As Commander Corgs might put it, Jester John Petric of the Other Paper didn’t get the joke — but he did appreciate the rock:

At least when idiot bands like Phish pull a Halloween stunt, it’s surrounded by a sense of fun—patchouli-drenched stink-bomb fun, but fun nevertheless. Bill the Butcher’s “acoustic” set was about as much fun as Ryan Adams looking in the mirror.

But when the electric Pumpkins finally came on, sans Halloween costumes, they did prove— once again—that they are one of the great rock bands. Especially with the drums manned by the powerful Jimmy Chambers [sic], whose precision timing and ability to make his skins speak in tandem with Corgan’s seriously dynamic guitar playing make the pair perhaps the most underrated team in music.

The bottom line:

[A]dd tons of bone-splintering, wicked guitar riffing, a crack band, a sold-out house, Halloween and Billy’s megalomaniacal personality, and it was a strangely memorable night. In the end, I admired him for being such a gigantic and talented asshole.

His commentary during last night’s concert in Toronto is featured among a variety of rock-and-roll reactions posted on the Brooklyn Vegan blog.

UPDATE: Here’s a higher-quality video than that posted…by the Vegan? on “The Vegan”?

The above video is a bit blurry and you can’t see Stephen Bradley or Gabrial McNair at all, but you sure can hear them and Gingger Shankar backing Billy Corgan and Josh Groban on the Siamese Dream chestnut.

Getty Images offers nothing but tightly cropped shots of Billy Corgan (including a few with “Disarm” lead singer Josh Groban) at the Bridge School Benefit on Sunday. Hey, celeb photogs and editors, there were eight other people playing music on stage…

UPDATED UPDATE: Flickr user Tree Hugger shows us how it’s done, getting a variety of great images, including the hornists Stephen and Gabrial, Lisa, Ginger, Jimmy, Billy’s shoes, Mr. Pooley (on flute!), Jeff, and the, uhm, other instrumentalist Gingger (on Double Violin!). (Sorry, Google failed to help me figure out what a double-neck five-stringed violin-like instrument is called!)

On the occasion of the revitalization of his band’s website, the head Pumpkin (picture above from G4TV, more here) holds forth on an array of topics. You’ll likely want to read the whole thing, but here are some particular points of note:

Last evening we were able to play for the first time as a 9 piece version of the band, which is very exciting. The more we let go of how the band is supposed to appear numbers-wise and more of what it is supposed to sound like heart-wise, the closer we get to a present kind of truth. …

The night before we played the new Guitar Hero release party, which was great fun. I swore I kept hearing someone from the crowd yelling over and over, ‘where are the Smashing Pumpkins?’. I think I imagined it but either way it made me chuckle to myself.

So two very different shows over 2 days, and we were able to play 4 new songs: Owata, A Song for a Son, As Rome Burns, and a 2012 version of Simon and Garfunkels ‘The Sounds of Silence’. We’ve rehearsed now for 3 weeks for the 20th Anniversary tour, so I trust we have a few more suprises in store. That is, if you dare come to watch us piss on our own grave. …

If anyone comes to this tour expecting a hand-holding, teary-eyed tribute to a dead band, forget it. That is long gone. Outside of 9 shows in 1999, that band hasn’t existed whole since 1996.

Let me take this pause then to say a few things about our former bandmates…

We absolutely, without reservation, honor James and D’arcy. There is no qualification to that statement. We honor them IN FULL. They were there, then. And together we did some incredible things. But let me go one step further. When Jimmy and I decided to move forward and begin again with SP we very openly addressed the question of James and D’arcy returning. We spoke honestly with each other about our feelings and personal reservations, and decided together that the door was open to them to return. Because it was the right thing to do. Honestly though it wasn’t suprising to us that they didn’t want to return, because that was consistent with their general position to date (and continues to be I might add), which is they see the band as something that they got away from for their own reasons. There were no conditions ever put on a return. They simply didn’t even want the conversation with us.

I can now say definitively that they aren’t ever coming back. Period. There is no maybe. If the door was once open to at least have the conversation and consider the possibility, it is now closed. For good. We have moved on. We love them, and we wish them well.

The Smashing Pumpkins are now whoever is standing on that stage, on any given day, with a willingness to play those songs. Not just any songs, those songs. Because its not just what we play, its how we play them. The music MUST come first. And that’s just the way it is.

Talking to Press Association Ltd. at the Spike awards, Billy Corgan reflected on a time when all went wrong:

It was interesting in a sense that we got a lot of things put on us that we didn’t ask for.

Like we never said reunion, we just said we’re gonna put the band back together and see who wants to do it.

Then it became ‘oh, these aren’t the original members’. Well, we never said it was going to be the original members.

Despite my efforts to avoid the word reunion, it has cropped up on HU from time to time. I think it is an inappropriate term not only because Corgan never used the word but primarily because no one reunited…Corgan and Chamberlin were never apart. Obviously, though, the press has used the word liberally — and even the band’s Wikipedia entry claims that “In April 2006, the band officially announced that it was reuniting”, the seeming inaccuracy of that statement and an effort to correct it not withstanding the one-man wikiocracy of user WesleyDodds:

Yes, it’s still a reunion, even if Corgan didn’t use the word

Smashing Pumpkins Prep New Album, 20th Anniversary Tour
Reunited band breaks out classic tunes for tour; concept disc to follow
DAVID BROWNE
Posted Oct 30, 2008 9:59 AM

For an article that was posted in the future, this one is low on shock value. There are a couple of fun quotes, including Billy Corgan referring to himself as “a guitar hero” (note lowercase!), and a hint that the Schroeder/Reyes Pooley/Harriton combo will be joined by “to-be-determined additional musicians” on the new tour. (Keep that accordion handy, Mr. Pooley.)

Anyone see something else in there we don’t already know?

Time Out Chicago editor Frank Sennett has posted an interview that he conducted with Smashing Pumpkins chief Billy Corgan prior to the band’s early August concert in nearby Hammond, Indiana. Sennett’s questions revolve around his toddlin’ town, and since Corgan is not running for President he feels free to be an elitist express himself:

[Frank Sennett]: Could you be a little more specific about how the values have changed?

Billy Corgan: Having grown up working-class, and around working class people, there was a kind of ‘Icarus’ thing, where it’s like, “Enjoy your time flying close to the sun because eventually you’re going to crash and burn and come home.” In any career there are times when you go up, and other times when you go down, and when we went down it was almost as though there was an inevitability attached to it— people were like, “Yeah, we knew you guys were going to come back down to earth.” Meanwhile, the band is continuing to grow and prosper around the world, but Chicago still seems attached to this idea that we never got back up, which is really strange. I don’t take it personally, I see it more as a working-class type of thing. I think that’s why so many people leave Chicago. They find they can’t get away from that. They almost have to go and create a new fantasy away from it, because in Chicago you’re constantly reminded— through commentary and things people say—that it is a working-class city. Working-class values are interesting in that sense of “work hard” equals struggle, equals you maybe will succeed, but if you succeed there is a time limit to that.

[FS]: They want to remind you that you’re no better than anybody else.

Thank goodness Billy has not taken those “reminders” too seriously… Moving on, Sennett inquired into the fate of material from Corgan’s all-but-forgotten post-Zwan-but-pre- TheFutureEmbrace period:

[FS]: A few years ago you played a solo acoustic show featuring your folk songs about Chicago. What kinds of things were you writing about, and is it still a project you are pursuing? What spurred you to start doing that?

[BC]: I felt very inspired because I had gone through a really serious depression after the break-up of a relationship. I was really in a bad place, and had pretty much moved out of the city. But at one point I had to come home and lick my wounds, and found that the city really embraced me on an emotional level. It wasn’t like the people on the street; I just felt embraced by the place. So this project was my way of honoring what I thought was great about the city. I started writing about stuff I had never though about writing about: the Chicago fire, the Leopold and Loeb case, the Cubs and Sox rivalry. I wrote about fourteen or fifteen Chicago-related songs and I did one performance at the Metro. I had planned on putting it out, but I found that the response to the songs and the direction I was going in was so underwhelming that I just got really disappointed and put it all away.

[FS]: Do you think you’ll revisit that at some point?

[BC]: The plan now is to let it sit for a while, and maybe pick it up and do a part two. To put maybe seven years or so between them, and then maybe make a documentary. I have all the footage from the first cycle. That’s the plan now, and it’s the best-case scenario I can think of.

There you have it, fans of “Black Irish” and “White Lights”: in the best-case scenario you will wait seven years (which at 8% interest is roughly half of forever) to purchase a fine recorded representation of those and others of the (so-called? was this a name Billy gave to them, or did the fans make this up?) ChicagoSongs. Thank goodness Billy changes his mind a lot…

HMM… Actually I read that too quickly, and I apologize. Corgan says he may put seven years “or so” between the recording of part one and the (future) recording of a possible part two. Given that the songs were recorded in 2004, that would put recording of a second set into 2011 (or so), with a release to follow thereafter. Maybe there is only 30% of forever to go!

A music lover scorned can be petty and heartless, especially when you’re one of the music world’s most prominent critics (Kot and DeRogatis, I’m looking at you).

But the Chicago music media is feeling less like an “ugly date” now that its prodigal son, Billy Corgan, and his mega-band are returning to the city by the lake for four shows in November.  Embracing the news, several local publications have picked up the story now that there’s no casino involved in Hammond, Indiana.  *gratuitous eye roll*

The latest Chicago Metromix article sarcastically opines “Smashing Pumpkins in Chicago?!” brought to you by none other than the aforementioned Greg Kot.  Thanks to my mother, Sally, for the tip.

Meanwhile, Billy Corgan graces the cover of the new issue of Time Out Chicago, which features an article entitled “Cultural Heroes” which lists Billy Corgan at the head of his class alongside other prominent figures in the scene oh yeah, and Steve Albini.  The article puts the moves on BC:

Billy Corgan, Musician

Even though the Smashing Pumpkins are bigger internationally than they are stateside these days, Corgan’s sticking with Chicago—he’s even written more than a dozen folk songs about such local subjects as the Great Chicago Fire and the Cubs-Sox rivalry. Corgan recounts wandering around Lincoln Park one emotionally tough day only to end up in front of Columbus Hospital where he was born. The moment “struck me as quintessentially Chicago,” he muses. The city “has this unassuming quality where you can find yourself back to where you started without really realizing it.”—Frank Sennett

The single “G.L.O.W.,” out this month, is the Smashing Pumpkins’ last release of ’08, but “a multiyear concept album” might be in the offing, Corgan says.

Under “The Builders” section, lifelong Smashing Pumpkins friend Joe Shanahan is also listed.

Thanks to HU reader Cara for the Time Out tip.

Thanks to a partnership with Nxtbook Media, EQ Magazine’s October issue — including a massive profile of the Smashing Pumpkins — is available for viewing online. Writer Richard Thomas traces the band’s entire career (sans the interstitial Zwan/solo period), listing gear and recording techniques used in the studio from Gish through “Superchrist” and incorporating interviews with Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin, Butch Vig, Flood, Alan Moulder, Bjorn Thorsrud, and Roy Thomas Baker. Here’s but a tiny sample of the extensive historical material:

“Flood felt like the band he would see live wasn’t really captured on record,” says Corgan. “So a lot of Mellon Collie was tracked by the band at deafening volumes. I mean deafening. There was so much SPL [ed. wut?] in the room that it was physically uncomfortable. Your ears, your emotional resistance, would wear down.”

Flood also discovered that Corgan was a much better singer pitch-wise when he didn’t use headphones, so he switched Corgan up to a Shure SM58 and had him sing in front of open speakers.

There are essentially two pieces of forward-looking news, both found near the end of the dozen-plus-page exposition:

“I know the next record is going to be really psychedelic,” says Corgan. “I don’t think the Sabbath influence is going away anytime soon, but I’m thinking more late ’80s/early ’90s English shoegazer mixed with ’60s psychedelia and ’70s funk. I can hear it in my head, but that doesn’t mean it’ll ever get out of my head.”

What, no ’00s or ’50s influences? (And did he say, “funk”? Haha…) The other item:

[P]reparation [is ongoing] for the release of a Gish boxed set, which may include everything from demos and B-sides to revisited versions of old songs. The group also has archived performances of their first 40 shows, warts and all. As they have no label contract in place, the size of the boxed set is to be determined, which is good news for superfans, as Corgan is no stranger to releasing Herculean sets of material. The Pumpkins will also embark on a small-scale tour to support the release, which means Gish songs, Gish gear, and intimate Gish-sized venues. Need more message board fodder? [ed. blog fodder, actually plz] Corgan plans to give each and every Pumpkins album the same treatment. [ed. kthx]

This week we took a look at some of Billy’s recent statements about the band and tried to make some sense of them, and we got some breaking news hours before record time that we were able to squeeze into the show.

Listen to the whole show (46:30)

(download)(iTunes)

This week’s topics:

Panelists
-Chris, Jason, and Andrew

News
-Amazon.com posts a listing and release date for the Fillmore DVD.  Will it really be 271 minutes long, and if so what kind of content will fill all of that time? (3:43)

-Billy proffers a reclassification of Smashing Pumpkins music: American Gothic.  Is this the musical equivalent of choosing ones own nickname?  Is this an accurate genre for the totality of the Pumpkins’ catalog? (6:44)

-G.L.O.W. is announced as a Guitar Hero: World Tour exclusive (at least at first).  Fans are not outraged, but a certain online music blog is… (5:47)

In-Depth Discussion
-Billy made some comments about the difficulties of straddling the line between the mainstream and the hardcore in terms of songwriting.  Would a song like Mayonaise be appreciated today the same way it was in 1993?  Does Billy intentionally write songs for different audiences? (20:36)

This Week in Pumpkins History
-Zwan “officially” dissolves.  Where were we the day the music died? (1:41)

Song of the Week
-Thru the Eyes of Ruby, May 3rd, 1996

Next week we’ll be tackling a topic that is near and dear to all of our hearts: The Machina Mystery!

Part of an interview with Chicago Cubs fan Billy Corgan will be shown during “Outside the Lines”, airing tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. CT on ESPN.

Cubs-blogger Kurt Evans was also interviewed for the 30-minute episode, and he relates this hearsay:

Billy Corgan, by the way, apparently swore like a sailor during his interview. He also commands great camera presence. [Photographer] Ross [Dettman] apparently wanted to get a shot of him talking and acting naturally, but Corgan exerted his rock star presence any time the shutter went off and would completely shift focus from Conversation to Christ Pose without hesitation.

SmashingPumpkins.com writer Supervajra, in a third piece on the Machina band-imitates-band concept, elicits this reminiscence from Billy Corgan:

When the re-formed band agreed to the concept in october of 1998 as a way to bring the band to a close, everyone agreed to “play their part’ all the way down the line. I never envisioned that D’arcy would leave in April of ‘99, and that subsequently the 3 of us would try to finish. This put a stress obviously on the full integrity of the project. Because it was connected to the band not only bringing the music to fruition fully, but also the public component of being in character. I ended up in a broken band with a half-ass enthusiasm towards finishing a project already started…

Being bullheaded I pushed on, underestimating the strain it put on me to try to finish something I was no longer sure of. The songs were all written TO the concept, so what could I do but try to finish. I almost abandoned the entire project half-way thru. It took every fibre of my being to just not quit then and there in the middle of it. Jimmy wasn’t in the best state and James was, well, being James. The only reason I finished it was because I wanted off what had by then become a horrible label. And before anyone cries sell out + $, know that if I had disbanded the group then I would have gotten all the $ on the record and or shelved it and done whatever I wanted to instead music wise. I was the only person who could be held to the deal. James and Jimmy would have walked away free as birds, not only of the group but the contract as well. It was the last record of the deal, and that played into how it all went down.

If that just isn’t enough Machina mystery for you, the Internets will soon yield up Nick Kushner’s “Machina, Alchemy & The Occult”, an “encyclopedic, novel-length mini-site currently in production”. Teaser material for the site can be seen here and here.

After the jump: Our speculative dramatization of an under-his-breath wisecrack that could have gotten James in trouble for, well, being James. [WARNING: Dramatization may be in LOLGATMOG form. I blame Jill…] (more…)

Wayne Drehs of the Worldwide Leader has a feature including interviews with 11 Cubs fans; the gimmick at play here is that one fan was born in each of the last 11 decades. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman holds it down for those born in the 1960s. Here’s his take on what is special about following the Cubs:

If you’re a Cub, it doesn’t matter where you came from — it doesn’t even matter if you’re not even a Cub anymore. You’re always a Cub. Even if you came through and played one year, you’re still a Cub. It’s a weird thing. So you’d say…okay, so, to the guy in Oklahoma, what’s so special about that? What’s special is there’s a real sense of…”appreciation” is not the right word, but you really honor the player. It’s like, this is hallowed ground, and you’re playing for a great organization — even if it’s messed up. Don’t you understand? It’s not about the Tribune Company or Sam Zell or whoever owns the team now, it’s about that fanbase that will take that journey with you every pitch along the way, and that is unique. I don’t think you could point to another organization…some guy in L.A.’s gonna say, “No, I root…” I’m sorry. It ain’t like that in L.A.; it ain’t like that for the Yankees.

Oh, but is it unique? A wag could argue that Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie were like 1907 and 1908, that Melissa auf der Maur is still considered a Pumpkin, and that Lester Cohn “owned the team” during the ChicagoSongs era. But perhaps the proper analogy is to the Dodgers…thus casting Roy Thomas Baker into the Joe Torre role?!

(Thanks to Thomas L. for the tip.)

NewBay Media’s EQ Magazine features the Smashing Pumpkins in its October issue, and its website has posted two teaser stories, one on “Billy Corgan’s notable guitars” and a collection of interview excerpts that won’t appear in the print edition. From the latter piece, here’s Billy on one of his historically less-notable roles — that of Smashing Pumpkins bassist:

I was influenced by mostly new wave people: Simon Gallup from the Cure, Peter Hook. In my emerging adulthood I grew up with a lot of new wave and alternative, so I looked at that bass as “the” cool bass style. So if there’s any personality in my bass playing it’s that Peter Hook, ‘use the weird note’ thing. I always wish my bass playing had more to say, but in my head it all goes together like pieces of a puzzle. I understand how the bass works and doesn’t work with all the other pieces in my head, so it [is] probably the thing that gets the short shrift on certain things. Some ideas could have easily been played on the bass, but they were just more effective on the guitar.

More controversial will be this musing on the pressures from within and without to produce good work:

There are a tremendous amount of opportunities for a free artist, meaning free from a label structure, to do lots of interesting things. I think the danger is when you start playing to the front row of your audience. The audience that’s going to be there no matter what you do. I think it’s going to take a level of sophistication to continue to be progressive, dangerous, experimental, forward-thinking, and at the same time not lose everybody in the haze of non-directed creativity. You’ve got to get out of the Utopian idea of, ‘Now that I’m free I can just do whatever I want to do,’ and I think it splits your mind. I think the middle doesn’t exist anymore. You can be artistic, you can be mainstream, or you can be both, but you can’t exist in the middle. I think there were times that did work for us, but I don’t think it works for us anymore. We’re going to have to consistently prove to people that there’s a reason why we are a unique band. We still have to be able to show up and write a great song.

Lots of great visuals here — and do not stop watching until the very end.

There’s an interview with Billy that is hacked into tiny pieces, of which these are the most notable I think (hopefully the energy-drink-slammin’ quick-cut editing didn’t remove relevant context!):

Coming here to Neversoft, it really reminds me of the old days with the label. There’s a lot of energy in the building, people are really excited, they love the images of rock and roll, they love the music, they’re looking for songs that will challenge the people playing the game… “Guitar Hero”, right now, represents music that people actually listen to. I’m just totally overjoyed that they want our music in the game, that they asked me to be a part of the game…