Stimutacs or Gleemonex?

that is all.

More importantly, why does this guy keep writing at MS?

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE!!!!!!!!!

I saw them live in 2007 and they put on a great show – long and deep sets, and the best lighting rigs I’ve ever seen.

I’ve been waiting for Corgan to get his fury back – the guy can play his ass off, and has a wicked scream, but oversimplified riffs and autotune seem to be his modus operandi at this moment. And his attitude of the cross-bearing rock and roll mascot is beyond tired.

In the meantime, for me, Coheed and Cambria swooped in and filled the void of earnest, somewhat annoyingly-voiced concept rock. They’re infinitely better musicians, they’ve long had the prog and well-established concept elements that Corgan only half-assedly reached for in more recent years, and perhaps most importantly, they don’t seem to have open contempt for their fans. Listening back to SP seems utterly infantile now. It’s like watching old cartoons you loved as a kid, only to find that they haven’t held up too well with age, and a feeling of disillusionment follows.

Unless the new shit is astoundingly good, furious and heavy, I don’t forsee any kind of Smashing Pumpkins resurgence whatsoever.

I loved all their early albums.Gish is still one of my favorite albums of all time and Siamese Dream was pretty much the defining record for the early post-grunge era. Hole’s Live Through This might as well been another great Pumpkins record as Billy wrote almost the whole damn thing himself. Courtney Love actually was a good creative partner on that record too, which added to it’s success I think. Mellon Collie is probably one of the best concept albums ever made. Adore is another great, underrated album. Then they started to lose the thing that made them so great from the beginning: melody and musicianship.

Where you can argue that it has always been Billy’s band, D’arcy, James and Jimmy were a great creative filter for Billy. They kept him on track and the band making awesome music together. D’arcy and James bolted and Jimmy killed their keyboard layer (in so many words). It was pretty much a recipe for creative disaster. While I really liked Machina, it didn’t really feel like a Pumpkins record. It had some good, heavy tracks, but the melody and the complex, layered guitars were absent. I can understand that Billy was probably looking to evolve the sound, but he lost what made them so great.

I enjoyed the Zwan side project and got to see them live. In typical Corgan fashion, the show was fantastic and his playing was phenomenal. It was like a creative release for him, he got the garage band sound, the rawness, the back to basics out of his system. The whole band contributed to the creative process.

So with Zeitgeist, I totally expected a return to form, but was a bit disappointed. While I like the album, on the whole, it’s definitely the band’s weakest release to date. There were some signs of the old Pumpkins in there, the screeching vocals, some of the guitar work, but it lacked the spirit of the old band. So it’s tough to be optimistic about the new stuff. I think the young kid on drums will be good for Billy. A little youthful spirit. The new guitar and bass players are totally interchangeable with a million other players out there though, which is something D’arcy and James were not. Their musicianship aside, they kept Billy grounded and in check. When he’s free to run wild and make all the decisions, the music suffers. Billy’s solo album was god awful. He’s an extremely talented musician and he CAN be a great songwriter, but he needs competent musicians around him to keep him on track creatively. Billy seems to have turned into a greedy, sullen old egotistical maniac. Calling your fans onstage to berate them? Telling fans who want an encore “If you wanted to hear more music, you should have bought the fucking album”? I mean what the fuck can he possibly expect? He never once thought maybe people just didn’t like the album. Maybe his audience left him. Now he’s got to get them back.

While I really want the new material to be great, I’m not terribly optimistic. I hope Billy proves me wrong. I mean seriously, kick ass new Alice in Chains material and (what I hope to be) great new Pumpkins stuff, how awesome could the next few months potentially be?

http://thejamminjabber.com/2009/09/17/billy-corgan-obviously-doesnt-understand-the-concept-of-quality-over-quantity/