News 001202-5

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- The Smashing Pumpkins have come full circle, playing a farewell concert in the intimate venue where they first performed as a band 13 years ago.

With a maximum capacity of 1,100, tickets for the band's Saturday night finale at the Metro sold out in under 20 minutes on October 21. Fans called from almost every continent for a shot at one of the hottest tickets of the year.

Those who weren't able to purchase tickets first hand were reportedly paying as much as $1,000 to see one of the definitive rock bands of the last decade one last time.

Last month, Maria Alfarjes went to the band's concert in Barcelona, Spain, where she lives, thinking it would be her farewell to the band she grew up listening to. But Alfarjes decided that long shot or not, she'd go online for tickets to the final show in Chicago.

And she scored big. "It was like I won the lottery," she said. "I just started to scream and the woman on the phone told me to settle down, but it didn't work. I called my friends and we started calling around for tickets to America."

The Pumpkins opened the set powerfully with "Cherub Rock" and spent little time with talk between the next handful of songs.

Fans were, however, grateful for something far more important than talk: water. Before the concert, managers at the Metro stashed bottles of water at the front of the stage. The bottles were passed back through the crowd during the show.

When lead singer Billy Corgan did speak, he told the crowd something they already knew.

"Welcome, welcome, welcome...to the last gasp of the Smashing Pumpkins."