yesterday was day 2 of voodoo and should have been one of the better days. unfortunately thanks to Billy Corgan, it was tainted with the frustration of a bad show. the day started off well enough, with jacob and i hitting up the pub to watch the West Ham game, then going to the festival. we cut out on the game early to make it in time for Mute Math’s set at 1:15. their show was good, but something we’ve come to expect after seeing them multiple times. i much prefer seeing them in the HOB than at a festival, but i think that applies to every band we saw this weekend. we were able to catch Sinead O’Connor’s set, and at the time, it was the worst show we saw of the weekend. it was boring, very very boring. she finally got around to playing “Nothing Compares 2 U” about halfway through, after which point we left to go walk around. we caught Coheed and some of Ben Harper, before making our way to the stage where Spoon was going to play. jacob befriended a guy named Gibson who was quoted for the post title. he seemed like a friendly person, although very gullible when we told him the bald guy in Ben Harper’s band was Michael Stipe. he asked Jacob if we wanted to smoke a bowl for Spoon, to which Jacob declined. Spoon’s show was pretty good, although i’m still not very familiar with their stuff.

we left Spoon a few minutes before the end to stake out a spot for Smashing Pumpkins. Jacob recounted of the legendary show he saw in ’97 where SP played 3 hours with a 20 minute version of Silverfuck. well great, it’ll be a good show, right? WRONG! oh that’s right, SP has a new lineup, they have a new album, and Billy Corgan thinks everyone wants to hear the NEW material, not the OLD material. they were alotted 2 hours, and we got 5 or 6 old songs. no Cherub Rock, no Zero (HOW COULD THEY NOT PLAY ZERO?!?), no Disarm, none of those. they stuck to stuff off of Zeitgeist almost exclusively. this setlist resulted in 3/4 of the crowd leaving before the end. we stayed until the end hoping against all hope that they would dust off a classic, but they actually ended the show with two COVERS. i’m fine with their ‘reunion’, i’m fine with them playing some of the new material, but if you’re on a ‘reunion’ tour, then you need to PLAY THE OLD SONGS, get people excited again. don’t push the new material to try to sell records, especially if it is not in the same realm as the old stuff. it was very very disappointing.

the one light in this dark SP tunnel was that at one point, Billy said he got a chance to go around NOLA during the day, and he said instead of the living funeral he was expecting, he saw a breathing, vibrant city. jacob and i immediately thought of when we saw Lionel Richie at jazzfest, and how he complimented us and didn’t remind us of the problems (like Rage). other than that, SP made Sinead O’Connor look good, at least she played her classic.