Urge Overkill, Superchunk, and Smashing Pumpkins at Maxwell's (02-08-1991)

On February 8, 1991, Urge Overkill, Superchunk, and the Smashing Pumpkins played a triple bill for the ages at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ!  Former Maxwell's co-owner and booker, Todd Abramson, shared some memories of the show in a 2013 interview with Godfrey Chan of the Sir Wrangle A Lot blog:

That was funny [Smashing Pumpkins] played here twice too, the first time, they played with Superchunk and Urge Overkill and nobody was touring together, so I put them together and there was little bit of controversy over who was going to play when.

Urge Overkill—they were more into the rock star thing so they wanted to close, which is fine. Superchunk was more salt of the earth, so they were happy to play in the middle.

I booked Smashing Pumpkins to play first and their Sub Pop 45″ came out and they already had a high powered agency behind them.

“Why do we have to play first?”, they asked.

So I had to come up with something, “The other two bands have played here before and you haven’t,” and the agent said, “Oh, that’s a great answer, you should be a lawyer.”

All three groups played magnificent sets.  For fans of the Smashing Pumpkins and Superchunk, this show captures both bands in their infancy.  To put things in perspective, Superchunk had not yet released "No Pocky For Kitty" and the Smashing Pumpkins were still four months away from releasing their debut, "Gish!" This is one of my favorites in the McKenzie Tapes collection thus far - I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did!