MOG

so... after years stuck in a cd book i'd all but forgotten about, i dug up my pumpkins collection. yes, it filled a entire cd book, and that only included the albums and singles and b-side collections. my collection of demos and concert bootlegs is all on my computer from high school/college.

as most people who knew me back then can tell you, i was obsessed with them in a way that was almost unacceptable even for a high school student. I enjoyed all the other great alterna bands of the day nirvana, pj, and to a lesser extent soundgarden, but for many reasons the pumpkins were my main focus. something about the song writing, the intensity of their concerts, corgans solos and chamberlain's amazing drumming. I saw them open up the 'new' 930 club on a small preview tour of mellon collie before launching into the arena tour and was sold. i followed that show up with about 10 more concerts. (the first being my favorite, with the Adore tour show being a distant second.

eventually i got seriously annoyed with billy corgan's ego and voice, the depressing nature of most of their songs, and just hearing the damn cds 100's of times over.

anyway, today a number of bands joined together a released a collection of pumpkins covers... the new amsterdams (one of the spinoffs from the get up kids breakup), ben kweller, deftones, the bravery, panic at the disco, +44, etc. etc.

The result was pretty impressive. I always wondered what the music would sound like with better singing... and damn. it's good. the covers range from mayonaise (the academy is) and tonight, tonight (Panic) to siva (deftones) and +44's cover of I Am One.

Good shit. check it out. way better than some goth pumpkins tribute i got conned into buying a few years ago. it was worse than the covers the band i was in during middle school attempted. seriously, god awful.

The pumpkins also released their first single off the upcoming album Zeitgeist. the artwork for the album looks pretty cool, overtly political, and done by the guy who did most of Johnny Cash's artwork.

The single 'Tarantula' tho is kind of disappointing. Corgan's voice has gotten even worse and is so overwhelmingly annoying it's hard to pay attention to some pretty kick ass guitar and drum work in the background. While the final lineup for the band hasn't been confirmed, after listening to the track i can tell you neither Iha or D'arcy had anything to do with it.

While corgan wrote everything D'arcy and James Iha definitely influenced the music in the with a more chill, psychedelic approach.

I apologize for the coherence of my writing and any grammar mistakes... been doing a little pregaming.