In a bid for gratuitous self-promotion, I am happy to announce my photo essay from the Smashing Pumpkins two-night stand in NYC has now been posted to the official site.

Check it out here and stay tuned for additional exclusive-to-HU photos!

UPDATE: While the photo above was taken by HU’s own Pins, the Smashing Pumpkins Media Militia is promising photo updates from the Chicago Theatre throughout the day on its Flickr account.

Joe Doh, a non-dork, publishes his thoughts directly to the Internet:

 

Billy Corgan is on my flight. Smashing Pumpkins ring any bells?

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!  [ed. not this message…]

During Billy Corgan’s rant-remake encore of “Everything Is Beautiful” tonight at Constitution Hall in Washington, the audience member pictured — who was agitated following the Smashing Pumpkins’ set-closing post-rock take on “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” — extended two middle fingers toward the singer.

Called upon by Corgan to express his dissatisfaction, the young man yelled something to the effect that the band no longer rocks. A question as to the whereabouts of James Iha was also raised. Corgan’s response was to bring a young female fan on stage, referring to her as “James Iha” and asking her what she was doing since having left the band.

Pretty good show, otherwise, but that’s not what many of us were talking about as we exited the building. The segment of the show from “Transformer” through “The Rose March” was particularly energizing and impressive — and a bit of semi-confrontational banter from Billy immediately thereafter (and prior to “Today”) came off quite funny and ingratiating. And then…did it all go wrong?

Metromix has a nice set of shots from the Pumpkins’ first night in New York City.

I was going to stick this in a comment (#151! o_O;) in the 11/4 thread, but then I thought “Hey, Jill’s been bugging me to do an actual entry- this can be it!” So yeah, now that I’m back on a real computer, let’s try this thing out…

First TSP-2.0 performances from 11/4:

• Cupid de Locke - first performance since 1996
• Soma - first since 1999
• Bodies - first since 1997
• Crestfallen - first since 1998
• I of the Mourning - first since the 2000 “final show”
• Landslide - first full performance since 1996 (couple teases in ‘97)
• MCIS - first real “live” (non-PA) performance ever
• Galapogos - first since 1996 (teased in ‘98)
• Age of Innocence - first since the 2000 “final show”
• I Am One Part II - first known live performance ever

11/3 also gave us the first performances of Roctopus and Everybody Come Clap Your Hands. So, a dozen first performances (2.0 or otherwise) over 2 nights (which weren’t the start of a new-album/material tour)- not bad! Although I will have to take Billy’s challenge to show him “a band- without beards- who can play 48 songs in 2 days”, as I attended a 5-day run of shows in Tokyo last year (each night themed around a different album) which contained 55 unique songs (not including 2 “album intro” pseudo-songs played over the PA, or the drum solo- which I perhaps should include, considering Roctopus is counted in the 48…) ObSP: the pre-show music each night was Zeitgeist. :)

CODE UPDATE [by Jason]:  Photo credit to Flickr user Evdawg; more pictures here.

Crazy clown shoes, giant leather skirts, sombreros, and a bevy of hats for Lisa have all been the subject of discussion in the last year here at HU.

But last night takes the cake.  For those of you who followed our liveblog last night, you know that the Smashing Pumpkins were decked out in full-blown costumes for Halloween.  Now the pictures have started to surface.  Below, find a picture of Billy Corgan in a kimono, courtesy of fan Drevpile on Blamo.  Here’s another picture of the whole band on stage.

And here are two festive pumpkin carvings to celebrate the holiday.

Anyone have more shots from the show last night?  Feel free to contact us if you’d like HU to host them!  And as always, drop us a line if you spy more pictures!

As rumored in the comments here at HU [via Audrey Kitching’s MySpace blog], it looks like we can confirm that the Smashing Pumpkins did go into the studio to shoot video on Monday.

Photog “blackheart amoreena” uploaded 43 photos to this Flickr set yesterday; looks like she’s a friend of director Justin Coloma according to her MySpace page.

Check out the slideshow here.

Important Note: Those with sensitivity to neon colors, black lights, or sparks flying out of violins should take any necessary precautions prior to viewing the slideshow.

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!)

Via friend-of-the-blog Q-Dog comes word of today’s acoustic show at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Silicon Valley, where the Smashing Pumpkins performed among other artists to benefit The Bridge School. Q-Dog attributes this setlist to a printed copy that a fan received at the show, on which we’ve also gotten some high-level confirmation:

99 Floors
Owata
Sunkissed
The Rose March
A Song for a Son
Disarm

Set closer “Disarm” featured vocal stylings from guest Josh Groban, while the previously promised “Sunkissed” arrived along with newies “Owata” and “A Song for a Son”.

UPDATE: As you can see in the above detail from a picture by Flickr user Bryce Edwards, the new hornists and violinist joined the band on stage today. Nine Pumpkins now?!

Kevin Bronson of Buzzbands.LA has a firsthand account:

If you wanted the hits, you stuck with the video games. But if you wanted stimulation and not simulation, you hung with the Pumpkins, whose set for the Guitar Hero World Tour launch party included, oh, about two hits — if you count “G.L.O.W.,” the new tune the seminal Chicago rockers released via the game. There were a couple covers, a couple tunes from deep in their catalog and some fresher stuff that let the six-piece blast into a psych-jam-metal-core haze. Take that, button pushers.

Over a dozen pictures from the event have been uploaded at Getty Images.

NME.com tipped me off to a vaguely-written announcement about an upcoming art exhibition featuring the work of former Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur and musician Conrad Keely from …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.  Despite offering no details about the show, I did a bit more research and found out the show opens TODAY at 34 East 1st Street from 6-9pm.  More details are available on Conrad Keely’s MySpace blog, including a preview of the works.  (He is also watching Zeitgeist, the movie?!  Sine?)

In related news, Melissa will also be playing her first show in three years at Lion d’Or in Montreal on November 1st.  More details here (en français, bien sur).  She also plans to release three exclusive new songs on her website in November in anticipation of her Spring 2009 album release for the concept project, Out of Our Minds.

Perhaps HU will have to swing by tonight?!

So how is that new rig working for Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder?

Yesterday was the first day that I really got a chance to spend time with it and it sounds phenomenal. The modded Randall preamps sound great. I was real happy with them before and now I’m even happier.

The Axe-Fx is great too. Not that hard to use and has endless possibilities. Granted, it does take some time to program, but for me having versatility is key. I really wanted to design a rig that would not only be able to cover all the sounds for the songs we’re playing on this upcoming tour (and believe me, it’s a lot of them. 40+ over two nights) but would also allow me to grow into new sonic territories (I know that sounds cheesey, but y’all know what I mean). Suffice to say, I’m beyond pleased with what we were able to get here.

You can read more of Jeff’s tech talk here and here.

That’s my best attempt at an Onion headline, but truly the picture (again from the Spike “Scream” awards) says it all: the fluorescent tubez have survived the “G.L.O.W.” video shoot intact to comprise a more enduring rock aesthetic!

Also, there was an extra-keyboard dude. He may or may not be Mr. Pooley.

More pictures (from Buzznet user kindofadraag) here.

Here are pictures and a description of a guitar effects system freshly built for Smashing Pumpkins axeman Jeff Schroeder by David Friedman. (Not the anarchist-anachronist- economist David Friedman but the Rack Systems Ltd. operator David Friedman.) As Friedman eloquently puts it:

The path is guitar into the rack wah with a cable,then it hits the gcx with the 6 pedals pictured, the 7th loop is the Axe Fx front end {for pedal simulations} then it goes to the Rm4 preamp.

Well, yeah. You’d have to be pretty stupid to do it any other way.

Pictures and hips don’t lie; more from Getty Images here.

PR sez: “Smashing Pumpkins brought down the house with an earth-shattering rendition of their new single and the #1 most added song on Modern Rock Radio ‘G.L.O.W.’ …”

UPDATE: A few arrival pictures have been posted at IESB.net.

UPDATE:  More shots in the comments.