Headlining: slots

EXTENSION GOURD The Pumpkins release a new single, “G.L.O.W.,” in September.

Photo: Tyler Curtis

As I step inside Harrah’s rejuvenated Horseshoe Hammond casino, a security guard approaches me: “You must be here for the rock concert.”

Before answering, I take in the casino’s gaming floor: Under eight shades of beige and stock chandeliers, it looks like a cross between a Nordstrom and an arcade. That’s par for the course for any off-the-strip Vegas joint, but it’s opulent when tucked among train tracks and steel mills in the rusted industrial corner of northwest Indiana. Hundreds of video slot machines, some with modest Midwest bets as low as 2¢, chirp and chime as a geriatric crowd hopes to line up cartoon images of wolves, cherries, pizza slices, pandas, dinosaur eggs, hammers, bimbos and oil tycoons. This many wigs and ashtrays haven’t been seen together since the late ’70s.

Clearly, for the security guard, my sneakers and liver-spot-free face peg me as a different type of patron in the recently reopened, $500 million casino; I must be a fan of that crazy new thing called rock & roll. But in 2008, what’s more rock & roll than gambling and smoking indoors?

After the Smashing Pumpkins perform for the casino’s opening weekend in early August, theater designer Benoit Panaccio of Scéno Plus, the Montreal firm that created similar auditoriums for the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and the Wynn, all in Vegas, walks me around his latest creation. Scéno’s Venue sits atop the gaming floor, on the massive barge’s second level (legally, these casinos have to float). Once inside the room, I wonder where all the money went: It looks like a dimly lit high-school gymnasium with luxury boxes; I almost expect basketball nets flipped up against the charcoal ceiling. Confirming the impression, Panaccio shows me how the plush red theater seats retract under balcony-like bleachers. In less than two hours, the seating can be sucked up to transition from lounge intimacy (for the Bette Midlers of the world) to an open floor (for the Smashing Pumpkins). The design team placed flexibility before aesthetics.

But the hidden weapon lies in the drab gray walls: Acoustic paneling covers every surface. According to Panaccio, the material eats up distortion-causing low frequencies and offers no bounce for audio waves. So, unlike similarly cavernous venues such as the Aragon and Congress, this three-story theater offers clean, clear sound.

Yet when the reunited Smashing Pumpkins (after touring everywhere from Orem, Utah, to Oslo, Norway, for their 2007 comeback album, Zeitgeist) finally announced a gig in their hometown of Chicago—and it was not in the city but Indiana and in a casino to boot—critics flipped. The nonironic part of The Onion opined, “Adults…who witness [frontman Billy] Corgan torpedoing his own legacy will have a long, soul-searching drive back home from Indiana.”

In a phone interview, Corgan admits, “It’s a new concept, that casinos have entered the rock world as a place to play. I don’t care if it’s the back of an ice-cream truck or the United Center. At the end of the day, you’re just trying to put people in a place where they can enjoy music.” Without a doubt, the Horseshoe offers Chicagoland a new state-of-the-art theater. And it’s technically the same distance from downtown as the Allstate Arena, nearly half that to Tinley Park. A free shuttle from the Hyatt Regency on Wacker Drive, which departs every two hours, gets us there in 22 minutes.

Corgan promises the Pumpkins will return to “Chicago proper” in November for the band’s 20th anniversary show; the only question, he says, is whether the venue will be the United Center or the Allstate Arena. But it’s a shame nitpickers avoided the Horseshoe for the sake of some mythical rock ideals; there’s no way those shows will sound as sweet as this one.

The Pumpkins have been practicing seven hours a day, Corgan says, and it shows: The band rips through material from each of its records, some B-sides and a cover of Pink Floyd’s early acid freak-out, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” Unlike in his ’90s performances, Corgan exerts control over his voice; in fact, he sings better than ever. The group blends heavy-metal geek shredding with trippy goth shoegazing. After an insane, extended guitar duel, the band huddles up for a quiet acoustic set at the front of the stage. The Pumpkins always balanced the audacious with the intimate, which might have led to many listeners’ inability to understand Corgan’s intent. But that’s his point—to remain enigmatic. Before his biggest hit, “Today,” Corgan tells the audience, “This is for you, even though I don’t know who you are. But you don’t know me either.”

The Pumpkins close their Venue set with a cover of Mungo Jerry’s ragtime trifle “In the Summertime,” soloing on kazoos before tossing the toy instruments into the crowd. A little something for the blue-hairs lined up at the buffet across the hall.