 15 years, that question has now stopped being asked. They still ask you? They always ask me what was it like to be a girl. Hmm, okay, this is a good one, I actually have a story for this one. (crowd cheers) Heh heh heh, yes, thank you. I planned this one all out. This song is called The Dusty and Pete - or The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete. Yes, it’s from that groundbreaking album Adore. No one knows this story so I feel sort of funny telling this story but it is a true story. In the song, it’s a boy and a girl song, but in the song, the man has murdered the girl, speaking of mute females. The man thinks that by murdering the girl, he’s going to get rid of her. Of course he doesn’t realize that she’s going to haunt him until the end of time so he really can’t rid himself of her at all. Yes, ‘cause there’s no escape as all you men know. So, heh, the moral to the tale is Pistol Pete murders Dusty. Dusty doesn’t know that she’s a ghost so she keeps trying to contact Pistol Pete and Pistol Pete can’t understand what’s bothering him. He’s sure it’s got something to do with a woman, he just doesn’t realize that she’s a ghost. So here’s the murderous tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete.
The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete
BC: Hmmm....can you turn that off, Jim? The year was 1979 and...(pauses for applause) it was another good year. And uh, hmmm.... Do you know this story? Heh heh heh. I feel very naked telling all these stories. (girl in crowd shouts “Woo!” and Billy laughs) Can you - sorry - can you shut off the effect thing for a minute? Thank you. Oh, it’s back on. Thank you. 1979 was the last song written for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. As the story goes, the idea had been kicking around for a while but didn’t have any words except, I believe, “shakedown 1979.” It’s always the one line. And we were really getting down to the end of the album and there really wasn’t a lot of time left and we were sort of checking a list to see the songs that we still had to work on. Flood, who was producing the album, I said, “I really think this song has a lot of potential” and he said “Well, you’ve got basically 24 hours to make it happen. So either come in here tomorrow and make this song happen or it’s not going to be on the album.” So I went home that night and I spent that night and the next morning writing lyrics. I did a demo at home and I came the next day and we did an acoustic version with a slightly different arrangement but basically the same song. You know, it’s just one of those moments where you just know that the song is a special song. To try to ex - many, many people because this is such a well known song of ours, many people have asked “What does it mean? What does 1979 mean? Does it mean about when the year 1979, are you trying to say something about the time?” I can’t really say why I picked the year 1979, I mean, it’s as good as any other year, I suppose. Plus it sounds good in a rhyme scheme. That’s a joke. Sometimes when I write a song, I see a picture in my head and for some reason, it’s a sort of an obscure memory that I have. And the memory that I had for this particular song was I was about 18 years old and I was driving down the road near my home and it was really heavily raining as only it can conceive to rain in a gloomy way in Illinois. And I remember just sitting at a traffic light and that’s the memory. And I don’t know why that memory sort of stayed but that’s the memory that I wrote the song about. That sort of feeling, sitting in a car at a traffic light. I know it doesn’t sound very glamorous but it emotionally connotates for me sort of a feeling of waiting for something to happen and not being quite there yet but it’s just around the corner. Little did I know that I was right so this is 1979.
1979 (Jimmy plays drums, unlike almost all other 2000 versions)
BC: I wanna take a little, like a five minute break, okay? We’ll be back in five minutes.
[set break]
BC: Okay, so we got three more songs we haven’t done, then we want to do a few over again if that’s okay.
Person in crowd: [unintelligible]!
BC: I can’t hear you. (many people yelling) Uh, uh, uh, uh! Should I tell my story, James? Okay. This song is called Raindrops and Sunshowers. It’s pretty simple, I have to say. It’s basically about, once again, how you can’t seem to please somebody and all you try to do is walk between the raindrops for them, which of course is impossible. In the song, the antagonist - thank you - the antagonist is pretty messed up in the head. So the protagonist is attempting to communicate and as we know, communicating to another human being is probably the hardest thing in the world to do, especially when it comes to the truth. I don’t think the protagonist wins in the end. I think he or she gets wet but it’s all good. So this is Raindrops and Sunshowers.
Raindrops + Sunshowers (abandoned after 3rd line in verse 1)
BC: Sorry, it’s not going to work, Jimmy. Too fast, it’s too fast...and too loud. Sorry. This is Raindrops and Sunshowers.
Raindrops + Sunshowers
BC: Heh, nice thank you. The next song we would like to play for you is called With Every Light and there’s a.... (pause for applause) Do you wanna hear the story behind this song or the meaning of the song?
Audience: Both!
BC: Let’s vote. Meaning of the song? Story of the song? See, the meaning is not important, I’ve said that all along. So here’s the story of the song. It’s a very interesting story, I think. For a while, me and James and D’arcy at the time were working out with a friend of ours, a trainer in Chicago. We were building up our muscles to once again tour the world with rock and roll. I think Jimmy was working out too. He was working out something, heh heh heh. (cracks up) So one day, I was having a conversation with our friend and she was talking about how her mother had passed away at roughly the same time as my mother. And she said, “I have a friend who’s a psychic, although the friend doesn’t like me using that word so we’ll call her an intuitive. She’s an intuitive and she can possibly communicate with your mother.” So I became intrigued with the idea that maybe I would talk to my mother somewhere on the other side, as they say. For those of you who don’t know, my mother passed away about four years ago. Actually, there’s a whole ‘nother story but my mother did actually try to contact somebody and left messages through this other sort of intuitive woman so it wasn’t sort of out of my frame of reference that my mother might be able to communicate from the dead, so to speak. It gets stranger. So I went to see this person who’s become a very close friend of mine and really in that particular afternoon, so many things about life and the things that I believe in were sort of confirmed for me in a general way. And I became sort of, in a rare moment of happiness, really content with the world and the first thing I did when I got home was I picked up a guitar and I wrote this song. The meaning of the idea With Every Light is that we basically are everybody that we meet and the energy that sort of comes into our body becomes part of who we are. In some ways, it’s not just an acknowledgment of my mother somewhere and everything that goes on in my life but an acknowledgment of the fact that everything that I’ve become in my life is - both from enemies and from friends - has become a part of me and also you as well, so I’ll give you that. So when I sing With Every Light, I’m talking about everybody because it is about the light and hopefully you know what I mean. Here’s to the light.
With Every Light (abandoned after “could you believe in heaven / if heaven is all you had”)
BC: Shit. I was very disappointed you didn’t pick the meaning of the song and I started to really obsess on that in the middle. That’s not true, I just messed up. (Jimmy starts counting off the song again) Wait, let me remember the words. By the way, my real name’s not Billy. No, it’s actually Fred. Okay.
With Every Light (abandoned right before the lines in the last abandoned version)
BC: Hahahaha. It’s my fault. It really is my fault. Hahahaha. Now it’s all like “ohhh.” That’s not very professional...shocking. Sorry about this. I guess we’ll have to break up now. Thank you, heh, Fred loves you. Alright, we’ll try one more time.
With Every Light
BC: Thank you. I wrote this next song, Landslide, in 1972. You guys doin’ alright there in the back? They’re actually judging. Okay. This song is sort of a legend in Pumpkin world because it has the rare distinction, I think - although I could be wrong - of the only song that we’ve recorded for two different albums. That true? Yes. Cash Car Star? Oh, sorry. Heh heh. Well, that’s it, thank you. This song is called Let Me Give the World to You. (crowd cheers) See, it’s famous, even though it’s never come out. This song was originally written for the Adore album and many people that have heard the Adore version told me that I’m absolutely insane because they believe it was probably the song that would have made Adore a hit album. But for some reason, it just didn’t seem to be the right song for that album so then we decided that we were going to record it for Machina and of course we didn’t put it on Machina either, heh heh. But I love this song. Every once in a while, you write a song and it’s sort of elusive, it doesn’t really want to be held to anything and we probably should’ve put this song on a soundtrack or something because it doesn’t really seem to want to be tied to any one album or any one moment in time. It’ll probably best serve as sort of a song for our greatest hits but maybe we’ll leave it off that too and let it live as a legend. I’d like to tell you what the song was about but you’ve already voted that you’re not interested in song meanings so.... (crowd protests) Yes. This is a recurring theme in the songs that I write but the actual meaning of Let Me Give the World to You is basically me as a boy speaking to a girl, saying that “Let me give the world to you” because obviously nothing else is going to fuckin’ make you happy. Girls, you know what I’m talking about. So this is Let Me Give the World to You.
Let Me Give the World to You (abandoned almost immediately)
BC: Slow. Sorry, too slow.
> Let Me Give the World to You
BC: This concludes our regularly scheduled program. Actually wouldn’t mind doing that one again too. Is it okay if we do some songs again? We don’t want the rest of the world to know how feeble and worthless we are. We were gonna have dance moves but.... I wanna do that one again. Huh? Wanna do it now? Okay, one second.
short jam
BC: Is everybody tired? Liars! Liars. We’re tired. Yeah.
Don’t You Want Me (tease - Billy or Iha plays the riff once)
BC: So...the girl’s saying to the boy, “let me give the world to you because no matter what you get, you’re going to be unhappy and destroy it anyway.” So, this is Let Me Give the World to You.
Let Me Give the World to You
BC: Thank you. Is that one better? Okay, we’d just like to do three songs again so.... Glass? We’re gonna do this one again because we were nervous and it wasn’t very good. You see, my jokes are getting less funny. For those of you who’ve always wondered what our rehearsals are like, you’re pretty much - this is it. You’re seeing all the mystery revealed. The other part I’d like to add about this song which I forgot in the beginning was the girl’s totally on drugs. That’s very important, explains a lot.
Glass and the Ghost Children
> Le Deux Machina (tease)
BC: Okay, we’re just gonna do one more.
Zero (tease - Melissa bass, joined by Jimmy)
BC: You like to say a few final words here, James, give me a minute? Would you like to say a few final words?
Iha: Uh...my gosh. I don’t have any prepared statements. Thanks for coming, heh. Thanks to all the fans of the band for a million years, I don’t know. I’m trying to think of something profound here but I think you’ve already said all the profound things about the songs, but you guys are great, thanks.
Improv Jam
BC: You don’t wanna sing for them? Mike’s playing a song for you.
Iha: I’d rather not. Thank you for the memories. Thank each and every one of you. Thank you.
BC: When did you write that?
Iha: Well, I wrote that and I was in the cab coming up from the Village. It just came to me.
BC: Ahhh....ahhh....mmmm...okay, one more time. Heh heh, I’m not talking anymore, that’s it.
Stand Inside Your Love
Iha: Thank you, thank you.
BC: Thank you everybody. Thanks a lot, thank you, thank you.
Iha: Adieu.
BC: Thank you. God bless.

Photos and Memorabillia