Yes Billy Corgan is a twat but..

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

..he's written some incredible tunes over the years. Not bad for an egotistical moon faced bellend:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg2ejFgaKx4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU16EBurb1Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RumHTFUV7bA

[One off man mental]

I second this, big SP fan here. No band helped get me through secondary school as much as these, I love almost everything they've done from Gish to Oceania (Zeitgeist aside, obviously, although Tarantula almost makes up for the rest of it).

While there's no denying Corgan's dickish ways, he's not as bad as some musicians whose reputations haven't taken anywhere near the battering his has. It frustrates me that his prolific, varied and often brilliant body of work goes ignored by many who just prefer to sneer and dismiss him as a pretentious[nb]To be fair, I can't argue with this. Although it often served the music well.[/nb] prick whose sell by date was 15 years ago. He made some terrific music, at least 3 brilliant albums, and yet the first thing that comes to most people's minds about him is that he's a bit of a dick. Isn't that what we expect from rockstars anyway? The man who made Siamese Dream and MC&IS greeted with total indifference. Unbelievable.

I'm tired and probably haven't articulated this well but my point is that despite selling millions and receiving critical acclaim[nb]Most of it, however, being retrospective. I'm sure he was sneered at during his heyday as well.[/nb], he's still an underrated musician/writer and has been unfairly maligned for just being obnoxious.

Anyway, enough of this, here's some more great Corgan tunes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGF_NwHv9C8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVfWx9282y0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nm4xv3firw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPBEAtLIQz0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pcNP9JE0bs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RACfdjCWuzU

[Spiteface]

May as well post this here seeing as someone's started a Smashing Pumpkins thread

Corgan confirms Mike Byrne has left the band.

Not surprised, given that current sessions for "Monuments to an Elegy" have had Tommy Lee on drums.

[elnombre]

Love BC/SP. Cheesy as it is Oceania helped get me through therapy - used to play it on the bus there and back and it was the musical equivalent of an arm around the shoulders. I tweeted Billy about a year ago to say how much the album meant to me and got an extremely kind and supportive reply, so he's no twat to me.

Great art, great music etc. comes most frequently from misfits. Not saying Billy is blameless by any means, but misfits do have a habit of coming across as difficult and egotistical. Besides which his results speak for themselves.

Eagerly awaiting the Adore reissue (hopefully it'll come out when I'm back on my feet and can afford it). Such an underrated album. For Martha is an absolute masterpiece.

[Vodka Margarine]

The Pumpkins could do no wrong between about '93 and '98 in my eyes. Corgan is one of a very select few men who actually become cooler after they went bald.

Now he's seemingly a figure of fun, it's quite sad. They are/were a great band.

Whatever happened to Darcy by the way? I mean I know what happened but I do hope she's ok now. She was one of my very earliest gothic girl crushes.

[chand]

Corgan is one of a very select few men who actually become cooler after they went bald.

You'd think he'd be a forum hero.

He's an easy guy to take the piss out of, most recently I saw a tweet doing the rounds mocking him for doing an eight-hour improvised ambient interpretation of Herman Hesse's novel 'Siddhartha' on a modular synthesiser at his own tea house. But really, if a man can't get famous and then do an eight-hour improvised ambient interpretation of Herman Hesse's novel 'Siddhartha' on a modular synthesiser at his own tea house without getting mocked then frankly this is not the kind of world I want to live in. I'm genuinely in favour of more self-indulgence from artists.

How could anyone truly hate this man though?

[Spiteface]

She's very much kept out of the public eye since she quit in 1999.

There's a few weird things, according to Wikipedia:

Wretzky did not participate in the Smashing Pumpkins' reunion. In 2008, she and her former bandmate James Iha filed a lawsuit against Virgin Records for selling ringtones of Smashing Pumpkins songs without their consent.^[13]
After many years out of the spotlight, Wretzky resurfaced in July 2009 by calling in unexpectedly on Chicago's Q101 FM with Ryan Manno.^[14][15][16] During the interview, she stated that she was not healthy enough to be a musician, and repeatedly professed her admiration for Monkees frontman Davy Jones, as well as discussed the Silversun Pickups and Marilyn Manson's family. In addition, she also mentioned that she now lives on a farm in Michigan, had briefly lived in Austin, Texas sometime during the previous decade, and that former fiancé Wendell Green had died.^[14]
Wretzky was jailed in February 2011 for missing four court dates related to a ticket she received for failing to control her horses.^[17] She spent six days in jail.^[18] She was also arrested on February 7, 2011, on a misdemeanor drunken-driving charge in South Haven, Michigan.^[19]

Whenever someone tries to suggest bringing D'arcy back, they're wrong. She needs to stay the heck away for her own good. Although I think the 2007 iteration of the band would have been easier for some to accept if Melissa Auf der Maur was involved, what with her actually having been in the previous version of the band.

I actually really like the current band with Jeff Schroeder & Nicole Fiorentino. At least Corgan deems them good enough to actually play on the albums, it seems. Hopefully whoever the new drummer is (I don't think Tommy Lee's going to be a permanent fixture)

[vrailaine]

I liked Zwan and Walking Shade....


Having not delved too deeply into the pumpkins back catalogue, I've always got a nagging suspicion that I'm missing out on four or five properly great songs ever since I heard Set the Ray to Jerry