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CORRECTION: SEE CORRECTION APPENDED; Pumpkins date: A review of the Smashing Pumpkins' San Francisco concert in Tuesday's Calendar section said the band would play in San Diego on Sept. 9. The correct date is Sept. 19.
ONLY half of the band's original members are in the reconstituted Smashing Pumpkins, and the group's new album doesn't sound a lot like its old ones, but a capacity crowd got the full-spectrum Pumpkins experience -- challenging, indulgent, celestial, meandering -- at the Fillmore Auditorium here, where the predominant alt-rock band of the 1990s played its first West Coast concert since 2000 on Sunday.
The end of the seven-year hiatus came in the form of a three- hour show packed with the kind of dynamics -- if not the dramatics - - associated with singer-guitarist Billy Corgan, who peppered the set with Pumpkins staples, including "Today," "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" and "Disarm," yet never allowed nostalgia to become the point. There were too many new songs and Pumpkins obscurities for that, and the musicians played everything with an enveloping, epic force that demanded full and immediate attention.
Leaving guitarist James Iha and bassist D'arcy Wretzky behind,...