I guess WesleyDodds was right…either that, or whoever typed up the back cover verbiage didn’t get the memo on use of the word reunion (and will be hearing from Billy soon?).

So, now that it’s been widely available for a day (sorry we didn’t post anything about its release yesterday!), I’ve finally seen If All Goes Wrong. A few initial thoughts:

• For about the first two-thirds of the film, I wasn’t particularly crazy about any of the lyrics that made it to onscreen text. Some better ones surfaced later…
• …such as a few lines from “The Rose March”, which I personally would pick as the best song (or “peak experience”?) to emerge from the residencies — the film implies this is Billy’s opinion as well, but please come to your own judgments.
• The most sizable bout of laughter from both myself and HU reader Stace was prompted by the immediate wake of the Super Melt-Down of “Jeff Shroeder” [sic]: as band members pull themselves together to troop back out on stage for an encore, of all moments Billy might choose to comically acknowledge the documentary camera…that one.

What observations or thoughts does everyone else have? There’s a lot to process in the film, but please jump right in.

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.

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

The day we had been waiting for that has come and gone is perhaps right around the corner?! With her report today, Sona Charaipotra of ABC News finally brings mainstream attention to the underground buzz that had been building for a year or so two years ago:

Sept. 2 is shaping up to be quite the nostalgia-trip for Gen Xers. Not only can you download the new NKOTB album from iTunes today, you can also set your DVR to tape the first episode of the CW’s hotly anticipated “90210″ revamp, which premieres tonight…

And the NKOTB aren’t the only ones getting in on the action. “The nostalgia market has become a big deal,” said Blender’s [Elizabeth] Goodman, who cites nostalgia tours by acts like Sonic Youth, Liz Phair and a rumored Smashing Pumpkins reunion. “The expectations for this type of entertainment, with its built-in audience, are even higher than usual because the media is so tuned into them. We have all the stats, the numbers on how well the originals did, and so we will be comparing the new ones.”

I don’t know about you all, but I couldn’t wait to hear the media’s take on how the reimagined Pumpkins would stack up against their forerunners!

Smashing Pumpkins fans in America’s three largest (sorry, “global”) cities may finally be able to highlight a page on their calendars. Jonathan Cohen of Billboard.com has the news straight from bandleader Billy Corgan:

After a summer break, look for the Pumpkins to return to the road in September for shows in New York, Los Angeles and its Chicago hometown.

Cohen also explains why Corgan and his Pumpkins are taking Virgin Records to court over “Pepsi Stuff”:

The suit says Virgin breached its contract with the band by using the Pumpkins in a “Pepsi Stuff” promotion without its permission. Corgan insists the group has veto power over such deals and has turned them down several times in the past. A Virgin spokesperson said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

Corgan says he has been feuding for years with Virgin over the handling of the Pumpkins’ back catalog, but that the Pepsi/Amazon.com promotion “crosses the Rubicon. You’re going to see more of this playing fast and loose with the rules, hoping they don’t get caught. At face value, it’s not a huge deal. But in terms of precedent, it is, because there will be much more of this coming.”

Read the full Billboard article for more details on the Virgin lawsuit as well as Corgan’s tentative plans to release music from the band’s archives.

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.”

Bob Mould thusly answers a reader’s headscratcher in the almost-venerable Washington City Paper:

As for the Pumpkins, the reunion might be tied to the sales of Billy Corgan’s solo album, but that’s pure speculation.

Here’s a bit of impure speculation: Bob might not have the slightest idea what he’s talking about.

Last week, I stumbled upon former AMSPer Aaron Tiensivu’s blog in which he discloses exciting news about Superdrag’s reunion tour. The original line-up performs in NYC on November 2nd and I’m excited to see another band I love reunite this year. Check out their site for all tour dates. (And they’re open taping… hint, hint.)

Fast-forward to today. Perez Hilton announced that my reunion trifecta is complete and I can relive every beautiful moment of The Sign, LIVE AND IN CONCERT!

ACE OF BASE RETURNS!

p.s. Don’t you just love the big dude?!