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Photo: Chris Owyoung for RollingStone.com

In the lobby of United Palace, the grand theater in Harlem where Smashing Pumpkins spent two nights celebrating their 20th anniversary last week, a T-shirt for sale declared “Smashing Pumpkins: 20 Years of Sadness.” Based on the two unique sets Billy Corgan scowled through, a more accurate phrase would have been “20 Years of Frustration With Glimpses of Transcendence.”

• Photo Gallery: The Smashing Pumpkins Celebrate 20 Years in New York

Corgan is a problematic character, as he is a petulant control freak who gives into most of his artistic urges without questioning the context or repercussions. He’s always been a man not quite in sync with the rest of the music world — when everybody was making gritty grunge, Corgan abandoned his noisier tendencies to make a Boston album (Siamese Dream); a few years later, he made a Depeche Mode record during a time when that was not even fashionable for Depeche Mode. The current iteration of the Pumpkins — the version that released last year’s Zeitgeist — is a hulking big-rock monolith that nods to the group’s harder-edged past but generally lacks the finesse and grace. This was the band that walked into New York — their first time in the city in nearly a decade — and delivered a pair of sets that had the crowd full of mostly die-hards from the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness days scratching their heads.

Thursday night’s show, dubbed “Black Sunshine,” mined Corgan’s prog urges and stuck to the heavier tunes from Zeitgeist with only a few nods to some of their biggest singles. (more…)

The visitor’s locker room is like home to Panic at the Disco. It’s their dressing room at the Staples Center arena in Los Angeles, and there is the usual spread of chips, salsa and a big jug of Johnny Walker Red, all to help with the idle hours before showtime as Christmas lights blink in the corner. But the band is thinking about making music again. Panic bassist Jon Walker sits on a miniature amp with an electric guitar and begins strumming John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Guitarist Ryan Ross sits next to him in a pink tie and purple blazer, chewing on a bagel, but he soon moves to a small drum kit to tap out an anxious beat. “It’s funny how when you’re on tour you don’t really play music that much,” says Walker, “so we’re trying to make that happen again.” (Click above for exclusive backstage footage of Panic at the Disco).

The October 10 date in L.A. is only the fourth night of a tour with Dashboard Confessional, Plain White T’s and the Cab, the first live road trip sponsored by the Rock Band video game. And Panic is keeping miniature amps, a little jazzman’s drum kit and a couple of guitars in their dressing room to work on songs for the next album, a follow-up to this year’s classic rock and pop-influenced Pretty. Odd. Another crucial bit of equipment are the burning the candles they bring to every arena locker room, says Walker. “Candles are a big must in arenas when the night before there were 40 Detroit Red Wings in the dressing room sweating it out.”

Singer Brendon Urie sips a beer and drummer Spencer Smith is fresh from the shower. (more…)

Photo: Weiner/Retna

Once again, Obama has raised the Dead: The remaining members of the Grateful Dead regrouped for the first time in four years at a “Change Rocks” fundraiser for Barack Obama at Penn State Monday night. Guitarist Bob Weir, babying a set of broken ribs, joined bassist Phil Lesh and drummer Mickey Hart. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann, who did not play at the “Deadheads for Obama” fundraiser last spring, flew in from his Hawaiian holdout to join the band.

The crowd was an even mix of die-hard Deadheads and Penn State students, with the parking lot scene pretty standard, complete with tailgating, music blaring, Frisbees flying, and no hotel vacancies for 30 miles (students paid $30, non-students paid $50). The Allman Brothers started the show, giving the event a flashback to the days when the two bands shared bills at the Filmore in the late 1960s and early ’70s. However, without beer sales and zero-tolerance security, most of the students stayed out in the parking lot partying. Slowly, the seats filled as Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes traded licks and Gregg Allman worked the keys and sang with no signs of his illness that kept him offstage last spring. “It’s a beautiful night,” said Haynes. “It’s an historic night. Don’t forget to vote.”

Between sets, Obama volunteers and security wandered the floor of the sold-out 16,000-seat Bryce Jordan Center in State College, Pennsylvania as a video message from the candidate played: “For 20 months, I’ve been traveling this country from town to town — even developing a ‘Touch of Grey’ of my own,” Obama said. “On November 5th, I hope to announce that we ‘Ain’t Wasting Time No More.’” After a photo opp backstage, with Kreutzmann grinning and Weir sitting with his chin pensively in his hand, the band took stage and electrified the crowd. The smoke billowed, glow sticks flew and the crowd roar crept up. For the first two songs — “Truckin’ ” and “U.S. Blues” — it seemed the band was set on giving a Dead primer, offering something everyone could sing to. Turning on a dime after two rock openers, the band suddenly jerked into weird spasms, odd jolts and spacey twangs filled with MIDI effects and dueling bass and guitar play. (more…)

Photo: Getty

Phish fans and the symphony lot together in the Great Church of Country Music. What sounds like the perfect plot for an SNL short actually happened Saturday night at the famed Ryman Auditorium in Nashville when Trey Anastasio headlined Orchestra Nashville’s season-opening show.

Anastasio took the same 60-piece orchestra on a field trip to Bonnaroo in 2004, performing in front of a crowd of 80,000. It only seemed fair that Trey’s noodle-dancing pilgrims be invited into sacred confines more familiar to the golf-clapping elite. The result was a crowd gawker’s dream — dreadlocks and muumuus to the left, tailored suits and Coach bags to the right.

The first half belonged mostly to the orchestra, though Trey opened the show up front before moving to the back and then offstage completely. The second half featured the world premiere of Trey’s ethereal opus “Time Turns Elastic,” which he wrote with his new favorite collaborator, composer Don Hart. (more…)

Photograph by Jason Bergman for RollingStone.com

On the first U.S. date of Weezer’s “Troublemaker” tour, the sold out crowd at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, Massachusetts was able to observe two of the many bands the headliners have begat. The hooky Canadian power pop monster Tokyo Police Club and the emo-via-U2 Angels & Airwaves both contain a bit of Weezer’s DNA (especially the band’s 90s output). It turned the evening into an interesting example of reverse-evolution.

• Photo Gallery: Weezer Kick Off The “Troublemaker” Tour in Lowell, Massachusetts

Rivers Cuomo and his band took the stage — featuring two drum kits, multiple keyboards and a small trampoline that was removed in favor of a larger one— dressed in matching white jumpsuits. Four songs in, they switched to red jumpsuits and invited Tom DeLonge and Atom Willard from Angels & Airwaves to join them for a rousing rendition of “Undone - Sweater Song.” Throughout the set, Cuomo leapt and yelped like a manic leprechaun.

The band mixed much-beloved deep cuts (”Pink Triangle”) with more recent gems (”Pork and Beans”). (more…)

Photo: Jason Bergman for RollingStone.com

At 12:38 a.m. Monday morning, My Bloody Valentine walked onstage at Kutsher’s Country Club to play their first American concert in 16 years. In brief: It was seriously, incredibly, mind-numbingly loud. Perched in front of several Marshall stacks and a screen flashing psychedelic images, the band turned out 90 minutes of innovative psych-rock, covering a good chunk of Loveless, their beloved 1991 album. They also played 16 solid minutes of unadulterated white noise just before closing their set. Though their dreamy tunelets sometimes got lost in the mix, the guitar sound was manicured, ferocious and otherworldly. Bob Mould and Patti Smith came out to see the show; in fact, Smith and Kevin Shields were milling around Kutsher’s together beforehand.

(Check out live and backstage photos of the fest here.)

The band’s performance marked the close of All Tomorrow’s Parties, a three-day festival in upstate New York’s Catskills mountains devoted to loud, arty guitar rock and full-album sets. Saturday was all about smaller-name bands, as duo Lightning Bolt churned out noise punk from their set-up on the floor and Shellac, a Chicago trio featuring producer Steve Albini, turned out spiky minimalist rock and took questions from the audience (sample query: “Does God suck?”). (more…)

Photo: Brian Hineline/Retna

No doubt drawing on lessons learned from his collaboration with choreographer Twyla Tharp, David Byrne took his sold-out show Zoellner Arts Center in Bethelehem, PA, and created a show that used his various collaborations with producer Brian Eno (including the recent Everything That Happens Will Happen Today) and bodies in motion to advance the ambiguous narratives his multi-cultural rock — think of it as modern dance for people who don’t like modern dance.

Byrne — looking fit, trim and sporting a magnificent shock of silver hair — handled all guitar duties with surprising aplomb, expertly replicating the pneumatic wheeze of chords on “Home” and the angular funk of “Cross Eyed And Painless.” (more…)

Photo: Getty

If music fans have any single person to thank for the recent trend of live performances of entire albums, it’s U.K. concert promoter Barry Hogan. Since 2005, Hogan’s All Tomorrow’s Parties series has seen the Stooges play Funhouse, the Lemonheads run through It’s a Shame About Ray and Sonic Youth tackle all of Daydream Nation. Earlier this year, Hogan asked Built to Spill frontman Doug Martsch to perform his band’s beloved 1997 Warner Bros. debut Perfect From Now On for the first New York installment of All Tomorrow’s Parties, which goes down September 19th. From that request came Built to Spill’s current tour, during which the Northwest quintet will play the album 50-some times between now and November.

“I don’t know what anyone thinks — some people like that record, some people don’t give a shit,” Marsch said a few days before the tour began in Seattle on September 4th. “For me it was just a cool, weird kind of challenge and, you know, just a different thing to do.”

The second show was on September 5th as part of MusicFest Northwest, a four-day musical orgy of over 200 bands in 18 venues across Portland, Oregon. (more…)

Photograph by Jackie Butler for RollingStone.Com

The once scarily prolific Ryan Adams hasn’t put an album out in a while, but that didn’t stop him and his band the Cardinals from hitting the road with Oasis or from presenting a stirring set in Vancouver’s huge GM Place. Adams stuck mostly to songs from 2005’s Cold Roses and points forward, including a handful of new tunes that resulted in lengthy jams with his air-tight band. Liam Gallagher watched “Everybody Knows” and “Off Broadway” from the side of the stage and Adams mentioned that coming up after him was “one of the best bands in the world.” The best? Fellow Mancunians the Smiths, he said. “They must put something in the water there,” he said, before exiting on “Easy Plateau.”

• Photo Gallery: Oasis Live at the WaMu Theater in Seattle

Oasis took the stage with their trademark swagger, blurring the line between cockiness and contempt. (more…)

Besides for the headliners, no one was better represented at Ozzfest’s one-show stint at Pizza Hut Park than the late “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, who was killed onstage at a Damageplan show on December 8, 2004 in Ohio. For most of the day, that was in the form of T-shirts, tattoos and the virtual army of men in baggy cargo shorts and pink-dyed goatees. But following the set by Hellyeah, featuring his brother Vinnie Paul on drums, Dimebag’s music was there, too.

“Mouth for War” — with Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta on vocals and Mudvayne’s Gregg Tribbett on guitar — kicked off the tribute set, and brought with it the first big moment of the festival that didn’t involve a girl pulling aside her bikini top. “A New Level” followed, with Max Cavalera and King Diamond sharing vocals and Anthrax’s Scott Ian on guitar. An acoustic cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” headed by Jerry Cantrell served as a palate cleanser, before Slayer’s Kerry King appeared with Hellyeah/Mudvayne singer Chad Gray for “Fucking Hostile.” (more…)

The high only hit 102 degrees on Saturday, making for a relatively mild Texas afternoon at Ozzfest’s second stage. Adopting Warped Tour’s model of switching the action between two stages (one dedicated to Texas bands) to eliminate downtime, the old stop-start dynamic of Ozzfest was effectively turned into one big, rolling performance, with concertgoers only having to turn their heads to keep seeing the rock.

Rigor Mortis, the reactivated band that initially spilled the beans on this year’s Ozzfest, played an appealingly dirty and ragged set of classic thrash, proving again how bizarre it is that Capitol Records made them one of the first major label thrash acts in the Eighties. Kingdom of Sorrow, a collaboration between Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta and Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein, was exactly the sum of a Hatebreed-plus-Crowbar equation, with Windstein adding Louisiana metal sludge grooves to Jasta’s East Coast hardcore bark. (more…)

“I was at the biggest fucking metal show on earth!” reads the souvenir T-shirts for this year’s one-off edition of Ozzfest, held in Pizza Hit Park, a soccer stadium in suburban Dallas. That statement was definitely an exaggeration size-wise, and more than likely a dubious claim in terms of lineup as well. Still, there were times when it felt like it could transcend those limitations. Chief among them: Metallica’s pyrotechnics-laden performance of “One,” which felt like a big-budget stage production of Apocalypse Now, with its explosive generation-kill buildup.

That was only surpassed by the band’s extended medley of Mercyful Fate songs, fronted by the grease-painted falsetto howling of the group’s own King Diamond, who lives in the area. (”Are you ready for about 12 minutes of Satan?” Lars Ulrich asked the crowd. Spoiler alert: “Fuck” and “yes.”) Metallica finished mixing their new album, Death Magnetic, earlier in the day, so they were loose (and a bit sloppy) during their fan-friendly headlining slot. Though one new song was unveiled (”Cyanide,” which sort of swings in a hammock between The Black Album and St. Anger), the set list stopped in 1991. (more…)

The inaugural Pemberton Festival brought together monster names like Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Jay-Z, the Flaming Lips and My Morning Jacket in the mountains of British Columbia. Click above for the complete wrap-up from Pemberton, featuring live performances from Nine Inch Nails and Jay-Z and Wayne Coyne’s thoughts on waste.

For complete coverage of the Pemberton Festival, including more video, check out rocknrolldiary.com

One of the biggest draws of this weekend’s Pemberton festival was Canada’s own the Tragically Hip, who are treated as heroes in their own country but are a mystery in the United States. Luckily, Rock Daily caught up with Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, who explained their importance. Click above for the explanation and some exclusive footage of the Tragically Hip’s performance.

For more Pemberton Festival coverage, visit rocknrolldiary.com.

[Video: Pete Maiden]