Below is the third and final segment of the Smashing Pumpkins’ interview (part one, part two) last Monday on the syndicated radio program “Mancow’s Morning Madhouse”.

Mancow Muller: Hey, fellas, let me ask you something. I mean, ’80s music, the stuff that we grew up with, is so huge again. And when we were kids, it was ’60s music, right?

Billy Corgan: Mhm, Sha Na Na.

MM: At some point this stuff will go full cycle and the ’90s music will hit again. Do you guys envision yourself, you know, at 50 years old, 60 years old, singing “Today”?

BC: That’s a bridge you cross when you get there.

MM: Billy, when you go see these bands that you like and that I like, do you think, “Ah, it’s just nostalgia?” Should they quit, or do you admire them for keeping it going?

BC: It depends on the artist. I think if the artist is still creative…like, look at Neil Diamond: he’s still releasing new songs, he’s a great songwriter, you know? Somebody like that, then I think it’s about the present and the past. Neil Young, the present and the past. With us, it’s about the present and the past. When it turns into just a past thing, that’s where you lose me.

MM: I saw Neil [Diamond] two Saturdays ago.

BC: Was it good?

MM: Yeah. I mean, sure. He did “Sweet Caroline” three times.

BC: That’s weird.

MM: Three times.

BC: Wow.

MM: And what is it about that song that white people have to sing along?

Jimmy Chamberlin: [laughs]

MM: [singing] So good, so good, so good! …Billy, he did do the song I want played at my funeral.

BC: Which is?

MM: “Hell Yeah”.

BC: I don’t know that one.

MM: Well, buddy, you better have someone download it for you.

BC: Okay.

MM: Because it’s his masterpiece.

BC: All right.

MM: “Hell Yeah”, him and Rick Rubin, you’ve got to hear it.

BC: [laughs]

MM: I mean, you guys could have done it better, I hope I haven’t gone into dangerous territory here. But he does pretty well.

BC: God bless. …Are you out of controversial subjects? There must be another one, right?

MM: No! No, I’m just having a conversation with my buddies. So the Smashing Pumpkins continue. The last CD was a smash.

BC: Yeah, we did good.

MM: The concerts are selling.

BC: Yeah.

MM: You guys are all getting along.

BC: Yeah.

MM: Jimmy, you’re off the drugs.

JC: I’m completely clean and sober now for over four years.

BC: It might have something to do with the drumming.

JC: [laughs] Yeah, right.

MM: What do you mean?

BC: Well, that’s why he’s playing so great, I mean…can you imagine, he played…he was out of his mind all those years, with how good he played, and he plays even better when he’s clean and sober.

MM: Jimmy, is there any aspect of that guy that you miss?

JC: Um, no. No, because I gotta say that all those things were filling up empty holes, and those holes have been subsequently filled by my family and my music. I’ve been completely lucky to have kind of lived by fire and kind of survived. And now I’m living by love and water and surviving even better. So, I’m completely happy where I’m at, I’ve never been happier. I have two beautiful kids, a beautiful wife, you know, a beautiful partner, I mean, things are great.

MM: I have two daughters now. My life has changed. I don’t really want to fight Billy as much as I used to want to fight him.

BC: [laughs]

MM: Billy, I’m sure Jimmy’s told you, I told you in Toronto: Kids? When? When are you gonna do it?

BC: I’m…believe me, I’m waiting. It just hasn’t worked out. I really must be miserable to be around, because…

MM: Do you want to have kids?

BC: I do. I’ve wanted to have kids since my late twenties. It’s really probably one of the great tragedies of my life that I don’t have kids.

MM: Is it possible that, just, you don’t have any swimmers?

BC: Uhm… [laughs]

MM: Billy, I would run into you occasionally, and Chris Farley lived in my building where we broadcast, and we would run into you, you know, with your floppy hat, and you’re a very shy guy and everything, but we would see each other every once in a while. When you’re clicking through cable and you see a Farley movie, does that…I still feel kind of sick to my stomach when I see him.

BC: What a great tragedy. He was so talented, and he was such a sweetheart, such a sweetheart. He really was.

MM: Do you feel anything?

BC: In terms of?

MM: Yeah, if just, if “Tommy Boy” is on TV, do you go, “Ohh, man”, because you ran into him a lot.

BC: He — and I think Jimmy can vouch for this — when you talk to him behind the scenes, you realize what a sweetheart he was. And he had that great gift like Belushi, where he could just make you laugh just by the way he moved his body, which is such an amazing talent. He was such a great, gifted person.

MM: All right. Well, guys. Thank you very much.

BC: Thank you!

JC: Thank you.

MM: And, uh…you’re going to be in the area. Are you actually going to come in sometime and see my, uh, my new empire?

BC: We will.

JC: Yeah, of course.

MM: Jimmy, anything else you want to say?

JC: No. All good, man. Good to talk to you.

MM: Thanks guys. Billy, thank you.

BC: Thank you, Mancow, nice to talk to you.

What follows is part two (part one here) of the Smashing Pumpkins’ radio interview with Mancow Muller last Monday. There is some irreverence in this section, so more than usual it is a good idea to listen to the audio for inflection, tone, et cetera.

Mancow Muller: Where are you at now spiritually, Billy?

Billy Corgan: I’m in a really good place, I’m really happy. I know that’s shocking.

MM: Can you write when you’re happy?

BC: Oh yeah! Oh, I write more.

MM: And fame does weird things, doesn’t it? It did weird things to…I know you guys didn’t change, but boy, everybody around you just turned to *bleep*, huh?

BC: Yeah, it’s been shocking. [laughs] It’s been shocking. You know, it changed me to the extent I had to figure out who I was and go back to who I used to be, for sure.

MM: The suicide talk you gave, about…do you want to talk about that? It got a lot of attention.

BC: Sure!

MM: It’s hard for people to relate to. You’re on the top of the world, you’re writing some of the great songs, timeless songs, and yet you were suicidal. How is that possible, Billy?

BC: Well, I think there’s… Like everybody, I’m a human being. I didn’t face certain things. I think fame gave me a free pass on dealing with my problems. Like anybody else, you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, you’re thinking, “You know what, I got all this money, I got all these cars, I got a hot woman, and I’m ready to throw myself off a roof because it just doesn’t matter.” And you know, of course, one of the great artists of our generation, Kurt, you know, took himself out. And I think, there’s this weird thing in America where fame is the new immortality. And look how many of those people are completely miserable. Like the kid who was in the Indiana Jones movie, he [Shia LaBeouf] flipped his car.

MM: Yeah, he’s miserable.

BC: How old is he, 22 years old? You just want to grab the kid and say, “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.” But, I’m sure he’s surrounded with a bunch of people who are making excuses for him already. I just know how that works. Trust me, Mancow: when we were flying, they couldn’t take us out to enough dinners, they couldn’t pat us on the back, they couldn’t tell us how great we were — and the minute it stopped selling like it did, they were gone. And that’s a weird feeling too, because you start thinking, like, “Well, is everybody a liar in my world?” Including bandmates. I’ll give you a perfect example: Our old bandmates, James and D’arcy, constantly complained to the press that I was this crazy dictator and I wouldn’t let them record their music. And they’ve been out of the band for seven, eight years and they haven’t released one song. So am I still suppressing them from a distance? I mean…

Jimmy Chamberlin: [laughs]

MM: Well, you know, the little Asian girl was nice. She was always nice to me. And D’arcy was always asleep, so…

BC: [laughs]

MM: So I can’t really say anything, but I did see you guys in the studio numerous times, and I really wasn’t sure what they did. In fact, early on, I thought they were maybe with the caterers.

BC: Well, they looked good.

MM: They did look good in the videos!

BC: No, I have to say, they did make serious contributions, and it’s not fair to try to go out and denigrate their contributions.

MM: Yeah, but do you enjoy when I do it?

BC: Uhh… [laughs] I can’t argue against you, you know? It’s hard, though, but put it this way: we were all together there for a while and it worked. And God knows why it worked, because behind the scenes it was really impossible. But it did work, and you find yourself thinking there was something to it. But they’ve turned into such thorns in our sides, you know…

MM: Well, they were in the paper yesterday complaining that you haven’t given them money for your ringtones.

BC: Yeah, but see, that’s nice to say in the press, but that’s not really what’s happened. If you notice, they’re not suing me, you know what I mean? And there’s a reason they’re not suing me, because I haven’t done anything wrong.

Talk Radio Network’s Mancow Muller interviewed Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin of the Smashing Pumpkins last Monday. Audio of the interview can be found here.

Here’s the first portion of a lengthy full transcript:

Mancow Muller: Billy!

Billy Corgan: Yeah! Hey, good morning.

MM: I thought you’d never do my show again.

BC: Oh, stop it.

MM: Are we friends now?

BC: We are friends.

MM: Okay. I told you just a couple times that you hurt my feelings when you said that you didn’t think radio really helped the Pumpkins. Have you changed your mind on that?

BC: [laughs] It’s helping me now.

MM: Jimmy’s on the line too, Jimmy Chamberlin. Billy Corgan, the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins, Jimmy Chamberlin…

Jimmy Chamberlin: What’s up, Mancow?!

MM: Hey guys. I got a chance to catch you in, uh, I don’t know, Toronto, I think, and it was spectacular.

JC: Oh, thank you!

MM: How are things going for you guys?

BC: Good. We’re so busy, it’s crazy.

MM: What are you working on right now, Billy? Aren’t you working on one of the Guitar Heros or something?

BC: Yeah, I’m going to be in the new Guitar Hero, like, actually be in the new game, which was pretty cool. We just recorded a new song, we’re getting ready for our tour, we’re getting ready for our 20th anniversary tour, we’re getting ready to put out a Gish box set.

MM: The new song is called “G.L.O.W.”, right?

BC: Yes sir.

MM: What does it stand for?

BC: Glorious Ladies of Wrestling.

MM: What?!

BC: Don’t you remember the Glorious Ladies of Wrestling?

MM: Yes! Yes, I do.

BC: I bet you had a few private moments with the Glorious Ladies.

MM: I did, I did, actually. Farmer’s Daughter.

BC, JC: [laughter]

MM: Billy, what weird things turned you on?

BC: Uh, I don’t know. I don’t talk about those things.

MM: You don’t have a record company now, do you?

BC: No, no, we’re free. It’s awesome. I mean, it’s amazing to be free in the market…”market” sounds so businesslike. In the world we live in now, the digital market world, whatever, it’s so cool because you can basically do whatever you want.

MM: Did they ever “get” you, Billy? Did they ever get the Pumpkins?

BC: The last record company, no, unfortunately. But some of the people at our old record company did, and they had everything to do with why we were so successful.

MM: And of course, the minute the Smashing Pumpkins had a hit, a lot of your people started hating you. The minute we played you on the radio people hated you.

BC: Well, that’s just the weird “alternative” world.

MM: But isn’t that weird?

BC: You remember that episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk had to fight his…self? His anti-Captain Kirk? That’s what it’s like being in alternative rock. It’s like, if you’re too good, they hate you; if you kind of suck and you smell bad and you have a beard, you’re good. It’s that weird thing. You gotta be good enough to be listened to, but bad enough that the mainstream world doesn’t want to hear you. We’ve been around for twenty years now, and we’re still…still getting it done. So we must be doing something right.

MM: You told me something in Toronto that I want to reveal, and I hope you don’t get mad at me. You said you’re making more money now than ever before.

JC: [laughs]

BC: Uhh…did I say that?

MM: Yes, you did. Selling your CDs online, doing whatever the hell you want, no middlemen, touring when you want, collecting the money and not having to divvy it up with record companies and promoters…you’re doing better than ever before.

BC: That’s basically true, but we also have to spend more money to do that, so maybe it’s a bit of a lie, but yeah. Put it this way: the most important thing with that is the freedom — not sitting in the back of your mind thinking somebody’s going to shut us down here somewhere along the chain. I think that’s what’s really important to get back to just making great music, and if people want it, they’ll find it, believe me, in this world.

MM: You’ve made me mad, you’ve burned bridges. Do you regret any of that?

BC: Oh yeah. Of course I do. I’m 41 years old now. I did a lot of stupid things. But I’ll say this: most of the stupid things I did were at least out of the idea that I didn’t care because I wasn’t gonna get on my knees and *bleep* anybody else *bleep*…

MM: What about Jimmy?

BC: Oh, I’ve done that many times.

MM: No, but I mean, would Jimmy have *bleep*?

BC: With the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, yes, he would have.

JC: [laughs]

BC: The point is we came out of nothing. We were lower-middle-class kids. We didn’t grow up thinking we were gonna be on, you know, Solid Gold or whatever. Suddenly we found ourselves in this situation. So we were like, we had to make weird choices. I think we were immature and we didn’t realize that dying wasn’t a good idea. [laughter] You know, killing ourself, killing each other…those were all bad ideas.

MM: Standing next to Jimmy on stage is an amazing thing. The amount of energy that you put out, Jimmy. You are an amazing drummer. Billy, do you tell him? I know you have trouble with this…do you tell him how great he is?

BC: All the time.

MM: Can you do it right now?

BC: I think Jimmy is the best drummer in the world.

JC: Aww, thanks!

BC: I think no drummer in the world can do what Jimmy does, wihch is to play with that level of power for two hours like that and play to such a high level. And he’s able to play all different styles. Jimmy’s played on mellow songs, heavy songs. I mean, he’s up there with Bonham, you know…

MM: I agree.

BC: That level of drummer who’s been able to play in a different variety of music and have his style impact the way people play the drums, that’s the hallmark of a great drummer. Right now, I think pound-for-pound he’s the best drummer in the world.

JC: Aw, thanks a lot.

The Smashing Pumpkins are being showcased on Chicago radio station WXRT as their Friday Featured Artist.

The plus is hearing a healthy dose of Pumpkin tunes on the radio throughout the day, including some not-so-often played songs.

The negative? You have to listen to WXRT througout the day. John Mayer every hour, on the hour! With a good dose of Counting Crows and Midnight Oil thrown in.

Ok, I kid. For being a commercial station, XRT’s not all that bad. You just have to separate the wheat from the chaff. Those interested can listen to a live stream at XRT.com.

Here’s the remainder (first part here) of cool DJ Zane Lowe’s brief BBC interview with the Smashing Pumpkins last Wednesday:

Zane Lowe: Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, we’re catching up with you right now. Of course you’ve got some more shows in the UK to get through - Nottingham Arena, Manchester M.E.N., and then London O2 Arena as well. Just quickly - how was Glasgow, was that fun?
Billy Corgan: We played in, like, a car factory or something? I joked during the show last night that maybe after the show we could all get together and build a green-sensitive car.
Jimmy Chamberlin: I think it was Jackie Stewart’s old garage or something where we played.
ZL: You need to talk to your promoter, guys.You need to have a word because you shouldn’t be playing those kinds of places. I was looking at the setlist that you guys had in Paris recently - one of the ones that was online. It really covers the length and breadth of your entire recording career. It must be quite difficult for you though to satisfy yourselves on a nightly basis, let alone the audience out there. You can never keep everybody 100% happy - there’s always going to be people who have favorites.
BC: Oh, that’s the Pumpkins though. Being in this band is to accept that somebody goes home unhappy. We used to get off on that, but now actually we feel sad about that. We wish there was a way to get the balance right, but it’s just impossible. But just to diverge for a second: what we are talking about doing, because we’re going to finally start releasing a lot of archival stuff at the end of this year, we’re going to start doing tours that are focused on particular periods. So we’ll go out and actually do a tour where we’ll say, “Okay, we’re only going to play songs from the beginning of the band through Gish.” We’ll probably play fairly small places and charge good tickets, so you’re going to have to be a fan if you want to come, but it will really be a great chance to revisit those times. We’re really excited about that. I think that’s going to be fantastic.
ZL: That sounds amazing, that sounds really amazing. Apart from that, in terms of future music as well, you’ve got American Gothic - we’re going to get to that in a second. Are you guys talking about a forthcoming album?
BC: Jimmy, you want to let any secrets out?
ZL: Yes, Jimmy, you do is the answer to that question.
JC: We’re actually pretty full-tilt into the future right now. We’re in the process of buying a space in Chicago. We’re going to build another…what would be “Pumpkinland 2.0.”
BC: What we’re talking about doing is, rather than go away for awhile and then release a pile of music, we’re actually going to release the album as we make it. So we’re talking about making an album, say, over the course of three years, and try to come up with a level of work of a Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie where we really go as far out as we can go and really explore all the different areas of the band. So we’ll sort of record for awhile, put some stuff out, tour a little bit, so that way we won’t disappear because we never liked that. We don’t like the disappearing for 18 months and scratching our heads wondering if anyone is even going to like what we’re doing.
ZL: The new EP is called American Gothic and we’re gonna play “The Rose March” right now. It’s been really nice catching up with you on the phone. Don’t be a stranger for so long again or else I’ll start to take it personally!
BC+JC: *laugh*, exeunt

Zane Lowe of the BBC did a brief interview with Billy and Jimmy last Wednesday. Here’s the first portion of a full transcript:

Zane Lowe: Billy Corgan, are you on the line?
Billy Corgan: Billy is here.
ZL: Jimmy Chamberlin?
Jimmy Chamberlin: Hello?
ZL: Ahhh, good news, good news. Smashing Pumpkins, welcome back to the United Kingdom! The tour is underway - the rockness is happening and we’ve got you on line on Radio 1. It’s nice to have you. How are you?
BC: Good, we’re great!
ZL: This is rare, I have to say, since Zeitgeist has come out, and I have to start right here: You guys have been kind of reluctant to talk about 21st-century Pumpkins and it’s a nice opportunity to get the chance to do so. But why were you so reticent to begin with?
BC: Well, I think we figured that the first problem we were going to have, which wasn’t a musical issue, was that anyone who would talk to us wasn’t going to talk about music, they were going to talk about the past, and the problems of the past and the band of the past. And it makes total sense - if I was a fan, I’d want to know that stuff too. But because we made the decision to come back for real, we figured, “Well, we’re going to be around for awhile, so let’s just let the music do the talking for a while.”
ZL: Can we get the customary past question out of the way right now? Why do you think, with the benefit of hindsight, you broke up in the first place?
BC: You know - and Jimmy can certainly add to this - we were really not prepared for what band success brought us. We were just so overwhelmed by it, and we tried to sort of soldier on and keep up a good face, and we just couldn’t handle it. And rather than sort of step back and come at it from a different end, we just kept going and going and going, and I think it just destroyed the band. There was no trust within the band.
JC: I think we really needed to grow up as individuals. I think [for] me personally, and I know [for] Billy…we had spent so much time in the band we were basically in what amounted to late adolescence, for lack of a better term, for us. I think growing up emotionally in a band that’s a juggernaut like that places a lot of stress on you that you’re not prepared for. I think more than anything, we needed a break to grow up spiritually and come back to music with a new appreciation and a lot of good reasons to do it.
ZL: Yeah, you’ve summed it up beautifully, but you really did when you released Zeitgeist as well. It was an aggressive, very angry, direct rock-and-roll record. Was that the idea from the very start with Zeitgeist, or did that just develop over the course of the couple years making the record that it turned into that beast? Or was that your idea, that “We’re going to come back and we’re going to come back hard?”
BC: In talking to fans, everybody was like, “Put the band back together and come back and rock.” You got that sense off the street that people wanted to hear some energy, that they didn’t want us rolling over and crying in our milk. So we looked at it like we looked at our very first album, Gish, where you just gotta make a statement. It doesn’t have to be everything, it doesn’t have to be The Wall. It just has to have some energy and have some currency and there has to be some music on it that somebody goes, “Okay, this is 2007, this is not 1994 again.”

The Pumpkins weren’t the only ones flying into Atlanta for work today. In a happy coincidence of work-meets-play, I also flew in this morning to the nation’s busiest Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

After work tonight on my way to the hotel, I picked up a six-pack of local Atlanta-based SweetWater Brewing Company’s Hummer Ale, a “tasty Belgian White Ale brewed with coriander and orange peel.”

While, I beg to differ that this beer rates any higher than “drinkable,” at least it’s more of sport than the local Star 94 radio preset in my rental. The lovely folks there made a big deal about how the only thing that’s going on tomorrow is a studio interview with Mr. Moviefone.

Come on, people! Read the memo!

…

The Pumpkins are in town!

This will be the final segment I’ll transcribe from the XM “Artist Confidential” program with the Smashing Pumpkins; it is also the last portion of the program itself. Here Billy takes up the invitation of host Lou Brutus to address fans with regard to the future of the band.

Lou Brutus: To all the folks who might not be able to be here with us today, directly, who are fans who have supported you guys…anything you want to say as a goodbye today, to them, directly?

Billy Corgan: I know talking to some fans that I run into on the street and stuff, there, there’s sort of that, they want to believe in it, in what we’re doing, but there’s that feeling like “you’re just going to yank it away again,” you know. And I think…it took me a long time to understand what was so deeply disappointing about the band breaking up. (more…)

More from XM’s “Artist Confidential” program with the Smashing Pumpkins recorded July 10 and aired for the first time last night.

Billy Corgan: When you’re in a group and in a little hub-world like we are, you know, you have your own little catch-sayings, and one catch-saying we have is “short money”. “Short money” is, like, people want to make money right now, but they’re not actually thinking about how to make money and how to be successful and how to be profitable and how to be emotionally profitable over the long haul. You know, it’s like a winning baseball team vs. a team that sort of goes for it one year and then wipes out for twenty, you know. The music business that we’re in right now is all about short money. (more…)

Doing more justice to the XM “Artist Confidential” program with the Smashing Pumpkins, here is another transcribed segment of the interview. There is a decent amount of irreverence in this section, so use great caution and generosity as you read/interpret the printed text.

Billy Corgan: That [original version of “That’s the Way”] reminded us too much of Mellon Collie. So right there you have a contradiction of thought. On one level, we know that people want to hear that kind of feeling from us, because that’s what identifies some of our best work, and on the other hand, we’re saying, well, we don’t want to sound like that. So what do we do, you know what I mean? It’s not as simple as saying “reject the idea because it’s familiar.” (more…)

In an effort to do more justice than I did previously to a most entertaining and informative interview with the Smashing Pumpkins on XM’s “Artist Confidential”, I am going to transcribe some key quotes. Here is the first in what will be a brief, today-only series.

Lou Brutus: …let’s talk about the lyrical content of that record, because…I don’t think that you’d ever been overtly political before; I don’t know that you’re being overtly political now, but…and maybe I’m reading into the lyrics incorrectly, but there seems to be a lot more awareness of the world in these songs, or many of them anyway.

Billy Corgan: I feel I’m in an interesting position. (more…)

The Pumpkins played “Bring the Light” during their set at the classy Palms Las Vegas last night, if this touring fan can be believed. Arguably the fan shouldn’t be trusted, seeing as he (1) lied about this exact same item during a previous show and (2) can’t seem to get the song title right or spell credibility. If he is telling the truth, this was the first concert performance of the song.

I do believe the fan this time, and not only because of the detail he provides. It makes sense that the band would bring out “Light” in anticipation of Saturday night’s show in southern California, where the song is a minor radio hit.

UPDATE:  Below:  Indisputable visual auditory evidence (YouTube)

Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins perform and interact with intellect and swagger for a full house of fans in the XM Performance Theater. Hear a workshop style of their songs to a powerful Q&A session. The Smashing Pumpkins mesmerize in this edition of Artist Confidential.

The aforehyped program, recorded July 10 in Washington (full setlist from spfc.org) and surely edited down in the interim, has its premiere airing at 9pm Central on XM Ethel (ch. 47). Listen along (((free stream from AOL))) as we “live”-blog this occasion.

8:04pm: The XM Ethel DJ spins “That’s the Way” to warm up the listening audience. 56 minutes until mesmerization…

8:50pm: The DJ instructs listeners not to “pee [their] pants” but instead to use the “lavoratory” (ph; sic) during the 10 minutes until the show begins. Does everyone have to be gross these days?

8:57pm: DJ, who seems to prefer to say “Billy Corgan” rather than “Smashing Pumpkins”, chooses Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea” as the last song before the program. Hey, if you have something to say, dude, just spit it.

9:01pm: Loooong packaged generic intro, then a Pumpkin-specific medley of studio tracks, several greatest hits and then several Zeitgeist tracks.

9:03pm: Zzzz…intro finally ends; your host, Lou Brutus, says “the only thing better in Chicago than Wrigley Field is the Smashing Pumpkins.” Crowd claps. Band launches into an acoustic “That’s the Way”.

9:08pm: “What kind of Smashing Pumpkins album are we going to make?” Billy said that he and Jimmy asked themselves in Scottsdale in late 2005. “The original feel of [”That’s the Way”] was something like…” Billy starts to play and asks Jimmy to join in with the “original beat”, and Jimmy does. “We love the idea of the song, but it reminds us too much of Mellon Collie.” Billy says they didn’t want to reject the idea, but to adapt it (as Flood might have suggested); coming up with a new rhythmic pattern on the guitar moved the song “from 1995 to 2005″.

9:12pm: “People have a rosy opinion of what we did, but it isn’t always the reality of what we did.”

9:13pm: Billy begins “For God and Country”…

9:17pm: …and the band finishes it. Re: “For God and Country”, Billy says it was a “last-second entry” for the recording sessions that was originally a “Civil War dirge”, like a “funerary, there-goes-our-country thing”. A cheap keyboard provided a disco beat that Jimmy and Billy incorporated into the final album version.

9:21pm: Billy on the thematic overtones of the record: “I feel I’m drowning in a bunch of [political] crap, and I don’t know what to do or say about it.”

9:22pm: Billy introduces “Neverlost”, which he says they created in their last moments together before breaking for Christmas vacation.

(no timestamp) A general comment: Billy sounds quite energized, even excited, while talking, and is quite funny. Sorry that isn’t coming across so much in what I’m getting down.

9:28pm: Jimmy, discussing Roy Thomas Baker, says the world formulates grandiose stories about people who have fallen out of the public eye; he and Billy found the stories about Roy to have been false, and further found in him a soulmate, someone who approaches art in the same way they do. “He wore us out with his energy and his willingness to go the extra mile.”

9:30pm: “Every performance on Zeitgeist is a live performance,” Jimmy says, with “no digital editing or click tracks at all.”

9:34pm: After an impassioned complaint about the state of the music business and its obsession with “short money”, an amused Billy exults in his ability to swear on satellite radio. “Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em with a song - ‘Backdoor Sally’ - ready? 1, 2…” “Bleeding the Orchid” ensues.

9:39pm: “Ironically, that song is about what we just talked about.”

9:40pm: Lou is (not the only one) curious to how “United States” is going to come across acoustically. “I personally have always been afraid of the shuffle,” Jimmy says. He and Billy kick into some shuffle-based “good-time boogie”. The beat for “United States” is, Billy says, a Pink Floyd-influenced modified shuffle beat.

9:45pm: The journey begins.

9:52pm: The journey ends rather anticlimactically.

9:53pm: Billy says to fans: “We’re committed to the band for good… The band is not going to go away as an emotional identity until we’re dead.” He cites Neil Young, whom he describes as an artist who is forever making music for “right now”, as a model for where the band wants to go - but he says it’s “uncharted territory” (as many of their peer bands are gone) and that fan support will be necessary for them to succeed.

9:56pm: “We thought we’d do one oldie.” Crowd claps, and “Today” starts.

10:00pm: “Thank you.” Roll credits with special thanks to caterer Red Hot and Blue. XM 47 resumes regular programming with Social Distortion’s “Bad Luck”, thus in my mind clinching passive-aggressive hater status for the nasty DJ.

A post on Orbitcast.com today announces the debut of the XM radio show and interview that the Pumpkins performed the afternoon of their album debut show in DC. The segment features six songs of live performance (setlist here) and a band interview.

Orbitcast reports:

“Artist Confidential: Smashing Pumpkins” will air at 10pm ET on XM’s Ethel (ch 47) with encore broadcasts available all day every Monday on XMX (ch 2). Check out photos of the Smashing Pumpkins taping (as well as a short video). Future episodes of “Artist Confidential” will include Gloria Estefan, Marty Stuart, Mandy Moore, Lyle Lovett, Daddy Yankee, Perry Farrell, Kool & The Gang, Korn, KT Tunstall, Megadeth, The Moody Blues and Blue Man Group, among others.

Should be interesting. The fan review I read sounded great. Anyone have XM? Who’s taping?

UPDATE: We should be able to listen here.

Presumably, Warner/Reprise/whoever will be trying to get this new and inoffensive single on air in other formats than ye olde Alternative. Or, maybe they don’t care…but that’s not the way.

You can follow the success of whatever efforts they are making by using these links to Mediabase airplay data. (more…)

What #1:  A Smashing Pumpkins Webcast 
What #2:  the Internet Debut of a Concert Recording
Which:  2000/08/11 Barrie, Ontario, as taped by Frank Quinto
Date:  Sunday, July 29th
Time:  11:00pm Eastern / 10:00pm Central / in other time zones
Server #1: hipstersunited.dyndns.org:8000/listen.pls
Server #2: unitedhipsters.dyndns.org:8000/listen.pls

Sometime, but not too long after before this Shoutcast stream has ceased starts to flow, the recording will be uploaded in a popular lossless format to the Live Music Archive (archive.org).

To hear the broadcast, you can use Winamp, iTunes, or any type of media player that can play streams.  For iTunes, you want to go to Advanced, then Open Stream.  Copy the link above and you’re all set.

Full details on the recording… (more…)