TheVegasEye.com is suspiciously reporting via their Eye Spy blog:

Wasted Space inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino was packed to capacity Saturday night  as Dizzy Reed of Guns & Roses hit the stage to play some of the new songs from the new Guns & Roses album.  In addition, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins also performed at Wasted Space (Smashing Pumpkins performed at The Pearl earlier that evening). 

Can anyone confirm?!

UPDATE: DailyFiasco.com mentions that BC was in attendance, but nothing of a performance.  The hunt continues.

Keight Beaven runs the scene in L.A. and totally blogs:

But yeah, after the show, I grabbed this poster, and sat down next to Tony something from No Doubt. We started chatting about the Smashing Pumpkins show that I am going to on Sat which went like this:
Keight: This is insane! I love the 90s and to see Jane’s Addiction tonight and then Smashing Pumkins on Sat is like blowing my mind.
Tony: Yeah…wait…Smashing Pumpkins is playing on Saturday? Where?
Keight: At this Gutar Hero party at Best Buy.
Tony: In LA?
Keight: Um yeah.
Tony: How did I not know about this? How did you know about this?
Keight: My friend is throwing the party. I can email him tomorrow if you wanna go.
Tony: I think I’ll be ok, but this is weird. The guy that plays horns in my band-
Keight: I’m sorry what?
Tony: The guy that plays horns in m-
Keight: (moves closer) What? I’m sorry I can’t hear shit right now.
Tony: Its ok I can’t hear either. The guy that plays horns in my band is rehearsing with them and going to go on tour with them, so that’s why its weird I didn’t know about the show. Are you sure?
Keight: yes. I have a barcode.

A few interlocking puzzle pieces for you:

1. The Smashing Pumpkins are playing only the second day of Silicon Valley’s Bridge School Benefit, the date for that being October 26.
2. They are playing Jimmy Kimmel Live! in Hollywood on October 24.
3. The Smashing Pumpkins are prominently featured in “Guitar Hero World Tour”, which is being released on October 26. Lead singer Billy Corgan is a playable character in the game.
   
4. There is a four-hour “Guitar Hero World Tour” launch event taking place at the Best Buy in West Hollywood on October 25.
5. The “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock” launch event that took place at the same Best Buy location on October 29, 2007 featured live music by Poison, whose lead singer Bret Michaels was a playable character in that game.

Makes too much sense, doesn’t it? And might it not also explain why they would have set up shop in California around that time in the first place, considering their tour starts less than a week later in Ohio?

There’s been nary a peep (yet) from the band’s official site, but the fansite SPFC.org is keeping tabs on announced ticket sales as well as unconfirmed messageboard buzz. With the Bridge School Benefit appearance on October 26 and Los Angeles dates having been listed for early December, the tour may run for six weeks (or longer?).

Check out SPFC’s tour dates page here.

UPDATE:  peep peep

(I figure at least some of the following will turn out to be accurate!)

Netphoria user (and noted taper) Cabbage, on tonight’s tour-closing show at Hard Rock Live in Orlando:

“They played a full set. No setlist differences except for Chris on accordian during Set The Controls. [Heavy Metal Machine] ended with Cat Scratch Fever into Rush’s Tom Sawyer with Ginger on vocals! Sound was waaaaay better than Clearwater but not as good at the charlotte(s) shows.”

And if you really want some unverified hearsay, there’s word about that the big man smashed his six-string at the end of “United States”. I’ll believe it when we have video…

Rumors have begun to fly as fans begin to descend on the Quad Cities in preparation for the Smashing Pumpkins show tomorrow night in Davenport, Iowa.  Several fans have happened to “run into” members of the band while they’ve been out on the town, including Netphoria poster “toadkat9″ who has posted this story about running into Jeff Schroeder and Billy Corgan at a local restaurant.  Don’t read the full post if you’re afraid of spoilers for the upcoming tour; I’m sure song selection will meet plenty of discussion on HU as the tour progresses.

However, the news of note (or at least rumors of note) is as follows:

• The release for “G.L.O.W.” will be physical in Europe and digital in the US. Toadkat9 reports that Corgan claims to be fighting the record company on this and is not yet at liberty to discuss whether or not there will be other tracks to support the new single.
• “[Corgan] mentioned that they are working on 9 new songs that the band has never performed before in this incarnation of the band.”
• “He told me that due to the lawsuit, the Gish tour scheduled for early 2009 has been post-poned indefinitely!! Since the boxset may or may not come out (they currently don’t know) there will be no tour. He said the whole point of the tour was to coincide with the release of the boxset… He said the release may still come out, but it has DEFINITELY been pushed back due to this lawsuit.”

So, nine songs not played in at least eight years and a possible cancelled tour-that-was-never-scheduled?  Gee, someone get Chris a glass of water and a fainting couch because he might just pass out.

SmashingPumpkins.com feeds the mill (emphasis and link are mine):

There are currently talks surrounding the possibility that an audio soundtrack accompanying the upcoming [residency documentary] DVD may be created.

Below: Rumour-accompanying still (SmashingPumpkins.com)

According to PWInsider.com in an article posted this morning, they rumor the following about the Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Corgan:

[He] was in discussions to write and record an original song for TNA, which would have been used on Impact and PPV… Corgan was said to be more than willing to write the song for free and do a media tour as a way to help get word out on TNA and cross-promote both the company and his upcoming Smashing Pumpkins 20th Anniversary tour.

Apparently, however, negotiations stalled and the deal is off the table, which PWInsider laments could have brought great publicity to their events.

In a related rumor, PWInsider.com and Netphoria.org will face off in the BattleDome for a match to determine who has the most pervasive and offensive advertisers. Stay tuned for coverage of the event, as they battle to the death.

Check out the full article after the jump, or venture to their site at your own risk.

(more…)

It’s been about a month and a half since we reported a fully-HU-deduced rumor about Billy Corgan’s involvement in an upcoming Guitar Hero release.  Now there’s a picture and related article on Kotaku.com that has popped up to further fuel our suspicions.  Any guesses on the songs they recorded?!

Thanks to HU reader Davin for the tip!

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.

Last night, James Demastus of James and the Giant Blog posted this article about hanging out with Billy Corgan (or rather, watching him work from afar), presumably somewhere in California.  He blogs:

I got to hang around where Matt works (I have to keep a lot of stuff secret, and I even signed a confidentiality agreement) and watch Billy do his thing for a few hours. I didn’t really get to meet him, but hanging around in the same room for 3 hours is totally cool. I have two pictures I can share. The others can’t be published until the fall.

Hmmm.  It looks like this friend “Matt” is one Matthew Jackowski, a film/animation producer.  His networking profile on LinkedIn looks like he’s in the Los Angeles metro area, working as Associate Producer at Neversoft Entertainment.  It also looks like he’s currently working on Guitar Hero projects.  Gee, I wonder what Jamesy could’ve witnessed…

Did they strap Billy Corgan into one of those plausible motion capture machines like the boys from Jackass demonstrated in their last movie?  I don’t know which I’d rather see - more Johnny Knoxville or footage of Corgan pseudo-rocking out for the animators.  It seems like a pretty solid rumor — looks like this guitar met an ugly end when Slash finished his own Guitar Hero sesh.