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December 13, 2001 - Emerson Theatre - Indianapolis, IN, US Concert review by Natty (yttan11 at hotmail dot com) Let me start by saying that this was one of the coolest shows I have ever been to. As I walked in, I heard some mutterings among people leaving the first show, comments tending towards the not-so-goodish sort. Still, I remained optimistic. I must say, it was disconcerting when the roadies started bringing out stools and acoustic guitars. When Billy finally came onto stage (and preceded to undress) the roar was deafening, but there was a definite tension hanging in the air. Billy sat down with his acoustic and started strumming three chords in a mournful pattern. I could feel the audience growing more and more tense with each passing minute (the first song seriously lasted about half an hour). When Billy cracked a smile for some reason about five minutes into the song, the crowd was so desperate for something to hang onto that they began cheering madly. Anyhow, I found it mad cool that he could walk out into a building filled with people praying for a pumpkins song and bombard us with all new material in a nearly acoustic set. Highlights for me were 'Died of a Broken Heart', 'Whatever, Whenever', 'For Your Love', 'El-A-Noy', and Billy's german rendition of 'Happy Birthday'. 'God's Gonna Set This World On Fire' was awesome; I don't know how they could ever approximate the coolness of the gospel-like crowd interaction in the studio, and I hope they never try. I had also been secretly hoping the whole show that they would play 'Don't Let Me Down', and Billy answered my prayers, so I'd like to send a special thanks to him for that. It was one of the coolest concerts I've ever been to, almost as neat as seeing Built to Spill play 'Freebird'. Hope the album's anywhere near as good.
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