pumpkins are for spooky season, right?

i’ve told the story a LOT of times…

…so i’ll keep the first part of this kinda brief (for me):

the first big show i worked for star tickets was the smashing pumpkins sacred & profane tour where i famously crashed sound check as they were playing one of my faves (muzzle) and i didn’t realize due to a light test that i had gotten that close to the stage (but billy did – first of two times we greeted each other that day). their tour manager, john, inadvertently taught my many lessons on how to handle live shows, their patrons, etc, that night, which culminated in me being invited to the semi-private after party where billy and i formally met and had drinks.

at the end of the night when i went to dig cash out of my pocket to tip the bartender (open bar) billy saw my pass with a sharpie clipped to it (just how it ended up in my pocket – not intentional) and not only insisted on signing it, but made the rest of the band sign it to, which i thought was odd. within a month i heard on tv he broke up the band, which in my eyes explained his insistence on them signing it, as he felt their would be no “next time”.

and now, oddly enough, i found a little proof to back that last part of the story. in my quest to get shirts from shows i worked or attended but couldn’t get shirts from at the time, i noticed that while the us tour shirts from them had the album artwork on the front…

(and would have been printed before the tour when he decided to split em up)

vs some extra stuff on the front of the european tour, which would have been printed AFTER said announcement:

so it’s nice to know that, in my olden age, i’m not losing it that badly and that did actually happen.