Live Debuts Show the Pumpkins Rewriting Their Archive

The Smashing Pumpkins opened their Mellon Collie 30th anniversary tour in Columbus last night with a 32-song set that did more than revisit a classic double album. According to [Tom Breihan’s report at Stereogum](https://stereogum.com/2513249/smashing-pumpkins-break-out-live-debuts-and-rarities-at-mellon-collie-30th-anniversary-tour-opener/news/), the band played three songs they had never performed live before: “Machina, Machina,” “Sojourner,” and the extremely early demo “Jesus Is The Sun.” They also resurrected tracks absent from setlists for nearly two decades — “Cupid de Locke” and “Galapogos” since 2008, “Fuck You (An Ode to No One)” since 2007 — alongside deeper cuts like “By Starlight” (last played 2010) and “As Rome Burns” (2010). This is not a band curating a museum of past glories. It is a band actively rewriting its own archive. The falsifier is straightforward: if subsequent tour stops drop these rarities in favor of a greatest-hits run, the thesis collapses.

The counterargument is straightforward. Anniversary tours are nostalgia machines, and a few deep cuts on opening night can be a one-off gimmick to generate headlines. The Pumpkins have cycled through members and eras; maybe this is just a contractual obligation dressed in rare-song theater. The setlist still leans on the obvious — “1979,” “Tonight, Tonight,” “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” “Today,” “Cherub Rock” — and the second set’s sprawl across the catalog could be read as a grab bag, not a statement.

But the evidence tilts against that reading. Three live debuts, including a song from the band’s pre-fame demo days, cannot be dismissed as a token rarity. “Jesus Is The Sun” has existed only as an extremely early demo track; bringing it to an arena stage in 2026 treats the archive as a living document, not a sealed vault. The first-set concentration of Mellon Collie deep cuts — 16 of the album’s 28 tracks, sequenced with “Porcelina” into “Jellybelly” into “Bodies” — suggests a deliberate attempt to present the album as a whole emotional landscape, not a singles parade. The band is not simply replaying a record; they are revisiting its melancholy through the lens of three decades, and extending that melancholy into songs that never made the original tracklist.

The consequence is clear. This tour, if it holds its nerve, redefines what an anniversary show can be. Instead of a sealed exhibit, it becomes a living revision — an archive that the artist is still filling. The falsifier will be visible set by set. If the rarities stick, the thesis holds. If they vanish, it was just a headline.