This is an excerpt from my myspace blog about the asheville show...sums things up I think.

"Let us first take a step back in time.... I remember the exact moment I listened to my first Smashing Pumpkins album. It was June 30th, 1996 and the album was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which I had just bought at the mall with my Grannie. I was 11 years old in between 6th and 7th grade...the transition from childhood to middle school/pre-adulthood. That time when everything in your world starts changing, and you find your identity. I put in the cd...late afternoon swimming in the pool. The sounds swirled around me, and I could hear the music while I was underwater, looking up at the sky. My baptism. My first spiritual experience through music. The memory is just as vivid and consuming as it was then. Something about the words and the music reached me in a way I've never been able to describe. I became obsessed with the Pumpkins and fell head over heels for Billy Corgan. The purchase of about 30 albums, b-sides, imports, and interview discs soon followed as well as a book full of terrible forlorn poetry about Billy.

By the time I was 14 or 15, I got over my creepy obsession, but never got over how much I loved the Pumpkins. It's the music I grew up to. It is part of who I am. Everytime I've had my heart broken, fallen in love, felt sad, alienated, or happy, I've listened to the Pumpkins. Every year when I smell dead leaves in autumn, Siamese Dream takes an extended residence in my stereo. The music makes me feel more alive than anything else in this world."