By Carly Maitlen
Entertainment Editor

Billy Corgan owned the stage and Purdue students should have been paying rent Tuesday night when the Smashing Pumpkins took over Elliott Hall of Music.

The place was loud and should have been rocking. The stage and its tenants were on fire but the majority of the audience were passive visitors, not the fired up crowd that Elliott housed during Third Eye Blind concert.

But never mind the audience. When the Smashing Pumpkins took the stage, Corgan's haunting voice and lyrics paralyzed the room. The world stood still between each song as Corgan backed away from the microphone, standing eerily still and tuning his guitar for the next song. When he stroked the first note on the guitar, life was breathed back into his 6-foot-plus frame, which seemed to loom over the audience with a kind of daunting presence. Dressed in a long black leather dress, Corgan owned the night.

For anyone who has tuned into MTV in the last few years, it may have seemed that rock is dead. In the midst of a pop music take over, the Smashing Pumpkins are giving rock 'n' roll a transfusion.

"We reject your Britney Spears and your N'SYNC bulls———," screamed Corgan to the crowd.

Corgan spoke little to the less-than-stellar crowd, but he did mention his college years.

"I was in the astrophysics program (at MIT) and I dropped out to play rock 'n' roll," said Corgan. "I remember the exact day - Feb. 15, 1987 - that we said 'f--- school, let's rock.'"

"That was a great day-like 'Today,'" said guitarist James Iha, leading into the next song, "Today," from the band's "Siamese Dream" album.

Despite low critic approval, a number of songs from the band's album "Adore" made it to stage Tuesday night. There was a great range in the temp of the concert, with it starting out loud and rocking and then moved to Corgan on acoustic guitar later in the evening, which calmed the pace of the music. Iha took center stage and did one solo, a pleasant surprise for many fans.

The performance was heavy and emotion-packed. Corgan's lyrics are like lead; they drag in the pit of your stomach and stay with you even after the concert has moved on to a new song and a new feel.

The Smashing Pumpkins managed to put on an unbelievably phenomenal show without the help of the audience. The majority of the crowd had such apathy that when Iha preempted the extraordinarily popular song "1979" by begging the audience to dance by doing whatever dance they knew best, the crowd stood mostly frozen. However, nothing could bring the Pumpkins down as they took over Purdue for two and a half hours.

"Sometimes you've got to just exorcise your demons," said Corgan.