Smashing Pumpkins name the new album Zeitgeist, set 7/7/07 release date

better hurry up and find those other two members billy, or july 7 ain't looking too good!

Thanks to everyone who has sent in artwork.
You are brilliant!
Love, jc. "

(Frankly I would love to write the Ultimate Pumpkins Biography, in the understanding that I would include everything and Billy would have no say over the final contents. This being the case it'll never happen.)

And according to one of my friends who's from Chicago, Corgan and Chamberlain have been seen practicing with a couple of nobodies from local bands (apparently decent local bands, though). Take that as you will.

I like the sound of that. As long as there's 750 layers of distorted guitars with some e-bows and stuff, I'm content.

xpost

rip off

I kinda remember this! I just thought he was slightly insane.

Though now that I think about it, didn't the liner notes for Pisces Iscariot end with '2007' rather than 1994?

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), February 8th, 2007.

and frankly, i'd LOVE to read it! there's so much that's been swept under the SP rug, esp. billy+jimmy's rampant drug useage during the 90-95 days! and billy's crazed marriage thing. the CL thing.

and yes, PI had the 2007 mentioned. it's in reference to when Virgin's contract expries, and also it's been vaguely/allegedly the year of Armeggedon. again. isn't that EVERY year, tho?

also, wasn't whatsername, that photographer, supposed to be his soulmate?

Funnily enough, to me Adore sounds like the closest thing to a Billy Corgan solo album that the Pumpkins ever released!

yeah, right. i doubt it. the way he's held a lot of stuff so long, i doubt it very much. unless he starts runnin dry in the ol' account. then, we'll see deelux Gish/SD/maybe even MCIS. maybe. i'd be content w/ a very comprehensive b-sides comp.
aside from the one my friends and i made from collecting over the years.

ahh, the fabled Chris Fabian, BC's first wifey. oddly, there seems to be little to no info on her. she's been shielded from the public eye pretty well! yeah, BC cheated on her w/ no less than 2 confirmed peeps (Yelena Yemchuck, and CL AGAIN!), and then she dropped him. understandbly, and i hope she got him for a pretty large amount!
she put up w/ his worst time period and probably got treated as such.
YY's such a dog, tho. makes CL almost look good.
i thought he was about to be a daddy or some shit?

The new album really isn't as bad as I'd been hearing. Get rid of those dumb upbeat ones near the end, as well as "Starz" and "For God and Country", give it a better mix with less prominent BILLY everywhere and put in that 20-minute one they've been playing live and it would have been improved about 75%.

does all this negative stuff mean that even though i *think* i love the album now, in 6 months time i'm going to realise it's not good at all??? (this happened with zwan.)

i really like 'bleeding the orchid' and 'doomsday clock'. but i lack any degree of objectivity.

Simon all kinds of OTM, pretty much exactly what I've been saying. Fixing the mix and throwing "Gossamer" on there would make it about 10x better.

"Tarantula" is really good. The lead guitar tones are really cutting on this album. Sounds like they might be taking some cues from MCR and AFI, obv a good thing.

Taking cues from your own descendants = not *always* a good thing.

But taking cues from MCR really, really completes the circle don't you think?

Now Corgan and Way are one ...

I was listening to this in my pumpkins-loving friend's car, and they kept being like, "hey, that's from a Rush song -- hey, that's from a Black Sabbath song -- hey, that's from a Queen song." I mean, there is homage, and then there is just taking bits straight from "YYZ!"

a perfect circle (xpost)

i've never been into these dudes but tarantula is tyte at least musically, singing is ok i guess, i am curious abt more of their stuff now~

this album still blows

the production on "Tarantula" is horrible.

whatever nerds

Always rather disliked this band.

the production on "Tarantula" is horrible.
-- Curt1s Stephens, Thursday, 2 August 2007 21:00 (Yesterday) Link

i think Curt1s nailed it - personally i think about 1/2 of the songs on Zeitgeist are passably good to great, but the production on this album is awful, especially in light of Machina which was soul-crushingly layered and brilliant production-wise on tracks like "the sacred and profane" and "age of innocence"

Mojo's named it worst album cover the year so far.

I like the album art. It just seems somehow inappropriate for a Smashing Pumpkins album cover. It probably would have worked for Rage Against the Machine or something.

"If you're on mushrooms, this song will sound really good," said Billy Corgan, before launching into "Starla" at the Virgin Festival.

from here.

Uh... right.

http://www.blackpitchpress.com/billycorgan/20050729_13_27_20_comic.gif

It should be pointed out that drummer Jimmy Chamberlin is a machine on the kit. There's no drum roll too fast or complicated for him and he provided a solid backbone for the performance.

Word. Have to respect the catalogue.

this is like the Kingdom Come of 00 rawk albums or something, isn't it?

it could have been so much worse, really. it isn't so horrid that i wanna sell my promo copy or anything. "tarantula" is fun, you know?

Q: If you could have any artist living or dead covering one your songs, which artist and which song?

Billy Corgan: I would choose the as-yet unreleased version of "Gossamer" to be covered by Bach.

From You Tube / Smashing Pumpkins Q&A apparently modeled after presidential debates - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44C9Eh03Mmo

Well, they've captured the Zeitgeist in a sense. No one gives a fuck about 'em.

corgan must be living in a permanent time-trip or something. how can he expect all the same people who were enthused by his work in the mid-90s to sit up and take note now? sorry billy, if you want to do this thing you've got to appeal to new audiences. you can't expect to ride forever on the smashing pumpkins franchise.

Yeah, just ask George Lucas.

The SEVENth edition has been released in an attempt to speed up the already fast approaching death of the record industry, no doubt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist_%28Smashing_Pumpkins_album%29#Alternate_versions_and_controversy

uh. i still like this band. in fact i'm catching the Austin and Dallas shows this weekend.

...anyone else seen SP on the new tour?

*crickets*

I've heard good things about the recent shows, but until Billy pulls his head out of his ass and schedules a hometown show I'm not going to go out of my way to see this incarnation. And, honestly, I'm about thisclose to saying to hell with the band after all this re-re-releasing of Zeitgeist bullshit. Keep in mind, from about 1992-2002 I would have considered myself a hardcore Pumpkins fan.

Looking at all the covers next to each other is actually quite pretty. It's like a rainbow of Billy.

I LIVE IN ASHEVILLE NC AND I DO NOT KNOW ANYONE WHO WENT TO ANY OF THEIR 84 SHOWS BACK IN JULY

i know a lot of people who did

i know someone who went to all, what, 10-12 of em?

anybody heard this? i didn't even know it existed until today.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/shorttakes/

I've heard it, its actually not bad. Better than 90% of Zeitgeist anyway.

I thought it was dreadful.

whats it like

Seriously, fuck this band. I know this is kinda old news now, but I just found out how much they were charging.

The band finally plays the first Chicago area show since the reunion and what do we get?

a) It's in a casino in Hammond fucking Indiana.
b) $93 face value per ticket.

How many other bands treat their fans like complete shit?

No, see, they're treating you like royalty.

I wasn't really that excited to see the new band anyway, I'm just shocked at how horribly Corgan is treating his fans these days. Insane concert ticket prices, constantly reissuing the same album in different formats, etc. This is one band that should really be thankful for every fan they still have.

:/

'Have plans to start recording a new multi-year, multi-release concept album by the end of this year. It will be very trippy and hopefully unique, and we’ll probably keep putting out singles here.'

One of his more restrained outfits, I see:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postrock/SmashingPumpkins-4925.jpg

So Billy sez no more old songs to be played live after this tour. No more promised Gish tour, or any album oriented tours after that. The planned archive-scraping box sets have been scrapped. All because whiny Billy doesn't like the crowd reaction to the current tour. As a slowly recovering die-hard Pumpkinhead, I sincerely say... fuck this band. I've never seen a person treat his loyal fans so poorly than Corgan has since the beginning of the "reunion".

I've never seen a person treat his loyal fans so poorly than Corgan has since the beginning of the "reunion".

he is very very very sensitive

you would be too if you were wearing that

Yeah, he's always been a prima donna, no doubt. But he used to be pretty cool about getting the music out to his fans. The free, internet distributed Machina II, "leaking" the Mashed Potatoes box, encouraging taping/sharing shows, etc. But now he's just getting worse and blaming it on the few fans left. Berating them for a chilly reception between songs on a tour that was promoted as "a celebration of 20 years of the Pumpkins", but has featured sets filled with lackluster new songs and go-nowhere jams? Releasing FOUR different versions of Zeitgeist with different songs on each and encouraging fans to buy them all in order to get the the "full" experience? Then shitting on those fans by releasing a deluxe version with them all anyway, six months later?

I'm more than happy to have gotten off the bus for some time now -- my suspicions that reviving the name would be a very bad idea have all come true.

http://www.testriffic.com/resultfiles/15043belle.jpg

Not sure it's a compliment... but can I just say the production/mastering on Zeitgeist sounds really great on cheap, Apple-brand iPod earbuds in the midst of a chatty office environment?