Ahoy-hoy

Ahoy-hoy is how Mr. Burns on the Simpsons answers the telephone. Great stuff, I tell ya!

So, as you may already know, I went to see Billy Corgan this weekend. It was not a Smashing Pumpkins concert. But rumor has it they're going to start a tour in Spring 2010.

I started the day out by hearing the opening music lines from the Beavis & Butthead theme. Perfect I thought. Pop icons from the 1990’s starting the day that I was making my way down to NYC to see one of the greatest musicians from the 1990’s (and today) – Billy Corgan.

We rode the Amtrak down on the dreary day, but of course that didn’t bother me. This was the day that I got to listen to Billy have a dialogue about an image from C.G. Jung’s Red Book at the Rubin Museum of Art. Yes, it’s true I had no idea who Jung was or what this Red Book was about before I decided to attend this event. So like any good academic, I did my research.

Carl Gusav Jung was a German Psychologist who at one point in his life worked closely with Freud, but they had a falling out in about Jung’s mid-life. Jung created the visually impressive Red Book over the course of years. A short video is available here: http://bit.ly/3nKl8I

Since I’ve been attending Smashing Pumpkins/Billy Corgan related events for almost 15 years now, I know that if an event is general admission you must arrive early. This is because surprisingly, there are people out there like me. Dave and I arrived 2 hours ahead of time. There were not people lined up outside the theater (housed inside the museum) so we explored the museum a bit, then got in line at with just about 1 hour left ‘til show time.

Waiting in lines generally pays off for me, and this time was no exception. We got some sweet front row seats with a few other very nice fans. We all ended up with great seats so that was great (I'm taking front and center here, folks!)

Billy and Morgan went back and forth for over an hour analyzing one particular image from the Red Book:



Billy compared the fish to a monster. Billy said that the monster wasn't the obvious monster and that "I lived with a monster in New York." Billy also talked about how record companies tried to manipulate what he did/change him- it's really clear why he is going to release a collection of 44 songs on his own... and for free.

Billy also offered criticism of the internet/technology throughout the dialogue. The Smashing Pumpkins online community has been nasty for years, and Billy called the internet a place to vomit (I assume he meant language or textual vomit) or something like that.

There was a Question and Answer session, and of course my hand shot up. I received the privilege of asking the second question. When my turn came about, I said "Hi Billy. During the dialogue here you've offered some criticism regarding the internet and technology. But you're always blogging, you have smashingpumpkins.com and you're always communicating with the fans via the internet. So why are you so critical, you must think it's good for something?" or something like that... I asked because I was genuinely curious, it was relevant to the discussion and it was relevant to my academic work.

It was really interesting having your "pop-culture" address my question and speak directly to me in a room of 100 people. He answered that he did believe it did bring some people together who wouldn't normally have the opportunity to communicate (so true.) He then brought up how he just decided that he just had to let the sp.com community "kill themselves" if they wanted - or something like that.

My favorite question of the day came from another fan, a guy probably my age also sitting in the front row. He started off by saying "I listen to a lot of music, but there's no body of work that I've connected to like I have to yours" this was awesome, because it's a great description of my relationship with his music. He continued to ask about the meanings of a few lyrics, The world is a vampire and The more you change the less you feel.

Billy responded that The world is a vampire just came out- he didn't think to hard about that one. He then said that he wouldn't write the line The more you change the less you feel today. That was my high school senior quote. I agree that I wouldn't have picked that quote today myself. I'm not into numbness as of late.

Here are a couple short videos (about 2 mins. a piece)




And... here is the end- When BC sat on the stage RIGHT in front of me, which was pretty damn cool.