So, after entering the Cone of Silence for 3 weeks in order to keep myself as surprised and open-minded as possible about the first 2 dates of the Pumpkins return to the “city by the lake,” the Chicago Theatre shows have rolled by, and here I sit, ready to review.

Only, I’m left entirely flummoxed by the whole ordeal.  I could quibble about the song selection, or the performance itself, or Billy’s supposed “rant” Tuesday night, but really, is that remotely any different than any other show in the scheme of things? There’s nothing that was unique about Chicago, and really, that’s probably the main story itself. Chicago shows always used to have an extra jolt of electricity in the air, even if the performance itself was nothing special.  Once upon a time the delivery of the “city by the lake” line would be drowned out by the roar of the crowd, but Tuesday was more of a reserved detachment, more of a “what have you done for me lately?” Tuesday’s crowd was especially lackluster, which may have had a lot to do with Billy’s comments by the end of the night. Felt more like a morgue than a rock show a lot of the time. Wednesday’s energy was better, but there was still something lacking, with the only thing making it uniquely Second City the Cubs/Sox discussion midshow.

There’s always been a little bit of a sense of joint experience, common mindset in shows past, but any goodwill Corgan and co. had engendered coming up through the Windy City has passed. It’s not the fault of the band, or the crowd, but too much time has elapsed, and the sense of ownership and the shared pathos has faded into nostalgia. We may both be from the same city, but we’re no longer from the same place.

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On one hand, those who work for media outlets don’t think that their job is merely to pass along press releases; they believe it is important to subject PR to critical examination. On the other hand, journalists just want to get by, to do their work and go home early like anyone else. So an editor faces a classic quandary when a newsworthy release is faxed in: rewrite it, or just reformat it?

With regard to the Smashing Pumpkins’ announcement yesterday of the forthcoming DVD If All Goes Wrong, most music news sites I’ve checked (like this one) have saved labor by either pasting in or barely touching up the band’s release. For at least two sites, however, that was not good enough: Crave Online (”your source for everything that males crave on the net”) and Aversion Media (”rock * punk * indie”) went…well, I can’t say they went the extra mile, but they did both add to the press release some stuff they just made up.

Crave Online’s “Johnny Firecloud” wrote:

The second disc of the project is “The Fillmore Residency,” a collection of individual performances that will collaboratively comprise what a typical Pumpkins setlist looks like these days, post-Iha.

Out of the 48 or so full concerts the band has performed in these post-Iha days of 2008, I can’t find one that included more than three of the songs appearing on If All Goes Wrong. I guess males don’t crave research…

But Aversion’s unsigned writeup surpasses even what my dark, cynical heart dreamed was possible (the link is theirs, the emphasis is mine):

What’s more, you don’t have to worry about watching The Smashing Pumpkins play any of those pesky “classic” songs that made you like them in the first place. There’s no “1979,” no “Today,” no “Disarm,” “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” or even “Cherub Rock.” It’ [sic] all Zeitgeist (review) (2007, Reprise) songs you probably don’t even remember.

Apparently the inclusion of Zeitgeist bonus tracks “Death from Above” and “Zeitgeist” among the 19 tracks on The Fillmore Residency doesn’t make the DVD “heavy on material from 2007’s Zeitgeist” so much as it utterly transforms the DVD into Zeitgeist Live by retroactively placing studio versions of the remaining 17 non-Zeitgeist tracks onto Zeitgeist. (That is, unless the joke is on us — did Aversion gank a copy of the exclusive-to-HU 30-track brown edition?!)

In the new edition of Portico Publications’ weekly C-ville, Brendan Fitzgerald riffs on the two media-established themes surrounding the Smashing Pumpkins latest tour: (1) It’s really good and (2) it features songs from Zeitgeist. [Editor’s note: Uh, only two of the 21 songs on the tour setlist come from Zeitgeist.]

It feels a bit overboard to praise the Pumpkins so enthusiastically long after their biggest commercial successes, but the band never stopped making great songs; Corgan simply put out a lot of half-baked grunge that obscured the finer material. During the evening’s two-hour set—heavy on material from 2007’s Zeitgeist and a few recent singles—the Pumpkins called up tunes from at least half of their catalogue of albums…

The last line is sure correct, though — the band played at least one song off every one of their albums, which certainly is “at least half”.

Am I being too hard on these reviewers? Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I just can’t remember ever reading a review or preview of a Wilco show or a Neil Young show or (dare I say) a Radiohead show where the critic felt empowered to reinvent the band’s setlist to his or her own satisfaction, and yet with the Smashing Pumpkins it seems to happen frequently (see: here, here, here, here…). The Pumpkins’ setlist in Charlottesville had as many songs off Siamese Dream as off Zeitgeist and more songs from Mellon Collie than from either of those records. What journalist would go to a Radiohead show and claim the setlist was “heavy on material from In Rainbows” if it wasn’t? This would never happen, right?

Isn’t the “About the Author” page usually at the back of books? …

We didn’t launch HU by exhaustively listing our credentials to hold forth on all things Pumpkin all the times we have spoken with The Man Himself; rather, we blogged in obscurity for eight months and eventually the recognition and the traffic came. And we still don’t really talk about ourselves — would anyone care for that? haha — yet SP.com has now told us more about Sven and Sunky [UPDATE: and Simon] than it has about Jeff Schroeder. I’m not against personal touches, but I don’t know why I am supposed to care who these people are before they have written a single on-topic post.

All teasing doubts aside, I don’t come to pre-judge the new “Media Militia” writers; it surely wasn’t their idea to start out this way, and I certainly still look forward to reading what they have to say going forward…and, uh, stay tuned to HU for a possibly surprising plot twist later this week.

Usually my co-blogger dishes his beef with the music press, but I’ll stand in tonight.

On May 14, this sketchy report from Soundgenerator.com headlined: “Courtney Love scraps solo album. She’s now working with a British guitarist, according to reports.” When I first saw this shortly after it hit my RSS feed, I became interested; Love collaborated on the album in question, ‘Nobody’s Daughter’ with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan.

However, none of these “reports” were ever cited, so I decided to ditch posting the news to HU and wait to see official confirmation from Love herself since she regularly updates her online blog. Plus, how much sense does it make to scrap an already-finished album?!

Over the next few days, several major music press picked up the thread and began reporting as fact. [Idolator. NME. Gigwise. VH1.] However, Love has finally denied the rumors, posting the following to her MySpace:

so no”:scrapping” is going on, simply a few retakes- especially since all those recordings were leaked to the net and i knew if we played some of those songs live that woudl happen

Great. So there will be material released in mid-July. But, is this what the “news industry” is really boiling down to? Gawker.com calls it “journalismism.” Oh, and by the way, we have it from a reliable source that Courtney Love Will Lead Reunited Nirvana. Stay tuned for the headlines at 10.

I probably visit smashingpumpkins.com more than most of you; after all, I have to keep up with band activities. (Note that I have a blog about them.)

So while it’s possible no one very much cares about this, presently I will comment Perez Hilton-stylee upon a dead video link that for MONTHS has been inexplicably positioned near the top of the band’s homepage. Day after day it has assaulted my retina with nonsense, but now I’m pushing back:

UPDATE (5/6):  WE DID IT!!! (Drop the balloons…)

The well-read music blog Stereogum has a post today entitled “Billy Corgan On Radiohead: ‘Publicity Is Better Than Music’”. This five-word quotation comes from Billy’s recent interview with Rolling Stone. Stereogum plays up the quotation as if it were a slap at Radiohead, but — as demonstrated below — it ain’t so.

Here’s the portion of the Rolling Stone interview that was reproduced by Stereogum:

Rolling Stone: Artists are finding their own ways to get paid outside of the major-label system, like the Eagles with their Wal-Mart deal, Madonna signing up with Live Nation.

Billy Corgan: I think it’s really difficult for the young artist, who doesn’t have at least some sense of a pathway. For example, if you were a kid today and you’re looking at the bands who are successful right now, you think, if you don’t sort of sell out and let somebody make you a star, go on American Idol, then you can’t be successful. Alternative culture is really critical towards introducing new ideas. We need those young bands to push old band like us, to push new boundaries. We need our butts kicked regularly. That’s where all the energy comes from, from the bottom. And when the message on Amy Winehouse is drama is better than music, and for Radiohead publicity is better than music — no disrespect to them. But I think it’s a bad message to young bands of how to make it happen. It’s almost like the evil stepchild of the rap bling-bling thing, like, the only way to make it work is I’ve got to come up with a gimmick.

Unfortunately, that quotation standing by itself lacks perfect clarity. More unfortunately, Rolling Stone has removed from its site an earlier portion of the interview — such portion, as luck would have it, upon which Corgan was building in the Stereogum-quoted segment. Mercifully, however, that earlier portion was saved for posterity in a post on HU. Here (again) is that earlier portion of the interview:

RS’s Evan Serpick: It seems like the last decade or so, we haven’t seen many superstars emerge. Do you think it’s because of the focus on singles or the fickle market?

Billy Corgan: Number one, I think there’s just too much. I mean, how can you ask an eighteen-year-old to sort through everything that they’re presented with? Realistically, just being hot and talented and having a good single isn’t enough anymore. You really need like the extra story, like Amy Winehouse had, or a Britney freak-out. Like, Radiohead putting out a great album is not enough of a story. Radiohead putting out a free album, and blah, blah, that’s the story. So it becomes more media-driven, event-driven, than music-driven.

Corgan’s intent here is rather clear: he is describing what he sees as a problem with the contemporary culture or music industry, such problem being that what gets attention for an artist is not “a great album” (note his implication that In Rainbows is a great album) but an “extra story” like a “freak-out” or a “free album”. With this fuller context, it’s (more) obvious that the Stereogum-quoted section is an expression of empathy for young artists and an affirmation of the primacy of music over drama and PR escapades. (You know, everything for which an “indie” blog is supposed to stand?)

To be clear myself: I’m assuming Rolling Stone just wanted to tighten up the interview and thus they quite innocently removed a part that appeared redundant. However, I see Stereogum as going out of their way to jump to a shocking conclusion, when any attempt at sympathetic research would quickly reveal that Billy Corgan very much likes Radiohead. But, you know, fo*k that. Why bother when some manufactured drama between the Devil and the angels (right) can really pump up the page views? You see, Billy?! For generating ad revenue on the Internet, publicity is definitely better than…truth.

Hey, I’m pulling for Obama too, but I love knowing that Billy Corgan would never do anything like this. These are supposedly the cool young people in our country? Really, I think Obie’s doing just fine without this sort of help video.

Billy, on the other hand, is up to his old trick of finding ways to win me over, even when I’m anti-. Many times have I tweaked “That’s the Way” here on HU, but this new guitar-and-piano-only version carries the district of my heart:

Yeah, you won another round, Corgan.  Just don’t get into it with these ruffians…

Here is a question, semi-inspired by my alma mater’s dedication to the coursework of Big Problems, a capstone series devoted to “matters of global or universal concern that intersect with several disciplines and affect a variety of interest groups.” Obviously, these courses represent academic problems “for which solutions are crucially important but not obviously available.” Ahem.

Why is the original Ghost Busters movie so much better than its sequel?!

On a related, more on-topic note, perhaps Ghost Busters is responsible for inspiring Hexen to wrest the world from evil. Billy could definitely be the Keymaster.

It’s rough being a fanboy when your favorite band often finds ways to redeem even the (few) songs that you never liked all that much and thus have been able to diss when others accuse you of unconditional band-love.

So it is with me and “The Crying Tree of Mercury”. To the album track I was indifferent, but of the released-on-MySpace studio piano version (3MB mp3) and the 2007 live acoustic performances I think frustratingly highly. Mr. Corgan dispenses with meter and trusts himself to make the song work in the moment, thus bringing to mind another of my favorite rock artists, Dave Doughman of Swearing at Motorists non-fame, who’s made quite a non-career for himself out of doing that all the time, as here (YouTube). Yeah, I never thought I’d have cause to make that comparison, but there it is.

And, please, I don’t even want to talk about how I sort of like the 2007 live version of “Glass and the Ghost Children”. Of course, as the age of this blog approaches infinity, odds are that I will. Sigh.

Below: “The Crying Tree of Mercury”, solo acoustic by BC, in Asheville (Google)

As I posted earlier this month, another of my favorite bands reunited and I was able to catch them this weekend at the Fillmore in NYC (formerly Irving Plaza) on Friday night. Last night, my dearest brother took me on a belated birthday date to go see Sufjan Stevens perform “The BQE,” his highly-anticipated 30-minute indie symphony, complete with a really great arty three-panel 16mm film featuring footage of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Oh, and by the way, did I mention there were fly girls with hula hoops?

This latest round of shows (combined with seeing Paul Van Dyk’s Halloween gala last weekend) has made me realize how much I enjoy a good spectacle, Pumpkins notwithstanding. Critics may poke fun at Billy Corgan for leading the Silly Costume Revolution, but I am pretty sure Jeff made his own conscious decision to rock the Count Chocula look. Heck, Sufjan performs part of his show in giant wings, shown above.

Corgan, in his recent interview with Rolling Stone, talks about spectacle and its prevalent role in today’s music industry. His answer to the first question on how touring has changed is apropos:

“People used to go to shows to see what bands would do. Now bands fall all over themselves to appease an audience, hoping they will come. It’s a shadow of reality-TV culture: What do I have to do to convince you to pay attention to me?”

Isn’t this just two sides to the same coin? I guess I see artists like the Pumpkins and Sufjan as brilliant marketers in addition to bringing the spectacle back into shows. You go to see what feat they’re trying to pull off — and naturally, it also generates big media coverage. However, I do understand Corgan’s point about the desperation evident in some of these ploys by Record Label Execs. Maybe what he’s speaking to is reactive marketing as opposed to proactive Art-Making. Thankfully, I don’t see either of these artists as desperate -or- falling victim to the opinions of anyone else; rather, the grandiose production that accompanies their shows is an honest, sincere approach to innovation. I certainly can’t judge either of them for being contrived. Of course, that’s not generally what the Critics think.

If anyone else got to check out the BQE this weekend, I’d love to hear your thoughts. I was floored. And for anyone who’s wondering: I heard from one of the trumpet players that they’re recording the seven-movement work in the studio on Tuesday. Sounds like it will be released!

I realize that Pitchfo*k, as a matter of editorial policy, makes no pretense at objectivity (or “objectivity”); I think that is terrific, really, and HU sure doesn’t pretend to be objective either. That said, I think the following three facts are in considerable tension with each other:

1. Pitchfo*k is, or at least has the reputation for being, a sort of one-stop shop for musico-cultural guidance to a stratum of aspirational hipsters.
2. This, from Tuesday, is fairly representative of Pitchfo*kian attitudes toward/ coverage of Radiohead (and many other bands): deeply contextualized, centered around matters of music and the creation thereof, and editorially positioned in the respectful-to-fawning range.
3. This, from today, is fairly representative of Pitchfo*kian attitudes toward/coverage of the Smashing Pumpkins: shallow and disjointed, focused primarily on trivialities and supposedly telling “gotcha” moments, and oscillating between qualified respect and sneering dismissiveness.

They’re entitled to their opinions, I’ve got mine, and that’s all good. But let’s not kid ourselves; once we get beyond questions of competence — and Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin, Thom Yorke, and Johnny Greenwood are all palpably competent — notions of objectivity play a diminished role in cultural criticism. I personally have zero doubt about my ability to stand on two feet and argue down to brass tacks for the proposition that, relative to Radiohead, the Pumpkins have a roughly equally defensible claim to be a vital/vibrant/enriching/inspiring/enlightening/whatever artistic entity. Pitchfo*k could put up whomever they wanted to take the negative side, and sure, that person might be able to win over much of the audience in a hip debate hall, but I find it hard to imagine that I personally could feel that I had been exposed or ruffled in whatever process would take place. I already know why I believe the Pumpkins merit great respect; I’ve been thinking about it for a long, long time now; hopefully, over the past and future lifespan of this blog, reasons iz communicated. I also know from experience that I’m not alone in holding this opinion; if there is desire or need for it, I would be honored if this blog were to serve as a comfortably appointed haven for that Pumpkins-respecting stratum of culture consumers. I guess we’ll find out.

Wikipedia defines indie rock as such:

Indie rock is a music genre denoting rock artists signed to independent (indie) record labels, often equated with alternative rock. Reasons for remaining with indie labels as opposed to major labels varies from artist to artist, whether it be a desire to retain complete editorial control over one’s work, loyalty to the underground DIY culture from which independent labels grow, or an anti-corporate ideology espoused by the artist and a desire not to contribute to the financial interests of corporate-owned major labels.

This has been on my mind a lot this week, as I caught a very talented singer-songwriter from Nashville named Brooke Waggoner last Wednesday night, waited in line for bagels with Sufjan Stevens on Friday morning at my local deli, and watched Blonde Redhead, LCD Soundsystem, and Arcade Fire tear up Randall’s Island last night (along with 30,000 other fans). What exactly defines indie? How do the Pumpkins fit into this equation now and in the past?

To the best of my ability, I can’t really see how the Pumpkins (ideologically) deviate from the above definition of indie rock, except their affiliation with a big label. I’d argue that their continued affiliation is a holdover from the early ’90s when there really were few alternative ways to achieve success in the independent realm, but I digress.

I know that big-label affiliation is one of the tenets of being independent (and supporting home-grown ventures of kids who think starting their own record label is a good idea), but I would imagine Billy Corgan would refuse to make more music if he didn’t retain complete editorial control over his work. I also don’t think they’re pro-corporate as Trent Reznor has alleged in the past; They just try to get their music Out There. And I think because of their long history in the music industry, they have a much more sophisticated view of the marketing engine that’s available to them. With this sophistication also comes susceptibility to skepticism over their methods since they have achieved historical success (e.g. multiple releases of Zeitgeist for multiple retailers makes them look… greedy when I really don’t think they are).

On the other hand, bands like Arcade Fire take the benign, non-confrontational, starry-eyed approach of “Hi, we’re from Canada. We hope you like our music even though it’s evident there are tens of thousands of you out there!” I don’t doubt the naivete is authentic, but … it’s certainly not evidence of twenty years in The Biz. And they’ve also achieved such success that they devote full-time staff to manning the merch booth in the back for thousands of swarming fans who want their latest disc or babydoll t-shirt. Isn’t commercial success in the “Gray’s Anatomy Era” for indie bands more of a sell-out than what Trent Reznor was criticizing?? Should LCD Soundsystem be criticized for being part of a big Nike promotional campaign?

Now, I think that much like “alternative rock” grew to mean something very different from when it first debuted as a savior to our starving Midwestern suburbanized hearts, “indie” has taken on a much different meaning than in the days of Slint and Chavez. From Wikipedia again:

In recent years, however, the word “indie” has been appropriated as something of a marketing term used by major labels and music magazines to refer to any artists of the alternative rock genre. However, in the traditional sense of the word, indie rock is not a “genre”, but rather a status, indicating the rock artists of independent music.

So, how does this clause spin how we look at the Pumpkins? Does the marketing application of “indie” eschew or attribute specific traits to a band? I might argue that being “indie” makes a band more accessible. There seems to be an obsessive indebtedness to fans in the “indie” community that we never saw in the ’90s. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were never apologetic to their critics. Kurt Cobain wasn’t accessible to his fans — he did a swell job of preventing future accessiblity too. These bands became icons to a generation that craved empathy — their lives were miserable and there was nothing you could do about it except bring the rock. For what and for whom are current indie bands icons??

Sure, the alt-rock gods achieved great success on the books, much like Arcade Fire is doing at this very instant. I’ve never seen the Pumpkins play a show bigger than 25,000, but that’s precisely what happened at Randall’s Island last night. And if you want to attribute that to its location being NYC, I happen to also know Arcade Fire played to an 8,000-person venue at Starlight Theatre in Kansas City. Success in the “Indie Community” is pervasive, but how does it differ to the Pumpkins’ continued success?

When Billy said “the world is a vampire”, he covered Radiohead’s entire emotional palette with one line. Discuss.

(What? Was I supposed to say something about how I wouldn’t pay five pence for In Rainbows? Come on, as a “cause of the month” it is probably worth a pound or two.)

[00:43] jjb: my appreciation of rainbow and system of a down is not entirely based on…”taste”.  a good part of it is amusement that could be construed as being at the artist’s expense
[00:44] jjb: you can’t just like think that system of a down is some seriously great art
[00:44] jjb: now, let us not confuse Rainbow or System with the Pumpkins :)
[00:45] jjb: but i think rainbow and system are great fun
[00:45] jjb: and, i mean, there’s something about, say, Spoon, since they seem to be my go-to example of an impeccably tasteful band
[00:46] jjb: i listened to their bonus disc.  and in some ways i found it sad
[00:46] jjb: because it was like “hey!  here’s our silly side where we get a little crazy!”
[00:46] jjb: and it was just sort of sad to me how unwilling they are to let themselves go
[00:46] jjb: that that was their version of cutting loose
[00:47] jjb: i mean, this Rainbow song “A Light in the Black”….that just goes for it.  that keyboard is totally like…ridiculous
[00:47] jjb: Spoon can’t allow themselves to be ridiculous
[00:51] jjb: and that is sort of what i’m talking about with Spoon vis-a-vis, say, the Pumpkins
[00:51] jjb: or generally if you want to say “indie” vs. whatever the other category is
[00:52] jjb: like, “we’re in the reasonable range, and those other people are just a bit too much”
[00:53] jjb: it just sort of says there’s only one way to do things.  and i just don’t know.

This write-up in Today’s Zaman, an Istanbul-based new media group, speculates on whether yesterday’s Rock’n Coke festival is helping elevate Turkey as a music destination (despite its controversial endorsement of corporate interests - ‘DRINK COKE! IT ROCKS!’ says Trent Reznor). With an impressive 55,000 attendees, 10,000 campers, and 7,000 employees for the three-day event, the festival has made a small splash in the media and brought the Pumpkins to Turkey for the first time in nineteen years.

I took some time this evening to read about the history of this festival and its international cultural implications; follow along after the jump:

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