Billy Corgan 2019-11-16

November 16, 2019 – Stroudsburg, PA, US
Live performance by Billy Corgan
United States 2019 tour
Date	November 16, 2019
Venue	Sherman Theater
Coordinates	40°59′12″N 75°11′29″W
Location	Stroudsburg, PA, US
Venue type	Theater
Capacity	1,377
Personnel	Billy Corgan
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Setlist

Set one

1. "Hard Times" (acoustic) 
2. "To Scatter One's Own" (acoustic) 
3. "Fragile, The Spark" (acoustic) 
4. "Apologia" (acoustic) 
5. "Cri de Coeur" (acoustic) 
6. "Buffalo Boys" (acoustic) 
7. "Dancehall" (acoustic) 
8. "Anon" (piano) 
9. "The Spaniards" (piano) 
10. "Archer" (acoustic) 
11. "Half-Life of an Autodidact" (acoustic) 
12. "Aeronaut" (acoustic) 
13. "Oh, My Darling Clementine" [traditional] (acoustic) 

Set two

14. "Tonight, Tonight" (acoustic) 
15. "1979" (acoustic) 
16. "Spaceboy" (acoustic) 
17. "Purr Snickety" (acoustic) 
18. "Violet Rays" (acoustic) 
19. "Travels" (piano) 
20. "Another Bridge to Burn" [Little Jimmy Dickens] (acoustic) 
21. "Hangin' On" [The Gosdin Brothers] (acoustic) 
22. "Peace + Love" (acoustic) (final performance)
23. "Cherry" (piano) 
24. "Disarm" (piano) 

Encore

25. "Black Lung" (acoustic) 
26. "Perfect" (acoustic) 
27. "Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)" (acoustic) 

Notes

• "Little Maggie" was on the setlist but "Oh, My Darling Clementine" was played instead
• First performance of "Cherry" since 2017-10-01
• First performance of "Purr Snickety" since 2017-11-11
• Last performance of "Purr Snickety" until 2023-09-17
• A disruptive fight between two audience members occurred between "Spaceboy" and "Purr Snickety"

Banter

Hard Times
To Scatter One’s Own
BC: We have a birthday boy in the house, come here!
(Billy walks offstage for a moment and returns carrying his son; the crowd sings a half-hearted Happy Birthday and Augustus runs back offstage)
BC: Well, heh, heh, that wasn’t part of the show, but.... (Billy waves goodbye to Augustus in the wings) I’m gonna go back to the show now. (blows a kiss) There’s somethin’ about those Corgan genes, just....
Fragile, The Spark
Apologia
BC: Thank you so much for coming out on this cold night. These are songs from my new album that’s coming out November 22nd, hope you get a chance to hear it. Be on all those...streaming services.
Cri de Coeur
Buffalo Boys
Dancehall
BC: Thank you very much.
Guy in crowd: We love you!
BC: Thank you. Love is a funny word.
Anon (piano)
The Spaniards (piano)
BC: Thank you very much. That is, uh, Spaniards from the Ogilala album.
Archer
Half-Life of an Autodidact (abandoned after 8 seconds and a wrong chord)
> Half-Life of an Autodidact
BC: Thank you, thank you. Heh heh. Like to play a song now that I wrote for the birthday boy. Heh heh heh heh, heh heh heh. He likes to go on tour but he doesn’t like to watch the show, so.... He let -- he let that be known, but uh, I wrote this when he was a little child, about one year old, and now we have another one, Philomena, she’s just one year old and.... (crowd cheers) So uh, like to dedicate this to all the parents in the hall. ‘Preciate you. It’s a hard gig. Right?
A few people in the crowd: Yes it is!
BC: Heh heh heh. Or as I call them, Monster Number One and Monster Number Two.
Aeronaut
BC: So thank you very much, we have reached the end of the uh...the first set. Then uh, we’ll take a short 20 minute break after this song, come back and play some songs you'll hopefully know. If you don’t know some of ‘em, it’s gonna be a long night. Heh heh heh heh!
Oh, My Darling Clementine
BC: See you in 20 minutes, thank you!
[set break]
Tonight, Tonight
1979
Spaceboy
Purr Snickety (abandoned during intro strumming when a fight breaks out in the audience)
(Billy stands silently for about 90 seconds)
BC: Sure. ... Well.... Excuse me? So um, I was gonna play this song, but...I’ll just tell you about the song I was gonna play. Seems a lot easier than...fisticuffs.
Girl in crowd: Beautiful, play Beautiful! Play Beautiful!
BC: Before I continue...to the young lady who’s shouting in the back: I’m not a jukebox. On one level -- on one level, I sincerely appreciate that so many of you know my songs and want to hear them. On the other hand, I don’t care. I was thinking about this today on this long ride, we had about a nine hour drive last night and this morning to get here, and I’m very happy to be here with you. And uh, you know, sometimes we get lost, I’m in the audience sometimes too, watching my very person or persons and uh, we forget how much time and effort energy it takes to make these songs and uh, and uh, I’ve prepared for this show for weeks whilst making a double Smashing Pumpkins album, but.... (crowd cheers) I put this tour -- I put this tour smack dab in the middle of the making of the new Pumpkins records to promote obviously my new album, but also I'd like to play these songs. So, if you just let me play these songs, I hope you’ll enjoy them. If you don’t want me to play these songs, then I don’t know what else to do other than just talk to you. So a little story then, at least to get back into the show. Um, this song here was one of those songs that I wrote, I didn’t think much of it at the time and over the years, it’s kinda grown on me. It was written during the Siamese Dream era. Couldn’t tell if I wrote it before the making of the record or during the making of the record, but it came out on one of the uh, Siamese Dream singles, it’s a B-side, it’s called Purr Snickety.
Purr Snickety
Violet Rays
BC: Thank you very much. You’re about two thirds of the way through the journey, you’ve made it this far.
Girl in crowd: Love it!
BC: Thank you. But here comes the hard part, heh heh, I’m just joking. (hits first chord for next song) Oh my god, there’s a dead bug on my.... (picks it up) Still alive. (blows it off his finger towards the crowd, then swats as it flies back at him) Maybe he started the fight. (laughing) He’s back on the piano! Oh my god. Heh heh heh heh heh.
Guy in crowd: Bugg Superstar!
BC: Yeah, there you go. (blows the bug at the crowd again) We try not to kill things in our house, so that’s where that came from.
Travels (piano)
BC: Thank you very much. In our kitchen in Chicago: jukebox, 1953 AMI mono jukebox. So when we get up in the morning and we eat our vegan gluten-free gruel we normally eat.... Um, we put on the jukebox and the jukebox is full of old country and western and bluegrass and that’s all we listen to at home. So I’d like to play you a couple songs from the jukebox. This uh, first song is uh -- I don’t think he wrote it, but it’s a song that I love sung by Waylon Jennings. Any Waylon fans out there?
Another Bridge to Burn
Hangin’ On
BC: Now last night in um... where was I, Kentucky...they ran me out of there. Doesn’t mary the -- doesn’t matter that my grandmother’s buried there, doesn’t matter that’s where my family from [sic], this was still where they ran me out of. I’m happy to be here with you. To say you’ve been a great audience is an understatement. To say you’ve been a fantastic audience compared to last night is celestial. I really appreciate you listening to these songs. So, quick story, if you’ll have it. You never know these days, heh heh heh heh. Don’t want anyone to get offended. Heh heh heh heh heh heh. So uh, about 12 years ago, when the Smashing Pumpkins returned gloriously to the stage and...only 50 percent though. We’re 75 now but we were 50 percent then and uh, heh heh heh, we did nine shows in Asheville, North Carolina at the Orange Peel. And then we proceeded to San Francisco where we had a very -- I don’t know what the word would be -- tumultuous 12 shows at the Fillmore West. Which we’d ironically been the band to re-open the Fillmore West in 1994 when we were 100 percent. But in that gig -- the shades of things to come -- the speaker column fell over and smashed about three of James’s guitars. And we were told we were given this great distinction, you will be the band that would re-open the historic venue that hosted Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead and we were like, “Great.” So we were very excited and very honored because a lot of those bands were our heroes. And then we got there and um, we realized that we hadn’t been invited to the real opening, which was the night before, which was a private event, so all the celebrities and all the press went to that. And so we were like, “Oh okay,” and then we were playing with the legend on the bill who hated us because we were too loud. For some reason, we came back, um, I can’t do the math right now...13 years later to have another (laughing) bad time. And if you’ve ever seen the If All Goes Wrong documentary, you’ll uh, you'll know what I’m talking about. Anyway, so I wrote this song at the time, uh, try to deal, reconcile with what was my version of the Smashing Pumpkins in my head versus the version that was being thrown at me by the new audience that was empowered by social media to lend their voice strongly to who I should be and what kind of band I should be in, even though the band they wanted me to be in I’d never been in before, and it was some sort of reductionist version of the band that I’d been in, but that’s okay. The fact that we used to do 45 minute versions of Silverfuck were lost in them. ‘Cause god forbid we were playing 23 minute versions of Gossamer...which now fans want to hear and then they didn’t want to hear it. Once again, proving my point, but anyway, I digress. So this song was my attempt to reconcile with this contrasting opinion. Um, of course, in my mind, my opinion is the only one that matters, but we all know that’s not true, as years have dictated. And I’m cool with that, I’m actually okay with it at 52 years old, I’m quite grateful and uh, and I’m okay with the balance between the desires of the audience and myself. I think that’s what makes great rock and roll. If it’s too balanced this way, it becomes overly indulgent and if it’s too balanced this way, well, we all know what happens, look at the world. They can’t sing, they can’t dance, I’m sure they can’t fuck, but they’re still up there. So, if you’ll allow me to be serious for a second, um, couple days ago, someone in the Pumpkins family, her son was involved in a school shooting. Horrible, of course, and frightening and what makes it even more insane is that a member of my own family was involved in a school shooting just about a year ago in Florida. Now they weren’t involved directly, but it was in their community and of course, they knew people who had been affected and again: horrible. As I said last night, I don’t need to say that but these days, if you don’t say things like that, somehow some people just take it the wrong way, so again: horrible. I’m not talking about -- I’m not trying to disrespect what happened. But as an artist, I found myself yesterday and still today struggling with how to reconcile the feelings that I have and for some reason, this song bubbled up as the song to -- so somehow the connection between my song about what I was dealing with in San Francisco reconciles with what I’m feeling today about the state of our country. So I wouldn’t say it’s a great song, it’s not particularly catchy, but sometimes songs just have to be something else and so this is one of those songs, so I hope you enjoy it, it’s called Peace and Love.
Peace + Love
BC: So we’ve reached the end of the show. (crowd protests) Sort of the end of the show. It’s show biz, you know? But I wanted to play something special for you tonight that I don’t normally play, anticipating the beautiful response I have received here. I just knew! I just knew, I just knew that it would be good, just had a feeling. I knew there’d only be one fight and uh, heh heh heh heh. Heh heh heh heh. ‘Course there’s the obligatory “Rat in a Cage” guy. I’m not sure if it’s the same guy or it’s a different guy every night.
Guy in crowd: We got you, we got you!
BC: Yeah, heh, the other day somebody said something about “Rat in a Cage 2,” you know, like a sequel? I was like, (laughing) “I'm gonna like - I’m gonna write that song.” ‘Cause that’s a common airport refrain, you know: “Aren’t you the Rat in the Cage guy?” Which I would slightly rank higher than an “Aren’t you the Smashing Pumpkins guy?” Or as Pete Townshend once said to me -- I’m gonna try to get the English accent, I apologize to Pete -- (British accent) “I’m sick of being called Pete Townshend of the fucking Who! Why can’t I just be Pete fucking Townshend?”
Girl in crowd: Billy fuckin’ Corgan!
BC: (normal voice) Billy fuckin’ Corgan, right. Alright! So this is my note of appreciation and I hope you like this song. This was a song that was left off of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but it appears on the B-sides collection, Aeroplane Flies High. It was one of those ones we could never get together, but I still finished it and I still like it today and I’ll try to do it justice for you, it’s called Cherry.
Cherry (piano)
Disarm (piano)
BC: Thank you everybody, thank you.
[encore break]
Black Lung
> Perfect
BC: Thank you so much, thank you! I hope you’ve had a good time. Maybe you learned a few things. So...we reach the cheesy end. All endings are cheesy, I guess, if you think about it. But uh, I ask for a bit of crowd participation. All you have to do is remember these three numbers: two, two and four. And uh, since we’re in the band now, we’re singing together, um, you don’t want to enrage me with a false start. So I will give you a cue, which goes something like this. (pulls up on the neck of his guitar) And that is your cue to sing, if you want to. Hashtag “only if you want to, only with consent.” I would never ask you to do anything you don’t want to do. So two, two and four. (a woman in the crowd laughs loudly) It’s okay, she’s on drugs. She’s been down to the dispensary and loaded up on gummy bears and uh...she’s peaking right now on sativa or whatever the fuck people take. So we dedicate this song to her. May the love vibrations of this song....
Woman in crowd: Gee wow!
BC: Exactly, just what I was just saying. May the love vibrations of the song explode you into a unicorn of glitter. May you orgasmicly achieve some intelligence in this life. It looks like something like manners [sic]. As I am wont to say, sure my parents beat me, but they beat me some manners. 'S heh heh...I see your parents did not beat you and god bless you. Uh...two, two and four, you ready? Alright.
Silvery Sometimes
BC: Thank you, thank you, thank you.