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?

This newly shared video gives good insight into the band’s current mindset of eight months ago regarding the album format. It was recorded after the final show of the 2007 U.S. tour, November 18 in Dallas. Here’s some of what Billy said:

We’re playing songs off an album that’s been out now for six or seven months, but most people don’t know the songs. People don’t listen to records anymore. Yeah, when Siamese Dream was popular, more of the audience would listen to that, but when we played Machina stuff, 50% of the audience knew the album. Now you play, it’s like 10% of the audience knows it, because people don’t listen to albums anymore. It’s all iPod playlists and stuff. [Fan: So what’s the future?] One song at a time. I mean, if you were able to poll the audience, I would say that 90% of those people probably have not heard more than two songs off that record, and wouldn’t be interested in more than two songs, and won’t listen to them even if you gave them to ‘em for free. I think that’s what Radiohead’s going to find out really quickly, with, even giving away music… [Fan: Didn’t most people pay nothing for it, the Radiohead, though?] Well, I think 60%, from what I’ve heard, but that doesn’t matter. I would have no problem giving away music for free if people would listen to the music. I don’t think anybody ever envisioned that “free” would also equal “not listen” and also “not go to concerts”. That’s the thing that I think is kind of mystifying. Yeah, when we were kids, we traded tapes, nobody gave a shit because I didn’t pay for the record — it made you a fan of the band and made you listen to records. Now for whatever reason, generationally or just technology-wise, it doesn’t seem to translate into album-listening. So you spend a tremendous amount of time making sure the ninth song on your record is just as good as the first song, and in the back of your mind you’re thinking, “But nobody’s going to fucking listen to this.” So we’re over that.

Via email, British artist JJ Nolan has explained her Zeitgeist “purchase” to HU:

This is a conceptual piece I designed for my BA (Hons) Design course work. I wanted to set myself a realistic brief and heard early last year that the Smashing Pumpkins (a favourite of mine) had announced the title for their forthcoming studio release. I decided to design the cover and a limited edition USB stick for the album and use this as a live brief for my coursework.

I was a little disappointed a few months later when I saw their artwork. It is clear that they wanted to distance themselves from the old Pumpkins image, but I wish they had gone with something more traditional. I think this is why my designs work well with the band.

Flickr user JJ Nolan yesterday uploaded two pictures, one apparently taken inside an HMV store in Britain and another following his her purchase of two items from that store. Nolan labeled his her photos with the words “Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist Ltd edition CD/USB (Concept)”, and it’s not hard to see why.

I hadn’t seen or heard of these before; had any of you, dear readers?

I might argue that I’m aiding and abetting the competition, but the Smashing Pumpkins’ publicity firm - Mitch Schneider Organization - is seeking college students for its internship program.  From the job posting:

For those enthusiastic about the ever-changing music and media industries and publicity’s pivotal role in each, MSO’s internship program offers a first-hand look and hands-on approach for students to learn from the ground up. The program is designed to expose an overall view of our daily activities and interactions with artists, record labels, management, and media outlets and spans a variety of duties from advance CD and tour mailings to compiling press kits, media research and becoming part of our energetic and fast-paced office.  MSO is currently seeking motivated students with an interest in the music industry to fill positions in our internship program.
-Must receive school credit for the internship
-Internship is based in Sherman Oaks (local candidates only)
-Working knowledge of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook)
-Passion for music and interest in publicity

For those of you in the area and still in college, it looks worthwhile.  For those of us who can hardly remember the carefree days of college, grab your bifocals and check out the Mitch Schneider profile for the Pumpkins.  I’ve actually never seen it before and it’s interesting — includes some downloads, official media press releases, and loads of quotes from the band.  Most interestingly, it features a play-by-play of the Zeitgeist tracklist straight from the horses’ mouths.  Check it out after the jump.

(more…)

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.”

Back when Zeitgest came out, HU was tracking with interest the sales numbers for the new disc. Would the fanbase respond and rocket the Pumpkins back to the top of the charts? Would the “reunion” be a success or crash and burn?

While the first week numbers were solid, the precipitous drop in week two had this HU prognosticator predicting the album as being considered a failure .

With the annoucement a few weeks ago that Zeitgeist has now gone gold, I’ll admit I may have been presumptous in my prediction. 500,000 units shipped is no small feat, though I’d still be curious to see total Soundscan numbers.

Either way, please pass the potatoes, it goes well with crow.

Though I never posted a full-on review here, my fellow bloggers are well aware of my less than enthused reaction to Zeitgeist. Suffice to say, a few good songs, difficult production, and a fair share of outright clunkers, and then “United States,” which I find just short of abysmal.

However, despite my dislike, I still try and occasionally give it one more chance, to see if I can find more redeeming qualities. 

Sunday was one of those days, and I have news to report:

I’ve finally found a good reason to listen to “United States.”

It’s the perfect rhythm for an 8-minute mile while running.

Seriously. You just lock into the groove and stride.  And as you pick up the pace for the finish, the song builds to a crescendo.

Now it all makes sense.  

Anyone have an instrumental?

Zeitgeist was not among the 1,185 albums mentioned on at least one of the 452 top-10-albums-of-2007 ballots received by Gawker Media’s Idolator site for its Pop 07 critics’ poll.

Say you listened to Zeitgeist and - to your brain’s horror - your stomach, heart or some other influential but hard-to-control body part likey. And you’re a smart music blogger with a rep! That’s a tough spot to be in. Do you lock yourself in the bathroom and yell “shut up, shut up!” until your conscience gives in, or do you search for a compromise?

“Sugarkane” of a blog called “Ohmpark” has bravely opted for the latter, slotting Zeitgeist at hey-it’s-only-number-49 of his “Top 50 Best Albums of 2007″ post and beginning his commentary with all necessary preemption:

Ok, before you freak out that Zeitgeist made my list, hear me out.

[ed. This is a guestblog from my sister Lauren, recounting a key event that took place over the holidays. –jjb]

On Christmas Eve day morning, my father, stepmom, little sister, little brother, older brother Jason and I headed out for Ft. Wayne, Indiana to visit our grandparents. We would travel in two cars: Dad, his wife, and the kids would lead the way (Dad driving of course), and Jason and I would follow in Jase’s car (with Jase driving). As we pulled out of the driveway onto the street, something shiny flew off the top of my dad’s car. “It’s Zeitgeist,” announced Jason, and with a controlled sense of urgency, he hit the brakes and left our car to rescue the fallen CD. During the trip, Dad was able to listen to the borrowed album without a hitch. Thank goodness.

The ever-efficient Largehearted Boy has been collecting links to as many top-albums-of-2007 articles that he can find on the Internets.

If you dare, venture into this echo chamber, filled with amazing people who use their hip, tastemaking blogs (modal number of comments: zero) to post lists of the “best” recorded music.

For me, leaving hipstersunited.com to visit these other sites is like entering a totally different world…

UPDATE (12/16): Today I found an “awesome” parody of a typical music blogger’s best-of-2007 list. The same guy also did an hilarious riff on the typical biggest-disappointments-of-2007 list. Absolutely pitch perfect.

While waiting for the Blue Line this chilly late November morning, I happened upon the idea of listening to Zwan’s Mary Star of the Sea. The album is a recent addition to my Ipod, as I’ve been ever so slowly adding albums in terms of the amount I actually want to listen to them (Mellon Collie was another recent add, and for that matter, the Pumpkins have only been represented on the playlist since this summer).

I was on the Zwan bus when it first left the station in 2001, but jumped off around the time of the album’s release, as the joy and excitement of the early live shows was left dulled by a bland-sounding artificial album and a mostly moribund 5-night stand at Metro.

So, in listening to Mary for the first time in probably two years, I was intruiged to realize I found it far more compelling a release than Zeitgeist. I hear many similarities between the two, and it’s not hard to draw a direct progression from the sound of Zwan to the current Mach 2 Pumpkins, in terms of both style, production and execution.

But Mary is a far more satisfying listen, to me. Some of my fellow Hipsters may point to my general disillusionment of the “reunited” Pumpkins as a reason I would draw this conclusion, and while this post does touch on some of my thoughts with the current lineup I’ve been kicking around for a future blog, I will maintain that strip away the band names on the two releases, and my feelings wouldn’t change.

I find MSOTS to be more melodic, with actual hooks and more organic harmonies; with a crisper guitar tone and more intricacy, and still buoyed by often understated drumming from Jimmy. It’s by no means a good album, as the production still leaves me feeling hollow and there’s some questionable missteps. But I can find more worth coming back to than on Zeitgeist.

What say you?

The Smashing Pumpkins, or rather, Billy Corgan, has donated a signed Zeitgeist poster to a benefit auction hosted by Music For Relief and United the United, where 100 percent of the proceeds will be used to aid the victims of the California wildfires. The band is joined by a multitude of stars, including Music For Relief founders Linkin Park, as well as Fall Out Boy, Avenged Sevenfold, Van Halen and the Chili Peppers.

At the time of this blog, Billy’s signature can be yours for the low low price of $124.49 plus shipping; the auction ends in roughly 31 hours.

Pales in comparison to the $160,000 Gwen Stefani donated on her own, but it’s nice to see Billy donating the band’s name to a worthy cause.

At the outset of “Inside the Zeitgeist” (Google search), Jimmy Chamberlin and Billy Corgan outline some of the thoughts that inspired them to record the album; here’s a transcript of those remarks.

Jimmy: The singular vision of this record was impact, and how to put together a body of songs that’s like a gut punch and that really resonates with people. A loud kind of example of thundering sonic terrorism, something that’s visceral. Zeitgeist is our kind of raising of the flag.

Billy: I think we had sort of about three interlocking visions. (more…)