The Smashing Pumpkins have officially announced a reunion tour, with dates taking place across North America, but no stop announced for Vancouver.

As noted by the Straight, other media outlets, and fans yesterday, the Shiny And Oh So Bright Tour can’t really be called a reunion of the band’s classic lineup as original bassist D’Arcy Wretzky won’t be part of the proceedings. (Click here for the full rant)

Nontheless, Gen Xers will be able to haul their moth-eaten Zero shirts out of storage, however, for a version of the band that includes singer-guitarist Billy Corgan, guitarist James Iha, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain.

 https://twitter.com/SmashingPumpkin/status/964183566216175616

The three founding Pumpkins will be playing songs from the band’s five albums. from Gish to Machina.

For those hoping for a Vancouver date, it might be time to plan a road trip to Seattle for a show scheduled for August 24. The tour kicks off in Glendale, Arizona.

Curious what to expect? Here’s a review from 1997 when the Pumpkins were at the top of their game and headlining hockey rinks. (And, by Pumpkins, we mean the band with D’Arcy Wretzky on bass, not a hired gun. Taking her place will be Jeff Schroeder, who previously played guitar with Smashing Pumpkins after a mid-’00s edition of the group was assembled as a cash grab.)

CONCERTS
The Smashing Pumpkins
At GM Place on Wednesday, January 8
• By Mike Usinger
Billy Corgan is proof that therapy can work for even the most emotionally troubled misfit. In contrast to past Vancouver appearances, the often-hostile front man was humble, gracious, and even friendly when the Smashing Pumpkins played a close-to-sold-out GM Place on January 8. He thanked the crowd profusely for three encores, wished everyone much happiness in 1997, and generally refrained from acting like an asshole.

The Billy Corgan of yesteryear wasn’t nearly as pleasant. When the Pumpkins played the old 86 Street Music Hall a few years back, things eventually degenerated into an ugly shouting match. After a member of the audience that night yelled “You’re a freak, Billy,” the singer went ballistic, launching into an abusive tirade about how he at least had the guts to get up on stage and bare his emotionally battered soul to the audience.

Maybe the classical strains of Henryk Gorecki blaring over the PA system between sets had something to do with it, but Corgan and his fellow Pumpkins were in a positively mellow mood for the first half of the band’s show. Things kicked off with the heavily orchestrated “Tonight, Tonight”, then remained relatively sedate until the band napalmed its way through “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” nearly an hour later.

Thanks to the garbled mix, keyboard player Dennis Flemion, on loan from the Frogs, dominated most of the early songs. In fact, there were times when it seemed as if someone had forgotten to plug in the guitars and microphones: for the first half of the show, the sound was that bad.

That didn’t seem to bother the legions of Billy Corgan wanna-bes, who screamed as if they were witnessing the second coming of Christ. In a tribute to the singer’s outfit in the Pumpkins’ “Bullet With Butterfly Wing” video, T-shirts emblazoned with the word Zero on front were the fashion statement of the evening. The truly obsessed took things a step further by adding shiny silver pants and eye shadow to their ensembles.

With his stooped-over posture and shaved head, Corgan looks like a cross between The Simpsons’ Montgomery Burns and Mr. Clean. Freakish as is he is, however, he’s certainly got the rock ’n’ roll moves down to an art form.

When he’s not scrunching up his body and howling into the microphone, he’s standing with legs splayed at centre stage, slashing at his guitar or whipping off one-handed guitar solos. It’s a good thing he’s so charismatic, because fellow Pumpkins D’Arcy on bass and guitarist James Iha have about as much stage presence as a cigar-store Indian.

Whether or not the Smashing Pumpkins can be considered an “alternative band” is open for debate. Although there were a good number of disaffected bleached-and-pierced types, most of the crowd looked like the kind of people who listen to CFOX. And the atmosphere in GM Place was definitely mainstream rock ’n’ rollish: people actually flicked their lighters when the band came onstage.

Perhaps the Pumpkins are one of the best indications to date that “alternative” is now truly just another label for mainstream. There’s nothing radical about stomping around with dyed hair when a couple of thousand of your fellow concertgoers are doing the same thing. In fact, if you wanted to see someone making a bold statement about individuality, you should have been hanging out in the GM Place concourse before the show.

Completely unaware they were making a spectacle of themselves were a couple who looked as though they were headed to a 1980s-theme Halloween party. The guy was decked out in a black-leather fringed jacket, ball-hugging jeans, and yellow lizard-skin cowboy boots. His girlfriend had a cotton-candy mountain of dyed blonde hair, a bleached denim vest, black lace shirt, and black velvet boots. It was as if they’d shown up to see Poison or Vixen instead of the Smashing Pumpkins.

They were probably oblivious to it, but they were easily the most alternative people in all of GM Place.