Lets be honest here [TOUR-FLOP]
 

https://i.imgur.com/VxqAak4.jpg

80 % of all shows look like this, and first-second-third day sales are VITAL for these sort of venues. This tour is over.

For some reason it seems weird to me that the $300 floor seats are filling up. Doesn't that imply there are a few insane freaks that'll pay a lot, then no one else gives a fuck? That doesn't seem like the right audience makeup

I mean I have 5k posts on here and didn't even buy a nosebleed seat

Also having literal seats for a rock concert is fucking dumb

Yeah, nobody dances/moves to rock anymore. Especially not to "the bald guy with that cool-kids song from 1990-whatever".

That's probably how most people "remember" the bands legacy.

I went to see Queens Of The Stone Age last year. Here are two GIFs from that show:


https://i.imgur.com/SKLBGTw.gif


https://i.imgur.com/FGuhkyM.gif

I don’t know what venues queens are playing but they need to be playing places like that. I just don’t think they are suited to an arena and the fact that they ever were an arena band was a product of the specific time.

Play a bunch of sold out shows and rock the hell out of people and rebuild it up from there.

A good portion of those are held back and given to the promoter and various other people. You can look on smoking gun and read contracts that show how many tickets are held back.

Yeah, that's fine. I was more talking about the capacity of The Pumpkins doing that thing. In an arena. With seats.


Why would they otherwise not have a floor if they thought people could/would want to dance?

If sales are disappointing then at some point Corgan will lash out at somebody as a scapegoat for why the arena tour hasn't sold. Whether it comes before the tour and detonates it, or Jimmy and James are cast off as not being a profitable draw, or whatever.

The sheer number of dates on this tour, and the size of the venues was pie-in-the-sky.

Add to that he's shoehorned Jeff in and there's no female bassist on the promo shoot - people will notice that.

They're going to have to work at it with TV appearances, a strong EP ahead of the tour, price reductions etc.

People keep saying things like this.

People don't even care about this tour enough to notice anything.

This tour isn't a flop because he didn't get the lineup, or bad promotion... This tour is a flop because people don't give a shit about this band anymore.

Even in the 90s The Pumpkins had an odd reputation and Billy has shit on that rep for three decades.

It's not selling because there is no audience there, the tiny bit of an audience that would be there are not going to pay the prices he is asking.

This tour is going to be an excellent addition to the "Corgan's greatest blunders" thread

When it was announced I assumed they'd be playing venues with like 2000-3000 capacity. Even by Corgan's usual megalomoronic standards this is delusional. The Montreal show I'm going to seems to have sold reasonably well, though not remotely as well as Radiohead has.

At this point I'd be perfectly happy for the tour to get cancelled or venues rearranged if it meant getting a proper GA show in an appropriately sized venue. I saw Pixies in a half empty stadium and it felt cavernous and miserable when I turned around and looked behind me.

This

In London (which of course is not normal) QOTSA played in at the O2 Arena (20,000) and SSE Arena (12,500). I don't know if these places were sold out, but they were pretty packed, and boy did they play a great show in the O2. Great reviews as well.

Last time I saw Billy was in 2008. The Oberhausen Arena in Germany, which the band filled up during the MACHINA tour, had most of it partitioned off in that evening, and the little space left wasn't even that fully. The band came out, Billy obviously had no interest in playing, berated us for not having enough fun and sang in his bad vibrato. Jimmy was killer, though. It was the last time I even considered checking them out. It wasn't even bad - just overall a bit "meh".

Last great concert was just before Zeitgeist came out. Berlin, Columbiahalle (3,500), everyone, including the band was very enthusiastic, great setlist with hits and some real rarities, I loved them.

You mean "Skysaw".

This times 1000. The smart thing to do would be play short shows chock full or deep cuts at small theaters or smaller arenas. They would have a chance of building up good reviews and press, and then hitting bigger venues when the EP or album drops. But Corgan needs money, and I’m sure he got a decent upfront payment from Live Nation.

The only comparable tour to this I have ever seen was the 2002 North American tour Guns N’ Roses started when I worked at Clear Channel. It was considered a high risk high reward tour. Clear Channel didn’t expect any shows to sell out at first, and even anticipated some of the early shows would be sparsely attended. They hoped that the band would gain good reviews, which would cause people to buy more tickets at later shows closer to the night of the showitself. To their credit, it actually worked to a degree. Despite the first show being cancelled and a riot starting, and a second show where Axl’s mic died and left him inaudible the first half of the show, they were able to sell out Madison Square Garden. Unfortunately Axl no showed at the next concert and another riot started so Clear Channel pulled the plug.

I imagine Live Nation hopes for a similar trajectory. Unfortunately for the Pumpkins, Guns N’ Roses had a much larger popular legacy. Also, Axl had re-emerged in 2002 after being “off the radar” for quite some time. People were probably curious and excited to see Axl sing those songs again. No matter how much Live Nation sweeps 2007-2016 under the rug, Billy toured extensively all that time. “Casual” buyers who may be interested in seeing the band again will probably be turned off by the prices and the fact that they probably saw Smashing Pumpkins not that long ago.

I would have probably paid to see them if they had the 4 original members.

Do you have any stats to back that up. I am curious because I have read in the past that 50% of tickets are sold in the first 3 months of a sale.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/blog/wh...-tickets-ds00/

But even if let's say that all the concerts that don't wind up half filled get cancelled, why would Billy cancel Chicago, New York, LA, San Fran, Toronto, Connecticut, and a few others that do fill up?

Would it even be his call to cancel dates or change venues on this tour, does for example Live Nation not have a say in this?

Yeah, Live Nation would just change the venue to a smaller location they have their grubby hands on.

Queens played an arena when they were here a month back. The entire floor was general admission. You'll never see a guy like Homme do that seated floor baloney... It just goes to show how fucking lame Corgan has become.

Rolling Stone did a piece about how a lot of the big touring baby-boomer bands are retiring and how the Smashing Pumpkins are trying to slide into the legacy act niche in order to fill that void... Really isn't a terrible idea considering how few important 90's rock bands are left or could even reform if they wanted to.

I would disagree somewhat. There is a great deal of appreciation for the back catalog of the Pumpkins. 1979 has over a 100 million listens on Spotify, the other big hits well into the tens of millions. A band like Queens of the Stone Age, who have been playing arenas in Europe, don't have the same level of listenership.

The tour is not a failure just yet. There is a long way to go before these shows, a lot of promotion to come and if it's done well, there is still a very good chance they can pull this off. They won't sell out many venues, but with the pricing they are charging they don't have to. Milking 5000 people for $150 each on the night brings in a lot more than 10,000 at $50 each.

I fucking hate it, but that's the model.

Casual audiences don't know enough about the Pumpkins to know much about Corgan's persona or the band drama. They know it's the band with the bald guy with the nasally voice and maybe they know it has the chick bassist. They like songs like "Bullet," "Today," "1979" and "Tonight, Tonight." They might remember "Cherub Rock" if they played Rock Band or something. Most normies I've talked to don't know of anything past MCIS, and the band just fell off the face of the earth for them after that album.

Many people don't even know that the band reformed and has been active for a decade.

So, the only way I see the drama and lack of the true classic lineup affecting ticket sales is if pretty much any mention of the tour in the press is presented with these facts. People who otherwise wouldn't realize might go "oh, I hear that band doesn't even have all the original members, just, like, some of them. One of those four people I don't even know isn't in it."

And frankly, I think nobody but us jaded '90s rock fans seriously follows any tabloid news about these grunge personalities, and most won't be reached by Wretzky's interview. Being this invested in this stuff is a niche interest.

Whether the tour flops or not will have more to do with whether appreciation for a few popular singles that still get radio airplay will be enough to justify the price of admission, and less to do with this being a soulless cash grab to pay off some debt from bad wrestling investments, which are facts that most people who don't spend all their time on Netphoria or Sad Machines aren't even privy to.

The tour is a flop

It's not nice to say "I hope the tour flops"
But I hope the tour flops.

Even though Corgan is a dick, I don't really wish ill on him or his project. I'm not cheering him on, either. I just don't care either way.

I mean, I care about the drama, that's why I'm reading all the juicy D'arcy tidbits that Buttcannon is slowly dripping out to get more clicks out of a single interview. I'll read every single one of those. It's salacious and funny.

But, like, I'm not rooting for or against the tour or anything.

If they came to my city, I would probably see it, just because I'm a young fan and never got to see even three of the four classic members play together. Heck, I didn't even get to see two. Although, in a way, I kinda did get to see two, because having that big-ass shiny Oceania orb on stage was kinda like having an additional Billy Corgan. It was an okay show, it felt a little anemic because the latest album was a bit boring and Corgan is old and lacks rock-and-roll bluster, but I had fun because I got to see my favourite band, even if it was it's pale shadow. And some of the "classic" setlist was actually really fun, especially "X.Y.U." Most of it was just boring radio singles with few deep cuts, though.

But, seeing as the only tour stops in my country are on the other side of it, I don't wanna see the band enough that I'd pay for a concert ticket and a plane ticket. I caught a plane to see Electric Wizard, and that was worth it. Smashing Pumpkins in 2018, not so much.

But think of the drama if it flops!

Much drama.