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Just saw BC at the Winter Classic, walking down Clark Street.  We asked for a picture, but no dice.

This month I travelled to Bulgaria, and at no time during my one week there did I encounter anything Pumpkins- or even Zwan-related. I didn’t go looking for it, either, but they (”they”?) do play a lot of American music. I heard “Jeremy” and “Psycho Circus” on the radio; whoever was civilly authorized to blast music down the Knyaz Aleksandar I street in Plovdiv got away with “Bitch” by Meredith Brooks; and, randomly in restaurants and bars and other public places, I heard “Hazard” by Richard Marx three times.

I’m sure it’s quite possible to get through a week in America without Billy Corgan invading one’s consciousness, so I’m not trying to say anything…just thought a report was in order.

A harmless yet aggressive (read: benignly stalkerish) Smashing Pumpkins fan tracked down Billy Corgan near the “RockWalk” today, questioning the Pumpkins bandleader and videotaping his answers. Corgan cooperated good-naturedly, but the video shows that this fan (previously mentioned twice on HU) still can’t avoid scaring the star, who expressed this feeling after the fan brought up an “amazing” occasion when Corgan “played Spiteface tease”:

When you venture into this territory, it’s like the horror movie where I’ll be washing my…[laughter from the surrounding group of people]…and there’ll be you with a fucking knife.

And now that I’ve expressed my feelings about this, I will report the newsworthy items Corgan mentioned so you won’t have to watch the video yourself:

1. The Pumpkins are planning a fall tour that will extend beyond the three major cities (New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) already known to be in their sights.
2. The band is compiling a DVD for release along with an accompanying soundtrack. The DVD will likely include at least some footage of the band’s July 2007 residency in San Francisco.

Noted sports fan Billy Corgan may (or may not, for all I know) be pleased at today’s announcement that the 12-year split in the top ranks of American open-wheel racing has ended. The IndyCar Series and Champ Car World Series are coming together, right now, under the umbrella of the Indy Racing League.

In the early days of the split, Billy was known to use some of his Pumpkin money for trips to watch Al Unser Jr. compete in races sanctioned by Championship Auto Racing Teams, the forerunner of Champ Car. Unser is semi-retired now, but there is evidence (like this mp3 from a show last year in Asheville) that Billy still keeps up with open-wheel.

So here’s a completely unsubstantiated (i.e., made up by me) tour rumor for you: with this news sending a jolt of fresh energy into the sport, might the Pumpkins want to help celebrate in Indianapolis on May 25 at the 500-Mile Race? Lord knows the Speedway could do better for lead-in entertainment than they did last year with, um, Daughtry:

True-life story: I was at an economics lecture today during which the presenter used in an example the made-up university name “XYU”.

At left: Possible school monogram?

Sometime during the early fall of 1993, my sophomore year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, while alone in my room (1222 Ogg West, if you must know) listening to my copy of Siamese Dream on my boombox, I broke down in tears during Soma. It was at that moment when the Pumpkins moved from just another band who I had recently added to my rather limited music collection to my favorite band.

I had listened to the CD numerous times before, and I had already taken a liking to it. I was immediately hooked into buying the record one minute into my first hearing of Cherub Rock on Atlanta’s 99X the previous summer. The song on the CD that first really struck me as something special was Geek USA. I wasn’t yet aware that they were also behind the “She Knows” song I had heard a couple of times on the radio but had never caught the DJ identifying the artist. But for whatever reason that day a feeling of serious nostalgia over an old girlfriend (big surprise) overcame me as Soma played out and jacta alea est, the die was cast. But perhaps for the choice of a CD to put in my boombox that day I’m now writing on this blog instead of one about Nirvana, Belly, Suede, Nine Inch Nails, New Order, or Alice in Chains (not that there are likely many parallel worlds where Rain When I Die is my song).

Soma was further reinforced as my song when it was the opening song for my first concert, the 8/12/1994 Lollapalooza show in Atlanta. I was up high on the lawn of the amphitheater, dehydrated, sick, uncomfortable, and surrounded by people for whom the climax of the show was the just completed Beastie Boys set and who were apathetic to openly hostile towards the Pumpkins. They took the stage right at sunset, Mother Nature’s nightly special effects melding in with the stage lights as the opening notes floated by. You’ll note that there is no setlist of record for that date at spfc.org because I couldn’t tell you much of what happened after that moment. I do remember a very audience unfriendly I Am One rant (further drawing the ire of the folks around me) and Billy talking about recording Siamese Dream in nearby Marietta.

Of the Lolla shows on the Internet Archive, the Soma performance from 7/22 in Indianapolis sounds the closest to the unfortunately fuzzy memory in my head.

Soma can still sneak up on me to this day and get the waterworks going when I’m in the right mood, though not nearly as reliably as the end of Field of Dreams, the Jurassic Bark episode of Futurama or Brett Favre’s performance the day after his father died in 2003.

So…what’s your song?

(Great minds think alike…I started this post before JJB published his post putting Vieuphoria at #19 on the Big Countdown. Honestly! Rawk Power!)

On a plane from Memphis to Indianapolis this evening, I struck up a conversation with a pregnant woman and her 17-month-old son Jimmy.  At one point she mentioned that she works in “music therapy” (Wikipedia).  I had no idea what this was, but I asked questions and listened.  She mentioned that popular songs might be used to help elicit emotions or to otherwise help people open up about certain touchy experiences, citing Clapton’s “Cocaine” as a possible tune one might use with an addict. 

Of course I had to ask: “So, my favorite band is the Smashing Pumpkins…what Pumpkins song might be used in music therapy?”  She didn’t know their work, very sadly, but asked me for an example of a song.  Perhaps predictably, I described the song ”Today”; unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, as I often feel ambivalence regarding attempts at inducing musical conversions), I didn’t have Siamese Dream loaded on my fancy Sansa e280.  (Also fortunately, I did not suggest the name “Lisa” for young Jimmy’s new sister.)