I have no idea how to message you privately. I see that you have a lot of knowledge about the history of the band. What are the parameters that you consider or that make these concerts so special that you classify them among some of the very best of each era of the band: : Lollapalooza 94, San Diego Sports Arena 1996 and the Arising tour date from 1999? Also, could you recommend me the best concerts of the band from March to April 1994?

Most people are familiar with this show due to the inclusion of the songs Soma and Silverfuck in the Vieuphoria compilation.

The set here is a nice finish to the 4 night stand. The 1st show from the run was well-played, but cut short due to an apathetic audience. No recordings circulate for the second night, and the third night is rightly recognized for the excellent recording and performance.

This recording of the fourth night is sourced from an audience shot video, the footage of which doesn't circulate.

With the MTV cameras rolling, a few things about this show stand out. First is that Billy appears to deliberately take it easy on some of the more aggressive parts of songs, such as in I Am One, where he keeps the rant relatively short and controversy-free. Second is that the pacing of this show is very fast. The band transition from song to song as if they are in a rush to get the show over with. More likely is the possibility that they were instead focusing on giving a slick runthrough of their set, for the sake of the cameras. As a consequence, there are few real breaks between songs. The downside of this pacing, is that there are also very few chances taken during any of the songs. The performance is very well played, but it lacks a good deal of the enthusiasm of the previous night's show, and a good deal of spontaneity overall. It's a really good runthrough of the band's most commonly performed songs from the era, but none of the versions really stand out as being must-hear performances. Siva does include a few adlibbed lines from Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, but the moment is so brief, and done in such an offhand manner that it's barely anything more than a quick reference.

Even though this recording is just a transfer of the audio from the amateur video, one can't talk about this show without mentioning the performance of Silverfuck. Prior to the audience recording from the previous night circulating, the performance of the song from this night was a revelation, especially the video, complete with the earliest known full performance of Jackboot, and Billy smashing his guitar and wrecking Jimmy's drumkit at the end. Good stuff.

Unfortunately for this show, a recording from the previous night eventually did surface, and not only revealed a better performance overall, but also a better performance of Silverfuck, featuring not only the live debut of Never Let Me Down but also the real debut of Jackboot as well, which was arguably a better rendition. The show from the previous night also featured a rare and excellent performance of Luna, a flawless performance of Starla, and had Billy in top form both vocally and performance-wise from start to finish. So, overall, it's hard for this performance from the final night to compare. It is worth pointing out that we don't have a recording of the 2nd night of the run. So, for all we know, that gig might itself be better than the 3rd night, and might also feature an even earlier performance of Jackboot.

One thing worth mentioning about the final night, is that the guitar smashing at the end of Silverfuck was almost certainly a staged act, done solely for the benefit of MTV's cameras. Watch the video clips that circulate for this show, as well as other shows from the era (such as the ones from Munich and Barcelona), and you can see Billy using his Bat Strat for the usual songs. However, in the Vieuphoria video, which has the footage of Silverfuck from the final night at the Astoria, Billy can be seen playing a black Fender Stratocaster with white pickups. This guitar isn't seen at any other show, and doesn't match with any of the other guitars Billy used during the era. He did have a red guitar with black pickups, regularly used for Hummer, which he had painted black, but this was not the same guitar as the one used for Silverfuck in the Vieuphoria video. Which means that this mystery guitar was likely nothing more than a prop, deliberately brought onstage only to be "spontaneously" smashed at the end of the show. That's fine, and that's show business after all. But read enough of the interviews that Billy gave during the era, and you'll notice that one of his common mantras at the time was that the Pumpkins were above the posturing and showboating common to so many other bands. Billy proclaimed over and over that he was not part of the Grunge bandwagon, and that the band didn't fit in with the stereotypes that so many others were guilty of. So, it's a little sad to see that when given the chance to put himself and the band on full display, at the final show of what was arguably the biggest triumph of the band's career up until that point, that Billy resorted to the very type of staged "angst" that he always claimed to be against. Sad, not just for the staged aspect of it, but for the pandering to MTV as well. There are more than a few shows from the era where Billy can be heard chastising audiences for moshing just because they "saw it on MTV", and yet here he was doing the most generic of "rockstar" moves, smashing a prop guitar onstage. This is made all the more pathetic considering that it was supposedly during this week in London that Corgan began having an affair with Courtney Love, while Kurt Cobain was away on tour with Nirvana in Italy. So, not only was Billy's staged guitar smash a hollow gesture done for the sake of the cameras, but it also happened to be an imitation of the signature move of the guy whose wife he had just slept with. Talk about having some Freudian issues.

For the more bizarre angle, this show in London was the final performance of the band's return to the same city where just five months earlier they had played the Brixton Academy to end their initial Euro/UK tour supporting the release of Siamese Dream. At that show, which marked the end of a highly energetic and excellently played tour, rather than capitalize on the triumph of the moment, Billy instead used the occasion to issue a public threat to journalist Everett True, who had written a scathing review of the band (and Billy in particular) in the Melody Maker. To make matters even more strange, Billy took things a step further by also opting to dress up as a clown for the encores at that show, proclaiming that "I figure I act like one, so I may as well dress like one". That show marked the beginning of a significant shift in Billy's attitude onstage, with shows from the subsequent US tour frequently featuring a confrontational persona that would argue with audiences, lecture them with rants about pain and apathy, and even walk off the stage at a few performances. That persona would last for pretty much all of the shows that followed, right up until these Astoria shows. And yet notice that after this run, that side of Billy all but disappeared, and as a result, the shows from March and April 1994 are among the very best of the entire era. At some of the shows, he even comes across as a downright friendly and humble person. Who knows, maybe these Astoria shows were the end of some long drawn-out cartharsis, where Billy had finally reached the level of stardom that he wanted, and so no longer had the need to play the "tortured" artist who had to challenge audiences the way he had been doing all tour since that infamous show at the Academy in Brixton. In any case, it certainly makes for a weird London to London transformation. In 1993 he was in London in a clown suit, and in 1994 he was back in the same town, this time smashing a guitar onstage for the sake of MTV.

Anyway, this is still a good show. A shame that the complete soundboard audio does not circulate. The transfer here of the audio from the amateur video suffers from compression, which can be heard in the form of lower fidelity and a fluctuating reduction in bass frequencies, particularly between songs and during quieter moments, where all of a sudden the low-end frequencies pop back in, only to disappear again once a song starts back up.

If looking for the best of the run, the third night gets it, no question. Both for the recording, and the performance. This final night is still a good show, but beyond the quality of the visual and audio captured on the professional recordings, the staged aspect of the performance makes for a somewhat indistinguishable performance.