6.20.2007

The Pumpkins Are Coming, The Pumpkins Are Coming!

What does this post have to do with books? Not a thing, but then, BookGirl reserves the right to write about other things that catch her fancy. Today it's the Smashing Pumpkins coming to Asheville.

The re-united alt-rockers are doing a nine-day gig at The Orange Peel as part of their U.S. comeback tour. Their promoter said that the Pumpkins were interested in doing an East Coast "residency" -- a series of shows in one place -- and asked for an Asheville venue. I'm not a big Smashing Pumpkins fan, but even if I were, the tickets were sold out in less than five minutes, so it's just as well.

The tickets originally sold for $20 (a price set by the band -- nice to see that in these days of wildly overpriced music-act tickets, the Pumpkins are being generous in their pricing. Unfortunately, they're already being scalped on the Internet: $890 at TicketsNow.com as of this morning). Fifty percent of the tickets sold outside the state, with sales in NY, DC, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Canada.

That's more than 8,000 people coming in over the course of nine days. Maybe they'll buy some books at Malaprop's while they here, where they can order the only existing biography of the band: Smashing Pumpkins: Tales of a Scorched Earth. Ha! There's my book tie-in!

The Pumpkins at a recent concert in Paris:

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