by Nelson

The Smashing Pumpkins have been my favorite band since I was eleven-years-old. I’m not sure what it is about the band that made me love them so, but they’re a group that I’ve just never been able to let go of, no matter what. Despite breakups, reunions, lineup changes, and everything else that the group is pretty infamous for, I’ve always enjoyed the musical output and admired Billy Corgan’s unapologetically brash attitude.

I’ve been afraid of heights for as long as I can remember, really. I’m not sure what it is about heights that scares the hell out of me, as I don’t really have an early experience falling from some great height and injuring myself or anything like that. As a matter of fact, I can just barely remember my parents taking me on a helicopter ride at the county fair when I was around three-years-old or so, and everything seemed to go pretty smoothly on that night. I wonder if it was the death of The Joker in Batman that caused it? Maybe so. Either way, though, I don’t do very well with heights.

When James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin formally rejoined The Smashing Pumpkins and the “Shiny and Oh So Bright” reunion tour was subsequently announced, I was immediately interested in going, but I was also a little cynical about the concept considering that, technically speaking, the band had been back since 2007, and I misunderstood the tour’s early promotion to indicate that the band would only be playing material from their first three albums. My cynicism was lighthearted compared to the press that the tour announcement initially got, which seemed to indicate that everyone was super pissed that former bassist D’arcy Wretzsky wasn’t involved in the reunion. D’arcy, herself, fanned those flames by releasing snippets of her text message conversations with Corgan in-between calling him a bad singer and saying that he had brain cancer. This cast an unfortunate cloud of negativity over the upcoming tour, but, after mulling over the expense a bit, I decided I’d go see my favorite band at the appropriately named Infinite Energy Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.

I feel like I was the only one who kept making this connection…

My mother used to love telling folks about the time that she talked me into riding the Ferris wheel at the beach when I was around ten or so. I was scared to the point of panic and resorted to promising outlandish things about all of the chores I’d do and how I’d never talk back again if someone would please for the love of God and all things holy get me off the Ferris wheel and back on the ground. In simplest terms, this wasn’t a great moment for me. Going forward, I resolved to try and overcome my fear by purposely exposing myself to heights as often as I could stand it, and, while it certainly didn’t happen overnight, sooner or later I did get used to them. I can’t say I overcame the fear because getting too far away from the ground still caused me to feel that familiar sinking sensation in my stomach, but I learned to grin and bear everything much better and was miles away from melting down like I had on the Ferris wheel. I even rode a rollercoaster once.

Tickets for the tour weren’t cheap, and I wound up going with the most inexpensive option available to me at the time. Of course, I could tell from looking at the arena map that I was in the cheap seats, but that’d be okay. I’d seen Corgan on-stage a few times before, and I was much more interested in hearing the band. I knew that I might be on an upper level, but it didn’t strike me as much of an issue. It wouldn’t be too high, and it wasn’t like I was sitting right up on the balcony or anything. Besides, I was going to see the Smashing Pumpkins, the band that provided the soundtrack for my wayward youth. Even if none of my friends, or even my own wife, seemed too interested in joining me, any initial cynicism I had was marred out by delightful anticipation the moment my ticket purchase was final.

Eventually, I reached a point in my life where going to county fairs wasn’t a regular occurrence anymore, and I wasn’t really in many situations that put me around heights at all. As you get older, you gain more and more control over your life and your surroundings, and, accidental or not, I guess I lost my tolerance for heights. I don’t know when it happened. Hell, I didn’t even know that it had happened. About eighteen months before I’d set foot in the Infinite Energy Arena, I was asked to fly to a work conference in Baltimore. After taking a day to mull over the prospect of stepping foot on a plane for the first time ever, I politely declined the conference and wasn’t met with too much resistance. At the time, none of this seemed too important, but little did I know that the Conference That Wasn’t was a pivotal moment, a red flag if you will. Sadly, I’d missed it entirely.

The date of the concert arrived in a swirl of chaos, cancelled hotel reservations, reworked plans, and a bizarre foray into a Karaoke Bar that offered private rooms and exchanged five barely remembered hours of my adult life and a hefty fee in alcoholic beverages for a performance of “Amish Paradise” that would certainly earn me a hug from Al Yankovic, himself. Maybe it was the karaoke, maybe it was fate, maybe it was the fact that my wife really digs Metric, the Pumpkins’ opening act, but lo and behold I found myself en-route to the Smashing fucking Pumpkins with two additional tickets, side by side for my wife and I, and a newfound companion to claim my old one.

I didn’t realize it what it meant when I found myself unable to agree to set foot on an airplane eighteen months earlier. All that work I’d done to undo the quivering, scared kid on the Ferris wheel with a death grip on the safety bar was out of date, expired, finished.

My heart nearly stopped when I saw our seats.

“Wow, I don’t think I can go down there.”

Top level, first row, with about an inch of space between the seats and a safety rail that protected you from a fairly meager drop, all things considered.

Meager or not, though, the height absolutely made me dizzy, and I only took solace in the fact that I was at least two seats from the end of the row, meaning I wouldn’t have to navigate the perilous inch of walking space between the seats, the rail, and certain doom should I need to go pee before The Pumpkins took the stage.

I don’t know much about Metric except for the fact that my better half liked them enough to take a much stronger interest in seeing what was being reported as a three-hour long Smashing Pumpkins concert with a career retrospective style setlist. They put on a good show, but it did little to remind me that I was only a Final Destination-style sequence of events from sailing headlong over the safety rail and into the headlines. I wondered how I’d ever manage to adjust to such dire circumstances and lock in for 3-hours of Pumpkins Bliss, and I seriously contemplated just listening to the concert in the lobby.

Then, The Smashing Pumpkins came out. Behind them, a gigantic video wall lit up with an uncanny array of spot-on imagery that simultaneously managed to sync with each song played and celebrate the rich history of a band that has always been and will always be a big part of who I am.

And I suddenly didn’t care about being so far away from the ground anymore.

Occasionally, the arena lights would come up and I’d catch a sobering reminder of the fact that I was literally facing the most long-term and pronounced fear I’ve ever had (even more long-term and pronounced than my terror of being consumed alive by a great white shark) to see the most important musical act of my life. This strange duality of jubilation and utter terror certainly made for an interesting emotional cocktail and absolutely assured that The Smashing Pumpkins concert on the evening of July 22nd in Duluth Atlanta, Georgia’s Infinite Energy Arena was one of the coolest, most unique, and most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. Folks roll their eyes when stuff like this comes from a source as biased as yours truly, but The Pumpkins easily put on the greatest show I’ve ever witnessed, and I’m currently exploring black magic rituals in order to give myself a Groundhog Day style experience with that moment.

I didn’t get over my fear of heights that Sunday evening, a fact that was immediately confirmed when the concert ended and I made my way back to the lobby clutching the safety rail for dear life, but my wife was so impressed with the show that she opted to get a Pumpkins shirt instead of a Metric shirt, and that’s about a million times cooler than getting over my childhood fears.