The Smashing Pumpkins

[implanted_microchip]

The dude’s a repeat guest on InfoWars, I doubt anyone on here sees him as some scion of great sociopolitical views, and I can’t think of any album where that’s ever been an appeal. His livejournal post about sleeping with a trans chick, addressing her as a girl up until the point where he discovers she’s trans, then switching pronouns when he threatens to break her limbs is way worse than that story and I don’t know if he’s ever addressed it since. Most fans here like SP despite Billy’s personality, not because of it.

[ltrandazzo]

I just want to make something clear as far as where I stand on Billy.

I totally forgot about his appearances on Info Wars. So, with that being said, if someone wants to derail this thread to do nothing but shit talk Billy... please go right ahead. Yeah, feel free to talk about Billy the musician, but also understand that whenever he opens his mouth in interviews, stupidity falls right out of it, usually.

Anyway.

[Shadaloo]

In the last few years he's made multiple statements on his IG stating he supports LGBTQ+ rights. Now that doesn't excuse any of the Devi Ever shit or being pally with the likes of Mancow Muller or Alex Jones, but as far as I'm concerned he's always come off as ignorant. Still, I can certainly see how his statements can come across as nothing but bad PR.

While I'm a huge fan of his works - obviously - I have the same relationship with him as I do with Manson - any illusions I had about him being any kind of role model have long since gone the way of the dinosaur. I appreciate his art, nothing more.

The quote about him almost sleeping with a trans person and then threatening them with violence if they told anyone? While he posted that in 2005 or so, that story came from 1986 or thereabouts; it became known when he posted it on his confessions blog

Now, that said?

I just want to make something clear as far as where I stand on Billy.

I totally forgot about his appearances on Info Wars. So, with that being said, if someone wants to derail this thread to do nothing but shit talk Billy... please go right ahead.

I consider this disappointing. It's one thing when you've got people mindlessly parroting Manson lyrics on his latest record that allude to belittling abuse victims, but please don't give people carte blanche to shit all over this thread because Billy's political views skew right-wing and he's said problematic shit. I feel like you're opening the floodgates for this thread to go completely down the toilet the way the Manson thread did.

Discussing it and condemning him for it is one thing. But straight up being okay with the thread being derailed? Nah man.

[Shadaloo]

Note: Pretty neat interview on Premier Guitar, for the gearheads out there. Jeff talks more in this one than I think he's done in years. They go into some considerable detail about what they used to make Cyr. Of note: He explains his obsession with using words and phrases nobody's used in years, stuff that's fallen out of the general lexicon. He also says it was D'Arcy's decision not to come back.


-Let Me Give The World To You: Mixing, so masters present. Seeking to find a balance between the 'unwieldy but exciting' MII version vs one that can be achieved now with much more distinction and clarity. 1 each James Iha rhythm & picked guitar parts, 2 acoustic BC guitars and 1 electric, plus the usual bass and drums.

-Soot and Stars: Recording done at Billy's house from a demo done during the making of M1, never played for the band or producer. Printing it now - or trying to, the computer keeps crashing

-Untitled: Howard Willing shocked by how good the tones off the tape are. Sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday. First and last solos are Billy, second is James. It's being added to the final Machina running order despite being done after the period (At the time Billy described it as their "See ya" farewell song).

-Identify: Being mixed. A demo made for the Stigmata soundtrack, ultimately sung by Natalie Imbruglia (This also surfaced in the 2014-16 leaks if anyone wasn't aware)

-Also mixing various other demos and non-studio live takes, including a take of BC and JI playing Here's To The Atom Bomb acoustic.

-Soul Power: Showed off track sheet. Mixing.

-He estimates the final thing should be about 5-6 LPs, not counting extra tracks.
-About 2 more weeks of mixing to go. After that, release date is out of his hands.
-He's personally overseen all of the reissues except for when he's needed to consult with the other members to make a decision regarding their own work.
-He kept a journal all throughout the Machina recording process.
-He's gone off the idea of using crowd noise for a concert section. "If we'd recorded it that way it might have worked. Have to save that for the movie someday."
-Arising! performances have been discussed for release as part of the Archive project.
-For the reissue he'll be writing an essay of sorts detailing the evolution of the concept, recording process, and the story behind Glass.
-"The most challenging thing when remixing 20 year old material is drawing the line between what the music was meant to sound like vs. the temptation of making it perfect and bright in a modern sense". <- I can't tell you how happy reading this makes me.

[Lerxto]

#86, Billy. Wasn't Shiny Vol. 1 #54?
I don't normally give a fuck about chart positions, but since you tried so hard to chart high this time, you might want to think about it for a moment, Billy.

[Helpmeiaminhell (is now in hell)]

#86. Holy shit. This guy is like 1992 era Motley Crue or 2005 era Limp Bizkit. Most of the fanbase just left and abandoned him LMFAO....86????? Thats an abomination

[Failure]

The Unquestionable Truth debuted at #24 in 2005. Just saying..

On a different note, Cyr is thoroughly inoffensive to me. It’s not going to change my life...but I find it to be somewhat pleasant.

[neorev]

#86, Billy. Wasn't Shiny Vol. 1 #54?
I don't normally give a fuck about chart positions, but since you tried so hard to chart high this time, you might want to think about it for a moment, Billy.

I do find it funny that just last week, Pearl Jam's Ten was at #68 and Nirvana's Nevermind was #137 in the Billboard 200. The very same albums Billy claimed stifled Smashing Pumpkins success with Gish in the 90s and sent him into a depression and almost drove him to commit suicide. It seems Pearl Jam dropped off this week, but Nirvana rose to #102.

Here we are in the year 2020, nearly 30 frigging years later, and Billy's new "gamechanger" of an album is up against the very same two nearly 30 year old albums whose success sent Billy into a depression.

I am doubtful Cyr will stay in the charts long.

Meanwhile AC/DC's new album peaked at #1 3 weeks ago and is at #29 currently.

[allegro]

The dude’s a repeat guest on InfoWars

He absolutely was, yup. Has he been, lately, though? After the wife and kids?
He seemed to get some kind of positive influence from Chloe and the kids?

I will never forgive the guy for his selfish attitudes here in Illinois, a multi-millionaire whining about taxes and shit. But, he’s since been contributing to our community in many positive ways and I can only attribute that to Chloe since he has never seemed to be self-aware enough to do it on his own.

Billy has been a dick. Totally. So are lots of “stars.” But I am always willing to give people a chance for redemption.

Dedicating an entire thread to Billy being a dick? I’m with @Shadaloo on this one.


Anyway, I heard an interesting interview with Billy on SiriusXM “Volume” the other night, where he said he’d been listening to a ton of pop music, hence the direction of this album. He said this album’s “influence” includes “1977 Abba.”

Also included this:

I actually like a lot of what he’s saying, here:

[Shadaloo]

u w0t m8

[bobbie solo]

Is there a link or a quote of this Billy rant?
As if I need another reason to hate Billy Corgan, lol

A buddy works for Howard so I tracked down the interview & clipped out the portion where Billy talks about how he doesn't get along with Eddie Vedder & Trent. As has been said already, he does not get into real specifics, but it sounds to me like the bad feelings at least partially stem from "behind the scenes" issues as he puts it, most likely re: touring/booking drama & that being related to their managers as well. Talks about Marilyn Manson too, and gets much more detailed on their relationship:

https://soundcloud.com/user732289948/bchstrevmm-12-1-20

Worth the listen. What I felt was worthy I trimmed to 11 or so minutes above. It's so cringey listening to Howard talk about Trent. Yes he acts like some big fan, but his mentality is still stuck in 1995. Howard is absolutely terrible with music, strictly surface level/singles etc so there's no way he's checked out or paid attention to anything NIN related after The Fragile except for maybe THTF. To describe Trent the way he does in the year 2020 to one of his contemporaries is hilarious. Such a moron.

The point Billy keeps coming back to is how these two are perceived as very nice & caring people by the public, but Billy knows the real Eddie & Trent that we don't see, and that they aren't as good or altruistic as we all see them. And Billy is just too honest & real to go along with that adoration for their public personas maaaan.

Who knows how far back his beef goes. Any 90's stuff with these 3 could be completely off the wall considering how wild their lives were back then. I could see his issues related to touring/shows being related to festival booking drama since he brought the Pumpkins name back in 2007.

[jmtd]

Remember when the pumpkins topped the Leeds/reading bill just after NIN? Trent took that as a challenge to blow them off the stage. Whether he did or not, is up to the audience I guess

[WorzelG]

The point Billy keeps coming back to is how these two are perceived as very nice & caring people by the public, but Billy knows the real Eddie & Trent that we don't see, and that they aren't as good or altruistic as we all see them. And Billy is just too honest & real to go along with that adoration for their public personas maaaan.

??I can see that for St Eddie Vedder but I dont think people think of Trent as some kindly uncle, they’d tend to see him as a hermit and a bit of a prickly weirdo.

after actually listening to it, I feel Billy dug himself a bit of a hole. He should have just said we don’t get along, like personality clash but then Howard started twisting it into being about rock star personas and phoniness! I was quite amused by Billy talking about tabloids and I’m like ‘who do you think you’re talking to? Howard Stern is a massive gossip’

when you listen to him, Howard Stern is very clever, you can sense he’s buttering people up till he can pounce and get a real juicy story

[Shadaloo]

Machina update:

"We are almost finished with all mixing and incidental tracking. Today we are listening to the non-LP tracks/mixes, which is about 30 songs. So unless anything changes the whole box set would include about 81 pieces."

So 2, 3 CDs of extra material.

[Disassociative]

Gimme

[Tom]

I'd be happy with a straight forward remastering and vinyl pressing of the original album. My fear is that Billy is going to do a George Lucas and give us 'Machina: Special Edition'.

[neorev]

I'd be happy with a straight forward remastering and vinyl pressing of the original album. My fear is that Billy is going to do a George Lucas and give us 'Machina: Special Edition'.

Isn't that exactly what he is doing? He's using completely different mixes for some songs and had JC record new parts. This is gonna be Machina: The Lucas Edition.

[GulDukat]

Billy should go a Gene Simmons type thing where you can spend $10,000 and he will come to your house and give you the boxset.

[Shadaloo]

I'd be happy with a straight forward remastering and vinyl pressing of the original album. My fear is that Billy is going to do a George Lucas and give us 'Machina: Special Edition'.

He's mentioned the possibility of reissuing the original MI and II mixes in the future. But this is not that. Was never planned to be.

This is a 51 track collection of mostly-completely-remixed MI and MII tracks, plus a few solo acoustic numbers and the odd-never-before-released take here and there, all compiled into something vaguely resembling the original running order he had in mind.

In order to Lucas it as defined the original would have to qualify as some sort of timeless classic, and as much as I love both of them, they're not. One's overproduced, overloud and poorly mastered, and one's barely produced at all. I don't even listen to the originals anymore, just my own 3CD mix.

I know very well if he's adding stuff like Untitled to the tracklist it'll be more bloated than it was ever intended to be, but I don't care. What matters most to me is hearing these tracks mixed better and getting something approaching the original tracklist he had planned in '99.

[Tom]

Fair enough. Machina I is probably my favourite Pumpkins album - I'd just like a nice version of it on vinyl.

[Shadaloo]

Recap of mixing info yielded:

New mixes:
MI: The Imploding Voice, This Time, Age Of Innocence, Here's To The Atom Bomb
MII: Glass' Theme, Cash Car Star, Dross, Innosense, Let Me Give The World To You, White Spyder, In My Body, Home, Slow Dawn, BSBT Heavy, Vanity, Soul Power, Lucky 13, Try Try Try, Heavy Metal Machine, If There Is A God (Piano)

Using old mixes or tape transfers:
MI:The Crying Tree Of Mercury, The Everlasting Gaze, The Sacred And Profane, Heavy Metal Machine, Glass And The Ghost Children, Blue Skies Bring Tears, With Every Light, Speed Kills
MII: Le Deux Machina, Real Love

Mentioned but choice ultimately not specified:
MI:Try, Try Try, Stand Inside Your Love, I Of The Mourning (multiple choices listed)

Didn't discuss publicly:
MI: Raindrops + Sunshowers, Wound
MII: Go, Atom Bomb, Saturnine, Glass alt version, Cash Car Star V1, Speed Kills (heavy)
FAEOMM tape material: Versions/takes of Glass' Theme, Dross & MII Heavy Metal Machine, If There Is A God (Full band), Blue Skies Bring tears V1/Arising, Disco King (Everlasting Gaze demo)

New additions:
Pale Scales
Promise
Laugh
Le Deux Machina 3
Don't Want To Be Your Lover
Without You
Winterlong
Soot And Stars
Identify
Untitled

[Shadaloo]

Thoughts:

-I think Billy specifically neglecting to mention what's being done with Raindrops + Sunshowers could be indicative that track will be a complete surprise: He's mentioned that it went through the most changes out of any of the Machina tracks, with the leaked version sounding nothing like the MI version.

-We know Jimmy re-did drums for White Spyder, and Bill said "We do have the masters. But wait, there's a surprise. This version has Jimmy playing drums on it." Squinting at that info indicates to me they did a new mix and used Jimmy's new drum take as was planned.

-I'm guessing he didn't cover Go publicly as he said he always confers with James for the choices needed for his songs, so that was something he couldn't update on the fly.

-What's odd to me is that he's mentioned two versions of Heavy Metal Machine (really?) and Blue Skies Bring Tears, and Le Deux Machina during his discussions, and now he's talking about looking at 30 tracks for bonus stuff. I didn't think he was going to include different versions of the same track on the album, so who knows how the fuck that'll work. :P

-The FAEOMM tape stuff is largely different versions of MII tracks which we know are being remixed. I do hope If There Is A God (Full band) and BSBT V1/Arising wind up present somehow even if as just bonus tracks.

-Out of 51 tracks planned for the core release, we know 20 are new mixes, 10 are older mixes or tape transfers, 10 are tracks that never appeared on MI or II, 3 tracks have been mentioned as present but unspecified. R&S and Wound will be on there, maybe Go as well (assuming he doesn't relegate it to bonus material as tends to happen to James tracks - but it'd be fucking nice to have it on for a change, wouldn't it?). So that's 45 or 46 tracks I'd say we know for sure, and 5-6 odd tracks that could be and probably are anything from stuff we know about but he didn't mention yet, shit we have no clue about, or new tracks altogether.

A few miscellaneous tracks that could be candidates for the stuff not mentioned yet:
-Satellites from Adore Demos II. Lover/Don't Wanna Be Your Lover, and an acoustic Without You demo were there too, and those two songs are showing up on the reissue (Without You in electric form, like the leak I assume). He might look at it as a Machina era track or a candidate for one, it wasn't on the Adore reissue.

-Autumn, Drain, and Here I Am off Machina Acoustic Demos, and Sleeping Giant from the leaks haven't been mentioned lately. I think they were in the huge list he compiled last year, I forget if Satellites was on there too.

[Shadaloo]

"Good news: We are putting all the Machina pieces together today (Main + Reconstituted album + extra tracks) so the project is officially complete (save the mastering process and artwork). Thank you for your interest thus far..."

Main plus reconstituted album?

[rampface]

Maybe Billy mean's we're getting a traditional remaster of Machina and also the fully realized version he originally intended to make?

[seasonsinthesky]

Given that he'd said the originals aren't included, I'm assuming it's meant to be read as [original, reconstituted album] & [outtakes]. But who knows. I'd certainly prefer it had the originals, like the rest of the boxes.

[Shadaloo]

He specifically said last week one day he'd like to put out the albums as they were originally mixed.

So I don't know. Maybe 1 CD is Machina 1 made up of new mixes?

Either way gents...we're getting close...

[Dr Channard]

Cyr. Listened to this album today for the first time. Track no. 9 was okay, sounds like it could be a B-side from 2007's Zeitgeist. But, how is that the highlight of a new 20 track album? Everything else here just sounds like budget synths with Billy vocals. Truth be told, I'd much rather listen to Oceania or even Monuments.

[Piko]

They're not synths. Majority of it is guitar

[Lerxto]

They're not synths. Majority of it is guitar

Guitars that sound like cheap, budget synths

[Dr Channard]

They're not synths. Majority of it is guitar

If they are mostly guitars, then okay, I guess. That knowledge doesn't seem to help.


Not trying to bash the Pumpkins or Billy. All the respect in the world to their pedigree and legacy. It's knowing who these guys are, and what they are capable of that makes this album so bewildering for me.


Still cautiously optimistic for the alleged sequel album to Mellon Collie and Machina.