The Smashing Pumpkins @ iHeartRadio Theater - June 19, 2012
Review: Damien
I can barely believe it myself, but I'm about to write an extremely positive review. Of The Smashing Pumpkins.
Longtime Fucking Nostalgic readers are well aware of my previous and - to put it mildly - EXTREMELY vitriolic stance against polarizing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. Back during the Great Reissues Rush of 2011, I chastised Corgan for re-releasing the classic Gish and Siamese Dream while in the same breath criticizing his contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Pavement for appealing to fans' nostalgic sensibilities by playing their classic hits during their live shows. Basically, I called Billy Corgan a douche and told him to go fuck himself, a sentiment that was pretty well solidified by the fact that we created a "Billy Corgan Is A Douche" tag so that readers could easily find other posts in which I called the man a giant douche.
But then a funny thing happened: the world dished up some interesting and hilarious irony that would make me eat my words. The relatively new Smashing Pumpkins lineup released one of their strongest albums in years in the form of Oceania yesterday, coinciding with an enlightening and sincere interview with Corgan on Howard Stern that painted the '90s icon as less of an everything-hating curmudgeon as he'd been depicted prior than a once-revered artist who wanted everyone to shut the hell up about how he hasn't done anything worthwhile since the 1990s. Both the new album and interview are well worth a listen or several, as they drive home a point that Corgan - however directly or indirectly - has been trying to make for a long time: Yes, the Pumpkins had a lot of amazing songs that we'll always treasure, but to hold them up as an unimpeachable standard for a band - hell, for any kind of artist - leads to the damning assumption that their best days are behind them and that there's nothing left for their future.
Admittedly, we can all cross a line in our nostalgic leanings where we go from fondly remembering songs and albums that had a special place in our formative years to obsessively "protecting" that past from any sort of change. And with all of the changes The Smashing Pumpkins have gone through - particularly during this past tumultuous decade - listening to Oceania made me damn excited, for the first time in a long time, to hear what Billy Corgan and the new Pumpkins could do.
And then I won tickets from P.C. Richard & Son to go to the band's private record release show at the iHeartRadio Theater in Tribeca last night. Kudos to whoever turned the Irony Hose on full-blast there.
