Sorry: Although the headline above may have briefly given you hope that you were somehow flung back into the early ‘90s as you slept, it’s still 2018. (C’mon, you’re reading this on the internet.) And the house party the Smashing Pumpkins played in Studio City, California last Thursday was a decidedly more corporate affair than the basement shows of yore.
Instead of drinking whatever someone was able to steal from their parents’ liquor cabinet, guests were served catered hors d’oeuvres and beer from a proper keg, provided by sponsor Live Nation. And instead of smashing shit and passing out, they played beer pong and cornhole, which is about as far from punk as you can get, honestly:
Still, the Smashing Pumpkins never really claimed to be “punk,” and the event— held in the house featured in the Pumpkins’ “1979" video—did have one claim to street cred: It was shut down by the cops after neighbors complained about the noise and all the cars parked out front. Even this, though, is filtered through the lens of major-label celebrity, as the police let Billy Corgan and company finish their set—which was reportedly heavy on the band’s ‘90s hits—before pulling the plug on a planned encore. (It was supposed to be “Cherub Rock,” if you’re wondering.)
Yes, the wheel of time keeps on turning, and your youthful rebellion, if you’re lucky, eventually turns into an opportunity for a bunch of label executives and publicity assistants to play beer pong in the backyard of a house in an unusually white, upper-income area of Los Angeles. (Which explains the polite police presence.) Still, the snippet of video that made it out of the no-phones-allowed event does have a fantastic close-up view of the band. And Corgan, for his part, was pretty pleased with the experience (and himself) in a post-show Instagram post, linked below.