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07-13-2018, 12:32 PM | #1 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,612
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Shiny and Oh So Bright Tour - Reviews
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music...oenix-10576910
Critic’s Notebook Last Night: The Smashing Pumpkins’ Shiny and Oh So Bright Tour at Gila River Arena in Glendale. The Crowd: A horde of stoked Gen Xers, Millennials, and little kids losing their shit. I tried keeping a tally of how many Zero shirts I saw at the venue and lost track after Number 40. Overhead: “Phoenix—I mean, Glendale! Why so hot?!” Few things are more obnoxious than touring artists devoting the brunt of their stage banter to “boy, it sure is hot” comments, but James Iha somehow makes it sound charming and self-effacing. Random Notebook Dump: Aside from Corgan’s Charlie Brown vampire stylings, both Chamberlain and Iha had their own distinctive looks. Rocking a sleeveless silver jacket, the amiable Chamberlain had a Jetsons meets A Night At The Roxbury vibe going on. With his stylish mane and slick suit, James Iha looked like what would happen if you took an Asian Hall & Oates tribute band and rolled them into one person.Also: I get that merch booths mark shit up, but charging $60 for a vinyl copy of Siamese Dream is bonkers. Set List: Disarm Rocket Siva Rhinoceros Space Oddity (cover) Drown Zero The Everlasting Gaze Stand Inside Your Love Thirty-Three Eye Soma Blew Away For Martha To Sheila Mayonaise Porcelina of the Vast Oceans Landslide (cover) Tonight, Tonight Stairway to Heaven (cover) Cherub Rock 1979 Ava Adore Try, Try, Try The Beginning is the End is the Beginning Hummer Today Bullet With Butterfly Wings Muzzle Encore: Solara Baby Mine (cover) |
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07-13-2018, 12:46 PM | #2 |
Minion of Satan
Posts: 6,014
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"Last night, the Smashing Pumpkins debuted the full arena show in Glendale, Arizona. Even in just the couple weeks since the Los Angeles warm-up concert, things had changed in the band, including adding a sixth member in keyboardist Katie Cole. But the blueprint for the Shiny And Oh So Bright Tour had been laid long in advance. The concert would focus on music from the band’s classic ’90s era, but would also fold in new material written specifically for this iteration, including the recently debuted barnburner “Solara.” Longtime bassist D’arcy Wretzky wouldn’t be involved, much to the chagrin of her and a vocal portion of the band’s longtime fans. James Iha, though, would back, along with Jimmy Chamberlin on the drums, giving Billy Corgan a backing band that is sneaky in its technical mastery.
A decade ago, and this would have been the kind of excursion that would debut at Coachella, but the festival landscape has shifted so much that the Smashing Pumpkins have become a kind of legacy act that is not at home performing on the same stages as SZA and Diplo. So instead, fans get the Pumpkins in arenas, swelled to six members, and featuring the biggest stage production of their career. Fans get to see Corgan endure more costume changes than a Taylor Swift concert, and get to experience covers from the iconic (Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”) to the unexpected (David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”) or the indulgent (a version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” that was paired with a bunch of dudes dressed as monks wheeling a Corgan relic around the arena). If the band was trying to prove that doing the reunion at this scale was the only way to properly pay homage to their history, then they spared no expense and took the time to do just that. So it is with a little irony that the most successful moments of the set were the parts that found the band playing old songs faithfully without much need for over-the-top theatrics. For much of the band’s creative peak, this was who the band was, the kind of ’90s alt-rock icons that could get sweaty in a small club and blow the minds of their fans through their technical prowess and songwriting craft. It was only after the success of 1995’s Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness that the group began exploring a more ambitious visual aesthetic, and both iterations of the band very much existed side by side on Thursday night. Surely there are some fans out there who are just as interested in hearing the rarely played classics like “Drown” or “Soma” performed faithfully and also witness moving set pieces and between-song video speeches from a character that looked a lot like Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath. But mostly it felt like two different bands were playing creative tug-o-war, and it just comes down to personal preference which one was preferred. Still, the three-hour set had to exceed most people’s wildest expectations. There were moments of pure bliss throughout the audience, be it more well-known endeavors like a ferocious “Cherub Rock” or deeper cuts like the best Smashing Pumpkins song ever written “Mayonaise.” Songs that found the band getting quieter also went over particularly well, like the tender “Thirty-Three” which saw lyrics projected so fans could sing along, or the Iha-fronted “Blew Away” that gave the adored guitarist a chance to take the spotlight. And the band is not light on hits, with everything from “Zero” to “1979” to “Tonight Tonight” to “Eye” going over splendidly. Three hours is a really long concert, though, and some of the fat could be trimmed — a couple of the aforementioned covers, a Corgan-at-piano run that included “For Martha” and “To Sheila” that felt like a seriously lull — but its hard to get to down on a band for giving its fans their money’s worth. And with tickets in some markets struggling to move, a look at this massive setlist might be the best way to get that ball rolling. There are ultimately two ways to look at the Pumpkins’ Shiny And Oh So Bright Tour. One is like a generous gift for fans who have waited for nearly 20 years to have Corgan, Iha, and Chamberlin performing together and focusing on the strongest songs of their career. The other is this exercise in self-indulgence, where Corgan displays audacity to place his band among the greats in rock history and give his bizarre aesthetic choices a home. I tend to side with the former, even if I can see the points of the latter, and maybe that’s just taking into account the small shows the band performed in Los Angeles before this arena tour, where they made an effort to give core fans an inexpensive (or free) chance to get close to the band while also dusting off rarities for a sort of dress rehearsal. But even the wholeheartedness of Thursday’s performance was endearing more than anything, with Corgan fully embracing the weight of the moment and showing a willingness to take the biggest swing possible. It was refreshing to see a band not play it safe, something even rarer for a band as seasoned as the Pumpkins. On the opening song of the night, Corgan took the stage by himself, backed by blinding white light, getting the reception he deserved as the primary creative force behind the band. He then played the opening strums of “Disarm” to the eruption of the audience, happy to join in a singalong of one of the band’s most well-known tracks. Behind Corgan, a slide show of photos showed him as a child, some of them animated over with vampire teeth and “666” scrawlings, drawing a direct line from the early moments of his life to the present. “I used to be a little boy,” he sang while the images confirmed just that, and the tour, for better or worse, allows for him to bask in dreams fulfilled, to bathe in past accomplishments, and to give nostalgia a deserved make-over. But one line from that song stood out even more: “Send this smile over to you.” And by the looks of the fans who danced in the aisle ways throughout, who put their arms around each other to yell out lyrics, and who stood in their place for every minute of the impressive show, that smile was received. The band doesn’t need to show it for their fans to feel it." https://uproxx.com/music/smashing-pu...ndale-concert/ |
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07-13-2018, 12:53 PM | #3 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 4,275
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Charlie Brown vampire
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07-13-2018, 01:16 PM | #4 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 2,175
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Why don't you just put this in the big thread, ya jabroni?
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07-13-2018, 01:18 PM | #5 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,612
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07-13-2018, 01:50 PM | #6 |
Pledge
Location: Hell A
Posts: 218
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07-13-2018, 05:19 PM | #7 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 2,115
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It’s good to have a separate reviews thread. It’s not like the board has dozens of hot topics at once anyway.
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07-13-2018, 05:24 PM | #8 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Location: SP, Sao Paulo - Brazil
Posts: 4,876
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07-15-2018, 10:35 PM | #9 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,114
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That's a great set list. Though I wish James would play "The Boy" instead of "Blew Away" because that's the only song of his I actually like.
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07-16-2018, 01:44 AM | #10 |
Demi-God
Location: Crystal Lake, IL
Posts: 268
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I fucking hated when BC started the 2007 shows alone onstage and I hate that he's doing the same thing now. So full of it...
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07-16-2018, 02:26 AM | #11 |
Just Hook it to My Veins!
Location: Donald Trump of Netphoria
Posts: 37,218
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07-16-2018, 10:17 AM | #12 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 2,626
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07-16-2018, 10:21 AM | #13 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,114
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Go is okay but like so many other songs on Machina II, the production quality just ruins it for me. I've heard Billy intentionally tried to make half the songs on that album sound like he recorded them in a basement with a broken dictaphone, but I have no idea why. There is some really good material there that just sounds shitty for no good reason.
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07-16-2018, 10:33 AM | #14 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,714
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No, especially the dirty production of machina 2 makes it outstanding
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07-16-2018, 11:09 AM | #15 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,114
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To each his own, but I feel like the best songs on either Machina are the ones like Glass' Theme that don't sound overproduced like the majority of Machina I, and don't sound all shitty like most of Machina II.
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07-16-2018, 03:04 PM | #16 | |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,612
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Quote:
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07-19-2018, 03:10 AM | #17 |
Banned
Posts: 21,169
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The more they changed, the less we felt: The Smashing Pumpkins satisfy longtime fans during the Shiny and Oh So Bright Tour performance
https://newsok.com/article/5601791/t...ur-performance |
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07-19-2018, 03:21 AM | #18 |
Banned
Posts: 21,169
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Smashing Pumpkins Put on a Shiny and Oh So Very Long Show at Toyota Center
http://www.houstonpress.com/music/th...-some-10670898 |
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07-19-2018, 10:35 AM | #19 |
Just Hook it to My Veins!
Location: Donald Trump of Netphoria
Posts: 37,218
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ur dad is oh so very long
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07-19-2018, 10:46 AM | #20 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Location: SP, Sao Paulo - Brazil
Posts: 4,876
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And shiny too
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07-19-2018, 11:40 AM | #21 | |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 3,719
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Quote:
But too long. People were leaving halfway through Muzzle because it’s a Wednesday and people gotta work in the morning. I paid dearly, considering I have to leave my house at 7, but stuck it out despite hour drive Apathetic Houston crowds struck again and left early like usual it see In Dallas everyone gets belligerently drunk and tries to fight In Houston they fall asleep. Texans have terrible concert etiquette |
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07-19-2018, 12:29 PM | #22 |
Pledge
Location: within God's love.
Posts: 73
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For what it's worth, I have a friend in Houston (who isn't much of a pumpkins fan) who went to the show as well, and he just kept texting me how great of a show it was, and how it was "worth every penny."
I texted him today and asked if last night's show would make him listen to more pumpkins music now, and he said "Let me put it this way. After I finish this conference call, I'm putting on Siamese Dream." I guess that means "Yes"? Kind of cool though to see an aging band reignite people's interest in them by giving a live show everything they've got. I'm so sick of seeing live shows where the band seems disaffected by their own music. Points for showmanship. |
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07-20-2018, 11:37 AM | #23 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Location: a melting apocalyptic jungle bleeding out of me like a dream
Posts: 1,172
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Another glowing review that does well to acknowledge vexing aspects of Corgan's persona.
"Oklahoma City's July 14 date for the Smashing Pumpkins' “Shiny and Oh So Bright Tour” was only the second arena performance on what is slated to be a 40-plus-show run spanning the remainder of the year. It's something of a reunion, with founding members Billy Corgan, guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin performing onstage together for the first time since 2000. (They're joined by Jeff Schroeder on guitar, Jack Bates on bass and Katie Cole on keys.) The impact of this reunion, like pretty much every 20-year reunion in 2018, has sort of been ruined by the internet. First, there's the conspicuous absence of founding bassist D'Arcy Wretzky, who has participated in some fairly volatile online feuding with Corgan since the reunion was announced. Then, there's the elephant in the room: Pumpkins fans already know what everyone involved has been doing since we all last saw each other, and one of the things Corgan has been doing, at least since 2005, is touring and making records as the Smashing Pumpkins ... mostly sans Chamberlin and definitely without Iha and Wretzky. Corgan is, by reputation at least, a storied control-freak possessed of an interminable ego. Add to that a tendency toward purposely alienating his collaborators and the fans who've tried to stay along for the ride in fretful and surprising ways. So the reunion tour did raise concern, as posed by Joe Coscarelli for The New York Times in March: “The question now is whether fans — who have weathered years of diminishing returns from Mr. Corgan's mercurial antics, broken promises and odd decisions — will allow themselves to trust the band enough to care.” I went into Saturday's show jaw clenched, nervous for the thousands of die-hard Pumpkins fans who filled out Chesapeake Arena's seats on the promise of Corgan and company's return to their most-admired form: an evening full of material almost exclusively from the band's first five albums, performed faithfully by (most of) the musicians on said records. At promptly 8:15 p.m., following a brief and politely received opening set by Canadian rock band Metric, Corgan took the stage and performed “Disarm,” from 1993's “Siamese Dream,” alone, his reported 6' 3” form towering in silver boots and a black jacket emblazoned with a zero on the back, a nod to the “Zero” persona he developed starting with the video for 1995's “Bullet with Butterfly Wings.” Defaced childhood photos of Corgan cycled on-screen behind him, one of the only moments in the show where the video work had any real gravitas. “I used to be a little boy,” Corgan yelped in his trademark nasally tenor, which, at 51 years old, sounds as powerful as ever. “So old in my shoes.” There was probably not a better way to start the show than with an air of vulnerability, however staged it may have been. Otherwise, Corgan is a rock star through and through, a bizarre and charismatic frontman who strutted and costume-changed his way through 31 songs in a set that lasted just over three hours. Remember how insane it seemed to put out a two-hour, two-disc alternative rock record in 1995? And how good of an idea we thought “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” was once we'd listened to it? I left the show feeling that same way, that the high points and admiration for the band's sheer ambition more than made up for any perceivable lows. They continue to gild the lily, in other words, but at their core, they're exceptional enough to warrant looking past the frills. Among those high points: early hits like “Today” and “1979,” which brought a wave of well-deserved nostalgia along with hard-hitters like “Zero,” which was preceded by a decidedly creepy video speech from Corgan, during which he pronounced, “Let's blow on fading embers, to boast about things ... forgotten and buried. ‘Tis the end, ‘tis the end, ‘tis the end.” “Mayonaise” [sic] from “Siamese Dream” into “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans” (from “Mellon Collie”) was another strong pairing, both songs kicking off with jangly, quiet guitar work leading into the meaty ‘90s alt-rock the band helped define. And among the lows: the muddled concept of the video screen content, some of which was beautiful, some of which was generic and some of which was, for some reason, Sugar Ray singer Mark McGrath in a vaudeville costume blathering on so the band could take short breaks. Also, Corgan's voice is so recognizable that cover songs just come off kind of weird. Their take on Bowie's “Space Oddity” came closest to feeling OK in context, but a stunted performance of “Landslide” and a hilariously overwrought “Stairway to Heaven” were only saved by being the bread on a “Tonight, Tonight” sandwich, a song so well-written and well-produced that it sounds timeless and that they performed without fault. For the first time in a very long time, the Smashing Pumpkins delivered on exactly what their fans wanted and then some, which is a bit of a miracle, even if it was by design. “We collectively need to rebuild the public trust in our brand,” Corgan said in the aforementioned NYT piece, before going on to admit, “We're going to say, ‘Look, yes, we're brats. Yes, we've tested your patience. But this is our absolute best effort.' ” Maybe, in the life span of an artist's career, no apologies ever need be made, but for perhaps in the first time in the history of the Smashing Pumpkins, concessions are being made, at least. Corgan, despite all his rage, seems at peace with the legacy he's masterminded. He spoke very little throughout the show until the end, when he introduced his bandmates, calling out Iha and Chamberlin in particular for spending so much time with “a freak” like himself. He commented on how remarkable it is for a band to have a 30-year history and thanked the crowd for making it possible. They finished their set with “Muzzle,” during which Corgan sang, particularly meaningfully in light of the captive audience, “My life has been extraordinary,” before returning for an encore led off by “Solara,” a new Rick Rubin-produced single that sounds as at-home during their greatest hits show as it would on any featured album. Maybe, as his visage commanded earlier, “Tis the end,” but maybe that end also is a beginning." https://newsok.com/article/5601791/t...ur-performance |
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07-20-2018, 03:55 PM | #24 |
Immortal
Posts: 25,684
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07-28-2018, 01:11 AM | #25 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,612
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Billy getting a scathing review from the Miami press
https://www.bocamag.com/concert-revi...show-to-miami/ "Though the tour has been presented as long overdue fan service, corralling founding members to play songs from the group’s most popular records, it seems to be more of a vanity project for frontman, songwriter and noted egomaniac Corgan. Over the course of the three-hour-long show (yes, three hours), the undersold crowd at Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena was subjected to way too much Corgan. It wasn’t just his face paint or his incessant costume changes. Even the graphics that played out on the screen behind the band throughout the show, almost every single one of which featured an effigy of Corgan, may have been excusable on their own. But paired with the glut of a three-hour, 31-song set list, and his attempts to paint himself as a rock god while covering massive songs by David Bowie and Led Zeppelin, it made for a show that was simply exhausting... ....by the time the band returned for a baffling encore, which featured new single “Solara” and a cover of “Baby Mine” from the movie “Dumbo,” the already-thin crowd at the arena, which had to curtain off seats in the upper deck due to lackluster ticket sales, began to shuffle out. So many aspects of the show were just so ridiculous that it was difficult to grasp their juxtaposition with the commanding songs that were being performed. Corgan changed costumes too many times to count, and eventually ended up in an outfit that could be described as an attempt to imitate the pope. He played home videos of himself as a child on the screens behind him, and displayed messages to the crowd like “Can’t you see I’m special?” and “I stand out in a crowd.” You can’t make this stuff up." The issue is that Corgan’s ego has escalated to the point where a Smashing Pumpkins concert isn’t about the band anymore. It’s not even about the songs. It’s just about him." It does kinda seem lame how the videos are all about Billy. Do they even feature any of the other members in the new video footage shown? |
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07-28-2018, 01:12 AM | #26 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,612
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https://www.miaminewtimes.com/music/...ly-24-10558888
"The Smashing Pumpkins have fully embraced that they are as much a classic-rock band as Styx, Journey, or Rush, and they have the current reunion arena tour to prove it. The curtain at American Airlines Arena opened at 8:15 to a massive screen projecting stars of the night sky. Images from the Smashing Pumpkins' iconography began scrolling into view, including the ice-cream van from their "Today" music video and the cover girl on their album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. After the short movie, Corgan walked out with his acoustic guitar for a solo rendition of "Disarm." As he strummed his guitar, the giant screen behind him displayed childhood photos and old home movies. It seemed a little odd, but if you weren't comfortable with staring at Corgan's face on a giant screen, this was not the show for you. There were tarot card drawings of him, clips of him from the band's old MTV videos, and more recently made videos featuring his distinctive bald noggin." |
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08-02-2018, 11:28 AM | #27 |
Pledge
Posts: 243
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There were a few images of other band members in the context of old music video clips, but vastly more imagery of Billy. It was lame, but it was also just straight up psycho to have roadies in cloaks carrying a sculpture of Billy as the pope around the floor of Madison Square Garden. Also, this is not just like footage of Billy playing music. The show features stuff like video clips in which a woman with tear-stained eyeshadow grovels at Billy’s feet and giant text that says “Love is not all you need. I am what you need.”
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08-02-2018, 11:40 AM | #28 |
Apocalyptic Poster
Posts: 1,114
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Yeah, marching around that Billy Christ statue (or whatever it was) was ridiculous, as were the multiple drawings of Billy flashed up on the screen. Some of the images were drawn by a friend of a friend. If I ever meet her in person, I'm going to pick her brain about what exactly Billy demanded of her in those drawings.
Billy: So okay, like, I want this song to feature giant tarot cards. But like, I want the only figure on them to be ME. You can draw multiple figures on a few of them, but ALL of them have to have MY face. And maybe you can draw one where one of the figures looks almost female and is lifting up her dress Marilyn Monroe style, but she has to also look like ME, because I am Marilyn Monroe and the Pope and Jesus rolled into one. Got it?" Artist: (looks over at the other band members) Okay, but what about them? Billy: Why are you looking at them? They don't write the songs, I do. This is all about ME, got it? Artist: Okay... Jimmy: (shrugs) Jeff: (stares at the floor, tries to remember that he once had dreams) Jack: (smiles awkwardly) James: I'm just here for the music. |
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08-02-2018, 11:50 AM | #29 |
Minion of Satan
Location: Travelling between Ukraine and Russia
Posts: 5,357
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kyle.m.thompson Will there ever be an explanation of the tour films and artwork. Like the deeper symbols [email protected]pson perhaps kyle.m.thompson@lindastrawberry that would be amazing. Thank you for responding |
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08-02-2018, 12:31 PM | #30 |
Just Hook it to My Veins!
Location: Donald Trump of Netphoria
Posts: 37,218
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lol
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