I wish I could give you any kind of deep background on how this came to be. A friend shared it on Facebook yesterday, and it caught my eye not just because it’s Smashing Pumpkins in the worthy Gish era, well before Billy Corgan became an insufferable, bloated ego making insufferable, bloated albums, but because it was taped in my neighborhood.

I moved to Cleveland’s Tremont district a few years after this was shot, when it was still a cheap rent haven well on its way to becoming a hip arts district. It’s now neither, particularly. The gazebo they’re playing in still stands in Lincoln Park, where it’s now MUCH more difficult to get murdered than it used to be. (Also, some self-referential trivia: sometime Dangerous Minds contributor Jason Schafer got married in that gazebo.) The band sings “Blue,” from the 1991 Lull EP—the song later turned up on Pisces Iscariot—before they goofily riff on BÖC’s “Godzilla” while guitarist James Iha thanks the academy. An edited version of this exists, but I much prefer the raw footage.
 

 
Many, many thanks to Alan Madej for this find.

Previously on Dangerous Minds
Literal version of the Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Today’
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins wants to sell you furniture