Smashing Pumpkins: Fresh Fruit or Rotten Veg?

After hearing the new album a couple more times, this is increasingly becoming a "So long Billy and thanks for the memories" type of situation for me.

only 18 years late!

Well, not really - the band were inactive for 7 of those years and Billy put out the actually really great Zwan album in that period.

There's been Oceania and to a lesser degree his solo record, but otherwise it's been a very frustrating decade to be a Pumpkins fan. He's put out a lot of music in the last 11 years that just doesn't cut it.

billy regularly going without a guitar is pretty easily the worst thing about the current incarnation of the band, his stage presence without it is so weird

Maybe he's trying to compete with the overwhelming charisma of Jeff Schroeder.

Haaaaaaaaaaah!!

Zwan reissue(!): https://consequenceofsound.net/2018/12/billy-corgan-nine-projects/

oh god the prospect of a new SP best-of is....not a good one, for many reasons. pls stick to the Machina and Zwan reissues billy

we will get one of these projects in 2019 if we're lucky

Holy shit! He found the yellow Gish Strat!!!!

After 27 years, Billy Corgan has finally reunited with his "lost love" guitar stolen in 1992. The story behind the reunion is even crazier than you think https://t.co/HBNXG81Mlc pic.twitter.com/OpuBmATQb4

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) February 6, 2019

Was just about to link this. Amazing story.

“If you look at Billy, he’s very stoic,” says Heiche, who coordinated the reunion. “He doesn’t give a lot of facial expressions. But he looked down, and as she opened the case, he looked at it for a second and froze. Everybody was dead silent. And he goes, ‘That’s it.'”

crying

He slowly opened the case and froze. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s my hair.”

I'm not really a fan of this band, aside from a few minutes here and there, but I've had "Quiet" stuck in my head all day. (I had to look it up because I didn't know the title and don't have a copy of "Siamese Dream.")

will he be paying James the $20,000 reward he offered in 2009 for the instrument? “She didn’t want anything,” he says.

oh ffs buy her that hot tub at least you cheap shit

NO
https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/billy-corgan-guitar-portrait.jpg

Billy The Pimp

maybe he did buy her a hot tub but doesn't want to brag about it

or he didn't know about the hot tub before the story was published

Truly, a hot tub time machine.

my man wearing a coat made out of weed

The coffeeshop at my work has been playing a Pumpkins song lately that I can't identify; guess it's one of the new ones? They usually play very mainstream/familiar stuff.

Does he say lover a lot

Ha ha -- I'll have to listen more closely next time I get a small light roast

Btw -- I saw them play in Detroit, and searched to see if maybe it was *that show*... but no, it was Nov. '91 (opening for RHCP, with Pearl Jam).

So guess I saw him play with that guitar!

Yeah, I would have too -- late December 1991 club show with Hole.

July 1991 in Northampton, MA, hardly anybody there. I remember a short set, they were restless afterward and Billy invited us back to their hotel for drinks. We said no!

Then he wrote a song about you.

Mayonaaise is about that night, yes

man I just went looking on spfc.org to see if any of those shows were taped but nope, not even any setlists

only decent closeup show I can find with the Gish Strat. good showcase for it, they open with an early version of Drown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXIaxN2SQ6U

Wow — great sound in that video!

Man, did I love this band in this era (in high school).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyjBDmEcKAE

Any footage of Billy talking is immediately improved by just 5 seconds of James.

I love James and his sense of humour. I think even Billy comes across pretty well in that video though, it was a better watch than I was expecting.

lol @ james

the little bit of the "drown" riff he plays at the end, wonderful

i confess i feel very happy when i see them getting along.

I still didn't finish listening to Billy's Cotillions but it already seems his best songs since zwan or machina.

listening to it now and it's sounding pretty good, pleasantly surprised. though i did think Shiny & Oh So Bright Vol. 1 was surprisingly good for what it was too so maybe he's finally making a return to form of sorts. Shiny & Oh So Bright Vol. 2 & 3 is being recorded at the moment apparently and it's going to be a double album with 24 tracks (not sure if it's being released as one or two albums though).

yes, Shiny & Oh So Bright Vol. 1 was way better than his previous albums, but i never felt the need to return to it. but, as you said, with this new one i'm also pleasantly surprised. let's hope he keeps in this form.

Billy has apparently discovered country music about 25 years after James Iha's Gram Parsons phase.

This sounds nice but seems way too samey to be this long?

kinda feeling that too. but still surprised.

this would also have maybe been a good time to take a step back from making his lyrics so impenetrable, but alas

nourry did you hear Ogilala? that one blew me away

never really got into 'ogilala'. something with the mix kinda put me off, but I have to give it another chance, i suppose.

The west coast rap origins of one of Billy Corgan's most famous couplets.

Shock G: I'm in a rage
Humpty: Oh yeah? Yo, why is that G?
Shock G: Other races, they say we act like rats in a cage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXGgWf2lacM&feature=youtu.be&t=188

whoever had "synth-pop" on their Corgan Pivots bingo card, step right up

Was just about to dig up this thread to see what anyone thought.

My immediate reaction is positive, if lukewarm, on first listen.

The sound is really cool but, as usual with late Corgan, the songs feel half-baked. he seems to have developed a fear of choruses