Unintelligible Whispering
I'd be completely behind a Manson/Corgan collaboration of some kind. If nothing else, Manson tends to be the kind of guy to bring a kind of singular vision or focused effort to his works - on his good days - and Corgan could really use some musical direction and grounding; and the latter's overall musical skills could really compliment the former. The two of them could do something cool.
Never happen though; too much ego.
Active Member
http://www.altpress.com/aptv/video/b...ing_pumpkins_a
Really great interview that's a track by track breakdown of Monuments to an Elegy. I really love how much enthusiasm Billy shows for a lot of it.
Throbbing Member
I haven't listened to Monuments yet because a little birdy told me I'm getting it for a Christmas gift. I'm looking forward to having completely lukewarm reaction to it come Dec. 25.
Looking back to the Zwan era until now, it really seems to be an ongoing trend with Corgan to not release the strongest material he has on his albums (far too many songs to list). Not really sure why that is.
I really hope he delivers with Day For Night. Are there any other confirmed tracks besides Burnt Orange Black, or highly speculated ones? I'm digging B.O.B. Probably the best thing I've heard from SP 2.0. Would be cool to see As Rome Burns on the album also.
Active Member
I think people might appreciate MTAE even more when the whole Teargarden project is complete and people can hear it in that context, as one chapter in a 44 song album.Originally Posted by perceptionnexus
Unintelligible Whispering
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The assclown
Throbbing Member
Corgan is the biggest dick in rock after Axl Rose.
Stubby Member
Guess I never explored this site enough to realize there is a SP section...probably my 2nd favorite band next to NIN. Glad I stumbled upon this!
Active Member
Although I was getting annoyed reading that that he was being such a relentless douche to the interviewer, the interviewer does say at the bottom of the article: "It should be stated that this interview was much more amusing in person than it reads in print, although no less bizarre." So I dunno.
Stubby Member
God, that interview is hard to stomach. I'll always be a Pumpkins fan, and I'll probably always see them live when they come to my area but... it's getting harder and harder to defend Billy. I liked MTAE just fine, but its this rare occasion where almost every song on the album is great, but the album itself isn't great. It's just alright. Less than the sum of its parts. Billy could do well to listen to some criticism, because it seems like he genuinely believes this is like, the greatest thing he's ever done. It isn't even close. It isn't even as good as Oceania... and he chooses to listen just to the people that kiss his ass. It's unfortunate a songwriter/musician as amazing and talented as he is has to have his head so stubbornly up his own ass.
Throbbing Member
I don't even like the new album very much, but that interview is fucking awesome. It's funny, biting, and honest. What more could we ask for? If the guy this whole board is about was that open in interviews instead of giving his usual measured, stock responses, we'd be thrilled.
Regardless of how we feel about his work now, Billy did amazing things in the prime of the Pumpkins. Siamese/MCIS/Adore -- not just amazing albums, but amazing ERAS where even the b-sides were fucking mindblowing. And no, he never did get enough credit for that, except occasionally from us music nerds and *always* in retrospect. The fact that he's blunt about that instead of just trying to boringly shill the new product is fucking awesome.
And, again, even if his recent work sucks -- he's Billy Corgan. Doesn't he get to be honest? Doesn't Mellon Collie or Siamese alone give him the right to be a cocky, arrogant bastard for the rest of his fucking life? I don't want a humble, reserved Billy Corgan. That's not the guy we fell in love with.
Stubby Member
Liked the previous comment but still reading the interview you think: ''This douche...''
Active Member
Haha, that was awesome. Love Billy.
Stubby Member
Haha, video of the interview is about all we could ask for. Would love to have seen the interviewer's reaction to half to the stuff Billy says.
I LOL'ed at work reading the last line: "What paper is this for again?" And then interview just kind of ends. I'd like to think Billy just muttered the last few lines while strolling out of the room and leaving the building.
Unintelligible Whispering
Do we give Gene Simmons that pass though? Axl Rose? Half of Metallica? Do we brush off their arrogance and 'rockstar' attitude because they gave us classic works? Don't know about you guys, but I see nothing but vitriol against those folks nowadays. Honesty is good but he doesn't have a be a dick about it. Yeah, he always was kind of arrogant, but he's crossing the boundaries into straight up bitter waters these days. When he was on the way up he actually seemed like a lot of fun and affable; not anymore. He's going to end up old and alone if he keeps it up; he's alienated most of the people he's worked with, and he's been blaming anyone and everyone - including the fanbase - for his musical failings for years rather than admit the slightest possibility he could write so much as one bad song. Like @ZeroSum said, it's getting harder to defend him. I gave him a pass for years, can't do it anymore. At some point it stopped being quirky and just became straight-up sad.
And I'd say that yeah, he's gotten a fair amount of respect; that band was on top of the world for four, five straight years, and listening to the radio at the time, it felt like they always had something in rotation. Anywhere from twenty-two to five million albums sold by the time they broke up, beloved by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, Simpsons appearance, bunch of soundtrack spots, and the part that Billy really cares about - critical fame: two Grammy wins and a shit-ton of nominations, and a bunch of other awards. That doesn't seem like uncredited to me. If there were three anthems for Gen X, I'd say they were Smells Like Teen Spirit, Head Like A Hole, and Bullet With Butterfly Wings. "The World Is A Vampire" had to have been one of the most famous rock lyrics of that decade.
I give the guy tons of praise. He is, or was, a brilliant songwriter, and I'll always respect that. Very few people have a legacy like he does, but to him, everything's a competition. James Iha gets a bit of a nod for writing parts of Soma or Mayonnaise and Bill doesn't hesitate to remind us he wrote the "important" parts. Didn't hesitate to call James a "piece of shit" after the breakup, while James has been nothing but professional and still compliments him (but lord knows what happened between those two, we likely never will). Slagging off Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters for no good reason, Soundgarden too IIRC (It's really going to piss him off that MTAE got outsold by FF's last album on release week).
All he respects is fame, and that's why he hasn't verbally attacked Trent in years. He wouldn't dare, because TR is a complete qualified success in the eyes of the world at large who made it big, gets Grammies and Oscars. And that is very probably why he's buddy-buddy with Manson right now. They're two artists whose best works are considered far behind them, and the more scathing among us would say they're washed up.
And with how good Manson's latest work is, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that friendship cooled if it did really, really well.
Last edited by Shadaloo; 12-18-2014 at 09:53 PM.
House Always Wins
Average album.
Oceania > Monuments to an Elegy.
The single choices for this album suck as well. Drum + Fife is horrible along with having a stupid name.
Administrator
Re: that interview above
I thought Billy and the other guy were worth each other. Like questions, like answers.
Active Member
I thought that interview was hilarious, but I'm not really invested in Billy Corgan as I've yet to really listen to the Pumpkins. However, I checked out his albums on wiki and he is not being fair about his acclaim in the past, eg Mellon Collie got 8/10 in NME and 4/5 in Q magazine. Q gave The Fragile 3/5 and NME gave Downward Spiral 4/10 and Fragile 5/10. I don't think the Guardian bothered to review either at the time. So if anyone in the 90s set was dissed by the UK music press it would be Trent, not Billy
Active Member
I'm pretty sure he mentally thinks of that whole time period when he thinks of reviews for Siamese Dream more than anything, and has regularly mentioned that at the time of SD they were criticised for not fitting into the grunge sound at the time and deviating from that trend. Also a lot of things with Billy you'll find is that while critically albums may have been successful, there would be a lot of articles acting like he was a piece of shit or discrediting him regularly. I've always felt a little bad for the guy for having spent the better part of 10 years now being told by everyone on his own fan forums and journalists alike that he's nothing without the people he used to play with when he really did write the majority of it and recorded a lot of it (in some cases nearly all of it for SD), and when he does finally defend himself and say "Hey, you know, I did write a lot of great songs, and I do have real worth a songwriter and guitarist" only to get "Oh look at this egotistical asshole, he's discrediting James on these songs!"
It's got to be frustrating to work for 25 years and really give it your heart and soul and youth to it and just get shit on by people regularly along the way. If you've not seen what a lot of fan forums were like in the past decade, there's been a ton of vitriol spun at the guy by the very people he then plays songs for backstage in VIP packages. It's got to be a bitch to want to stop by and check in on the forum on the site for your own band and see nothing but people saying how burnt-out you are, when you're doing longer and stronger live shows than a lot of your contemporaries, when you're putting lots of effort into your songwriting and playing still, when you're constantly on the defense from that kind of attitude. Even the really successful acts have got to have moments after doing it for so long where they question their worth and if they're still good; even Trent admitted a lot of HM and The Slip were him questioning how relevant Nine Inch Nails is still. So I mean, imagine how exhausting it must be to have your self-doubt constantly reinforced.
Maybe it's self-fulfilling, because Billy's always had a bit of a "me against them" attitude, but regardless, I don't think modern day Billy Corgan is a shit guy. Pretty much all the actual fan interaction he has seems nothing but great, in almost every video interview he's smiling and seems happy, he does a lot of great little special things for fans and in general seems like a nice person who really just has music as an integral part of his life and identity, and still wants to pursue other things too, but regardless of what direction he goes in he gets shit for it. People said he should give up music and Pumpkins and all that jazz and he's got a teahouse and was involved in that wrestling thing and everyone complained about that and called him a sellout for it. I'd get pissed off a bit at times, too.
Also a lot of this interview sounds like he was already fired up from something. Everyone can get caught in the wrong mood at the wrong time or the wrong thing might get said beforehand that just hits the wrong chord in you, and suddenly you're far more negative and angry than you intend on being. I just feel like there's this willingness to subscribe to this narrative that he's nothing but some asshole when I think what he really wants is to be told that he's done well and is still putting in a lot of effort, and doesn't want to have to constantly defend his identity as an artist.
Active Member
Nice response, even this thread seems pretty negative of the Pumpkins, the interviewer was really playing up to it I thought. But it was entertaining none the less. If i was him I'd be a bit peeved at the success of the Foo Fighters too, they're just really bland, sadly people don't want bands to do anything different or evolve. I think dave grohl introduces all these gimmicks like the tv history documentaries to cover up that they're musically very unadventurous
Active Member
Yeah, the interviewer comes across as very ready to play things up, very ready to see how much he could get out of the guy. And I've never enjoyed the Foo Fighters to be perfectly honest here, I think it's amazingly middle of the road "safe" sounding music that's designed to where no one can be offended and no one will be totally turned off of it but it doesn't commit to any one direction enough to really go anyplace different or fresh. "Unadventurous" is the best possible word for it really.
Throbbing Member
EXACTLY how I feel about the Foo Fighters.
Stubby Member
Another interview here. Looks like another good one:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/ne...music-industry
Throbbing Member
I mean, no, but I also don't think any of those people have ever done anything worth a shit, so it's all opinion really. To clarify what I was saying: I get why someone who hates the Smashing Pumpkins would think Billy is nuts in these interviews. But to most of us who like the Pumpkins... I would imagine we agree with his assessment of the part he played in '90s music. So why get mad when he bluntly says it? Or when he's honest about the other bands of that era? He doesn't have to be humble about anything, he made 1-3 (depending on who you ask) of the best albums ever.
Active Member
Found that interview to be hilarious. Typical Billy here. What amazes me more are all the F Bombs he's dropping. Guess we don't have "spiritual" Billy anymore? If only we saw that attitude put into the lyrics. Either way, MFAE is pretty good (despite the cringe lyrics). But, as I've mentioned before, billy can literally sing "blah blah blah " for an entire album if the music is good.
Active Member
I love his music and don't care what kind of goofy things he says.
Unintelligible Whispering
It doesn't have to be someone who hates them that could find him nuts; an attitude like that could turn people off of listening to his music entirely, which would be the real shame. It's damaging.
And he's not being 'honest' about other bands; I'm not a Pearl Jam fan or Foo Fighters fan at all, but to sit there and go "they never had the songs" is ludicrous. The Colour And The Shape alone was one of the bigger albums of the latter half of the 90's.
I'm not mad, I just pity him for all this self-aggrandizement and the way he's always comparing himself to other bands - which he really has no need to do due to the scope of his old legacy. And knowing how obsessively he looks at sales figures, finding out that MTAE didn't sell half of what Oceania did AND that it got killed by FF's month-old Sonic Highways on its release week will eat at him. It's just a very self-destructive attitude to have.
Active Member
I was listening to the new album on my jog tonight. While MTAE may not be the best SP album to-date, I'd argue that "All for One'" "Moments," "Drum and Fife" and "Dorian" are some of the best songs Billy has ever written.
Active Member
One and All sounds like a Zeitgeist era song with better production, Monuments has some of the best-sounding music he's made in ages, Dorian is like something from TheFutureEmbrace. I really enjoy a lot of the album. I think Oceania is a stronger album, but Monuments has some stronger songs if that makes sense? Oceania is an excellent cohesive album but Monuments has a lot of stand-out songs.
Active Member
Well said.
Stubby Member
Rediscovering Machina II. Hell of an album!
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