You’ve already heard the song at concerts, heard it on the radio, bought it on iTunes, even watched the video on MySpace, but today you can finally play Guitar Hero-exclusive G.L.O.W. on the platform on which it was originally intended to be exclusive.  Guitar Hero World Tour publisher Activision made the Smashing Pumpkins 3-song download pack official in a press release yesterday, so if you’ve been avoiding spoilers in an effort to experience G.L.O.W. in (a bastardization of) the same way that Billy does, the wait is finally over.

Those of you who bought Guitar Hero World Tour in anticipation of being the first to hear the exclusive studio recording of G.L.O.W. will need to wait a bit longer. Originally scheduled for release on November 15th along with The Everlasting Gaze and 1979, smashingpumpkins.com reports that it will be at least December 4th until cyber-Billy can play any of his own music besides Today.

While Guitar Hero tracks aren’t released on any particular day of the week, it’s possible that G.L.O.W. got bumped last week to make room for a Jimi Hendrix track pack, which dropped on November 13th. So why not shift the Pumpkins to this week? The Raconteurs are already scheduled for a 3-song track pack this week, and next week all of the attention will fall on The Killers, giving Guitar Hero fans everywhere yet another outlet in which to hear Mr. Brightside.

SmashingPumpkins.com reports that G.L.O.W. will be released on iTunes tomorrow as the b-side of what they’re calling a Digital 45:

How is this a digital 45? Well historically 45’s had enough room for one song per side creating the main single (the A-side) and a subsequent song (the B-side). G.L.O.W. will be sold together with Superchrist as a digital 45 at a discounted rate on iTunes starting tomorrow.

With the song not slated to become available as a Guitar Hero download until November 15th, does this mean that the band can no longer take credit for giving Guitar Hero fans exclusive access to music before anyone else?

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.

The band should be taking the stage within the hour at the Best Buy in West Hollywood, between the DVD section and the appliances (joke), for a set expected to run somewhat longer than the five-song set performed last night for the studio audience of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” We hope to bring you some kind of report as tonight’s concert proceeds.

Our source must remain confidential; I don’t make the rules, but I do follow them.

12:17am: Setlist so far: “Tarantula”, “G.L.O.W.”, “Siva”. Very August-y!

1:10am: Well, no further word…sorry if you’ve been waiting (so have I).

UPDATE (10/26): Our source apparently stopped texting because the songs became unfamiliar, if that tells you anything :)

Activision put out a press release today to announce “a rich and diverse lineup of launch week downloadable content for the highly-anticipated Guitar Hero(R) World Tour”, but absent from the release was any mention of the 3-song Smashing Pumpkins bundle that will include the band’s current radio single “G.L.O.W.” Thus the bundle remains without a confirmed release date.

In other “G.L.O.W.” news, it was, yes, the most-added track at modern rock radio last week according to Mediabase.

So we’ve seen Billy Corgan in a video game. And we’ve now witnessed wrestling videos both from Ring of Honor and Total Nonstop Action soundtracked by Zeitgeist songs. Today, these not-so-disparate promotional strands are unified and made sensible thanks to the loopy genius of YouTube user Kidbegal:

I did this on RAW 2 for the Xbox. It’s my two favorite things… Billy and WWE.

But, Kidbegal, what about your third favorite thing — the vocal stylings of Solomon Burke, Jr.?! (Presumably you favor them over those of “Whiny Bill”…)

Below: It would be an even greater day if someone would press “A” already (YouTube)

Activision put out a press release this morning that validates the first version of Ardent Studios’ post on “G.L.O.W.”:

The Smashing Pumpkins, one of rock’s defining and most acclaimed bands who’ve sold over 30 million albums, is coming to Activision Publishing, Inc.’s (Nasdaq: ATVI) Guitar Hero(R) World Tour in a ground- breaking way as the band will debut their new single “G.L.O.W.” exclusively in the game. This marks the first time a band has recorded a new song exclusively for the franchise which will be released afterwards, giving Guitar Hero(R) fans exclusive access to Smashing Pumpkins music before anyone else. The new track, bundled with two other rocking Smashing Pumpkins hits, “1979″ and “The Everlasting Gaze,” will be available post-launch of the game as a three-song downloaded content pack.

Additionally, on-disc with the release of Guitar Hero World Tour this fall, The Smashing Pumpkins’ singer, songwriter and lead guitarist Billy Corgan will appear as an in-game character and will bring with him “Today,” the band’s smash hit from their pivotal and four-times platinum 1993 album Siamese Dream.

Activision’s site lists the game as planned for release between October and December. The Wikipedia entry for the game mentions an “expected” release date of October 26. Assuming the new rocking Smashing Pumpkins hit track does arrive “post-launch of the game”, it could be November before we hear it.

Lots of great visuals here — and do not stop watching until the very end.

There’s an interview with Billy that is hacked into tiny pieces, of which these are the most notable I think (hopefully the energy-drink-slammin’ quick-cut editing didn’t remove relevant context!):

Coming here to Neversoft, it really reminds me of the old days with the label. There’s a lot of energy in the building, people are really excited, they love the images of rock and roll, they love the music, they’re looking for songs that will challenge the people playing the game… “Guitar Hero”, right now, represents music that people actually listen to. I’m just totally overjoyed that they want our music in the game, that they asked me to be a part of the game…

“…can you hear the Guitar Hero?” she asks.

Dan Russo of Memphis’s Ardent Studios, where the new Smashing Pumpkins single “G.L.O.W.” was recorded, has posted a picture of the band (above) and blogged:

The Smashing Pumpkins were in the studio last week with engineer/producer Bjorn Thorsrud and Ardent’s Jason Latshaw, Mike Wilson, and Carter McHann. Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain [sic] were here working on a new song, entitled “G.L.O.W.,” to be released through the Guitar Hero franchise.

Guitar Hero World Tour, which appears to be set for release in late October, is already known to be featuring a certain six-foot-three frontman; makes sense that his latest music might be part of the soundtrack, no?

My fellow compatriots had 4th-of-July plans this past weekend, but we took a week off from podcasting in mid June and didn’t want to bail out again.  So this week I flew solo and recorded my thoughts on some of last week’s Pumpkins news.  I did not split up the show into individual audio segments this time since each segment was so short.

Listen to the whole show (11:19)

(download)(iTunes)

This week’s topics:

Panelists
-Chris

Topics
-I find myself in the unexpected position of defending the fan writers on the official website.

-I take a look at the 30-40 demos rumored for the pre-Gish/Gish box set by the numbers to try and determine what could be included.

-When a news story falls through the cracks at HU, I pick it up.  Rumors abound of the Pumpkins’ music appearing on Rock Band 2 (sadly without Billy and his mo-cap suit).

This Week in Pumpkins History
-July 7th, 1998 in Chicago: the free show that never was.

Song of the Week
-Starz, June 6, 2007

This show was recorded before the big news about the August tour hit the web, but rest assured we will cover that next week when the gang returns.  We are also planning a concert review a Gish-era show, which you can listen to at the Live Music Archive: New Haven, CT July 21st, 1991.

According to “details from an online survey forwarded to [Gawker Media’s Kotaku blog]”, Billy Corgan is not set to be a bad guy, a “boss”, or any other sort of AI blip in “Guitar Hero World Tour”. Oh no. Rather, you can be the Billy character:

You can even play as your favorite rock star, choosing from characters like Sting, Ozzy Osbourne, Ted Nugent, Billy Corgan, Jimi Hendrix, Travis Barker, Hayley Williams, and Zak [sic] Wylde. If none of these are your style, then you can create your own character, including character construction, instrument creation, band logos and album covers.

Unconfirmed rumor that I just made up: the Corgan character is set to feature this combo instrument/band logo/album cover.

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!

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.

Certainly not “Today”, as it is now known that the Smashing Pumpkins track is among 30 included on the PlayStation 3 hardcopy version of international karaoke timekiller “SingStar”, screens from which may or may not look something like this:

Not very well without the old PS2 Aussie version, Minister Garrett…