koldfront

The Smashing Pumpkins, Vega, Copenhagen, Aug 19 2025 #live #music #copenhagen

Monday and Tuesday this week The Smashing Pumpkins played Vega in Copenhagen. I managed to buy (expensive) tickets to the Tuesday concert.

Myrkur was the support act, which at first glance seemed a little odd, genre-wise - but in the introduction of a song, she mentioned that Billy Corgan had helped write it, so that gave away the connection.

Smashing Pumpkins played quite a lot of songs from Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness, which of course was well received by the audience - it is hard to deny that they are some of the best songs by the band, and from that time.

The sound was okay to good, sometimes a little muddled, I found.

They showed that they can still make noise, especially Bodies was pretty thundering. There were also more pretty moments, like the quiet parts of Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans.

Surprising me - and maybe a lot of the audience - was a cover in the middle of the set, "Take My Breath Away"! Corgan sounds like Corgan, and that is not a very crooner-like voice, so that was a fun interlude.

We also got a quite heavy, thumping version of Ava Adore, which was nice.

At one point Billy Corgan explained that he had visited the free town Christiania earlier in the day, "We played there in 1992, do you remember that, James?", to which James Iha replied: "No, I don't" - heh :-)

After a good concert the band left the stage and did not return for any encores. Not that they were needed, but that took me a bit by surprise.

It was fun to see such a big band in such a relatively small venue (audience ~1550), and nice to see that they play some of the oldies currently.