Now Shipping, Smashing Pumpkins – Teargarden By Kaleidyscope 1: Songs for a Sailor, you can buy the new limited edition box set at Amazon.com for $23.99. The box set comes as a silk-screened wooden box (7 ¼ tall x 8 wide x 1.05 thick) and contains the 4-song CD will have 4 new Smashing Pumpkins songs and instrumental intros, 7 vinyl single containing one NEW song plus b-side and a Hand-carved leopard stone obelisk, about 2 tall, similar to marble. Click here to order it on Amazon.com.

• Click here to Download – Widow Wake My Mind – MP3 (6.7MB)
• Click here to discuss the new song on the Netphoria Message Board.

“Absolutely Groundbreaking” announced today on the official Smashing Pumpkins website, Billy Corgan has released details about the new album which will be entitled “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope“. The album will feature 44 songs, 4 of which are now being recorded.

Corgan’s plan is to release a song at a time beginning around Halloween of this year with each new song  coming shortly after until all 44 are finally released. Each song will be made available absolutely for free, to anyone anywhere. There will be no strings attached. Billy writes “Free will mean free, which means you won’t have to sign up for anything, give an email address, or jump through a hoop. You will be able to go and take the song or songs as you wish, as many times as you wish.”

There will however still be a physical copy available in the form of a highly limited edition EP’s (of 4 songs each times 11), details of the EP releases are still being worked out. Also when the entire album is finished it will be compiled into a deluxe box set which will also be made available for sale. Those who have bought the EP’s need not worry as the box set will not be a recompilation of the limited edition pieces.

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- Official Announcement

- Click here to discuss this on the Netphoria Message Board.

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For more Smashing Pumpkins related topics please see the SP board or the Tour Info board.

Billy Corgan has formally announced 19-year-old Mike Byrne as the new Pumpkins sticksman, saying that he believes the teenager will make him a ‘better musician’.

It has only been three years since Billy Corgan reunited Smashing Pumpkins with Jimmy Chamberlin, and less than one year since Corgan pledged the band would no longer release albums – but already those commitments have kicked the bucket. This week, Corgan formally announced Chamberlin’s replacement on drums, together with plans for a new Pumpkins LP.

Nineteen-year-old Mike Byrne has officially joined Smashing Pumpkins after recording demos with the band this summer. The teenager from Oregon was not even born when the Pumpkins played their first gig, but he impressed Corgan at auditions earlier this year. Chamberlin quit the group in March, saying that he couldn’t “cash the check” and “commit all of my energy into something that I don’t fully possess”.

“Dream come true, man,” said Byrne, who has been listening to Smashing Pumpkins since he was 13 – that is, since 2003 – when he found them “exciting and fresh”. After playing in obscure bands like Moses, Smell the Roses and the Mercury Tree, Byrne answered Corgan’s call for internet applications – and was invited to auditions in Los Angeles. “We didn’t actually play songs at the audition,” Byrne said. “We just kind of jammed for about 15 minutes and then talked about Fugazi for the other 15 or so minutes.” Besides the Pumpkins and DIY punks Fugazi, Byrne says his influences include Mogwai, Maserati and quirky indie-pop band Maps and Atlases.

Corgan said: “We counted over 1,000 submissions, and what made Mike stand out was he just seemed to have that X-factor that all the great drummers have, a stunning blend of power, speed and grace. I’m excited to work with him moving forward – he truly deserves this opportunity. I believe in my heart he will push me to be a better musician.”

Byrne will play with the Pumpkins at a handful of concerts in August, but more important is his contribution to a forthcoming album. A “major announcement” on the follow-up to Zeitgeist is promised for September. This will be the first Smashing Pumpkins album to feature only one original member.

“We’re starting from scratch and just working our influences up into something totally different,” Byrne said. “It’s sort of a new direction.”

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Click here to discuss this news on the Netphoria Message Board.

I’m not really sure that we should listen to Harvey Danger’s Sean Nelson tell us which rock bands he wants to break up, but it does amuse me that he’s chosen to exit the music business (Harvey Danger announced their break up this spring) in a blaze of glory. Plus, “Flagpole Sitta” is quite a nostalgic jam for me, so here goes nothing:

“I was never really a fan of [Smashing Pumpkins] and watching them turn into what they did turn into—and you might have a different perspective of this—but that validated my not liking them in the first place,” Nelson told A.V. New York. Nelson concedes that Harvey Danger’s Jeff Lin and Aaron Huffman are big Gish fans, but he accuses of Billy Corgan of too much “Dude, just stop doing that.” I have no idea what that means.

As for the Coldplay dis, Nelson calls their songs “generic” and “inspired by the boring parts of Radiohead,” asking “what is the point of Coldplay?” When asked to answer that question, Nelson says, “There isn’t one. They serve no need. Anyone could sort of do what they do. And I just don’t think it’s worth doing either.”

The bands Nelson wants to reunite are extremely safe (as in not likely to offend the masses) bets (The Clash, Blur) and, come to think of it, the ones he trashes are already popularly maligned in the music critic blogosphere, so what’s the point? Dude, just stop doing that.

Corgan Explains Why He’s Keeping Smashing Pumpkins Name

Billy Corgan defended his decision to keep performing under the name the Smashing Pumpkins in a long, rambling blog post last week on the band’s official Website, telling fans that even though drummer Jimmy Chamberlin — the Pumpkins’ last original member not named Corgan — left the group, the band will still make music fans will hopefully deem worthy of the Smashing Pumpkins moniker.

“What the future holds is unknown to me. I am 100pct committed to the future of SP. I can tell you that. 100pct!! I’ve never been happier about being in SP, or a part of SP, than I am now,” Corgan wrote. “The music I am making sounds like The Smashing Pumpkins. It doesn’t sound like solo work, I can assure you of that.” Corgan adds that he’s wrestled with what to do with the Pumpkins name since Chamberlin was first fired from the group in 1996 and then when original members James Iha and D’Arcy left in 2000. (Chamberlin rejoined the Pumpkins in 1998, but left earlier this year after deciding he could no longer just “cash the check”).

“The idea of identity is a strange one to tackle. For many years, I treated the idea of the band named The Smashing Pumpkins as an existential concept that existed away from my being and body…,” Corgan wrote, hinting at his one-off supergroup Zwan. “The music that came out of this being and body. I’ve called the umbrella the songs came out under different names but to me I guess there really wasn’t a whole lot of difference. As they say, a song is a song.”

“I will never say to you what people say to me all the time, which is that ‘I am the band’. I am not ‘the band’, I am just the leader of the band,” Corgan adds before finishing off his long post with references to holistic living and wrestling catchphrases. As Rock Daily previously reported, one of those band members that Corgan is “just the leader of” may be Chamberlin’s 19-year-old replacement, Mike Byrne.

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Click here to discuss this on the Netphoria Message Board.

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For more Smashing Pumpkins related topics please see the SP board or the Tour Info board.

On Monday, SmashingPumpkins.com announced that an online 12-week subscription service will be made available in the near future, that is, if demand is ample for the project. Today Billy has sent a message to those than have shown interest by signing up for updates via an email newsletter.

From Billy:

Hello, thank you for signing up for these updates. Because of the nature of today’s post, and how the different ideas interact, I will be touching on both proposed business models; the archive fan-club and the new ‘window’ into the album songwriting sessions. Around 6,000 of you have shown interest in these updates, so because I am assuming you are on the dedicated side already, I will try to get to the center of the issues without a whole lot of contextual explanation.

Our first concept that we threw out for the archives (300$ for 200 songs) was met by a whole lot of complaining. Because we desire a harmonious relationship with those who would most want a completest approach to the bands history, we have revised this to a 40$ (proposed) fan-club sign up and this has been met much more positively. I think this demonstrates a willingness to work together to find a balance that will sustain over the next decade plus. The average mainstream fan doesn’t give two hoots about that gig in Iowa in 1989, so we aren’t even going to bother them with this kind of stuff, hence creating the relationships with you. We have enough on our hands to get them (the mainstream) to listen to newly recorded work. As you can see, everyone in the record biz these days is having the same problem, so it not particular to SP.

With that in mind, I have additionally proposed something quite unique as far as a ‘window’ into my songwriting processes with the idea of 12 weeks of mini-TV (about 25+ minutes a week broken into 5 updates OR 5+ hours of content). This would dwarf the kind of access that was given for example in the ‘if all goes wrong’ dvd, where one could see me briefly working out some idea. Having seen some of the raw footage from what Kristin shot at that time, there were moments that played out over 5 or 7 minutes that were quite interesting on their own but were definitely too long for a movie that had to hold a plot narrative. One of my favourite moments not shown in the film was the morning I wrote the riff for ‘Sunkissed’. You see me playing some bs blues and I stop, take a deep breath, and then the idea comes out fully intact in one crystalline moment. Even I was surprised, and for the next few minutes you see the song just pour out of me. I realize for most this is not interesting at all, but this is interesting for some and that is the point of a project this is an optional, pay-if-you-want to see it deal. You would get to participate in moments essentially as they unfold. Here however is where it indeed does all go wrong…

‘Take a walk with me
Tell me what you see
Take a walk with me tonight”
-lyric from an unreleased song I wrote last year

Last night I made the mistake of reading some of the feedback to this proposed idea. To say I was dismayed at some of the comments would be an understatement. The reaction was 50/50 mixed and very negative on the one side. I was so upset that I wrote a very long post in reaction, mocking the arguments made and canceling it altogether. Reading how something as open-hearted as inviting you into my inner-world of creativity turns into a sick, capitalistic manipulation is really disappointing to me personally. I speak not as the head of a multi-million dollar corporation, but as someone who lives and breathes being a musician. (I unfortunately made the vain mistake of asking for 3 dollars and 50 cents a week). The 40$ figure as a ‘all in’ was arrived at because I wanted to insure that those that were interested were going to take the whole ride for the all 12 weeks. I had expressed that this was not a profit driven business model, but many questioned the truth in that and went on to turn into personal attacks seeing it as yet another example of me taking advantage of them. Judging by this kind of feedback I would say this idea is dead on arrival. Which leaves me with 2 choices; cancel or revise.

My heart says to cancel, because the whole thing isn’t worth the hassle for the few thousand that would show up and faithfully engage in something new and exciting and trust me on the expenses involved to deliver such a project to them. The willful part of me says I know this is a really cool idea because it will force a new kind of dialogue between artist and listener at a much earlier stage in the process.

In my last extensive post, I promised love and light moving forward. But I also promised reality as we struggle to find what is going to work business-wise in the years ahead. The Smashing Pumpkins ‘business’ is alive and well (thank you), or I wouldn’t have just completed 165 date tour a few months back. Its laughable for people to think that this is some kind of way to stuff my pockets. One 90 minute concert alone and the profits from that completely blow such stupidity out of the water.

I have found thru the years that when I must become a salesman that this in turn reflects poorly on me as an artist. If I was a good salesman, there would be more than 6,000 people reading this newsletter, and I would be doing everything in my power to tell you why this a good idea and not a bad one.

Right now it’s a bad idea because this proposal has some (not all) accusing me of all sorts of lame things that have little to do with the spirit of the music or the business that surrounds it. I don’t need your money, for I am going to film these sessions anyway. The difference here was if we had an audience and a budget to work with, well then we could make it a whole lot of fun for everyone who wants to ‘be there’ and wants to see-here how the magic gets made. Great attempts would also be made to provide additional content to justify your participation. It would come with the responsibility on us to get the technical end right on a daily basis, hence the extra budget necessities to be able to turn footage around quickly.

Pandering to people for $ has never been my trip. I just don’t care that much. So here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna lay it all out there to you as a community. You decide what you want to do, because I already know what I’m going to do. Its your call. I figure to do this right its about 2,000$ a day, or 10,000$ a week which adds up to 120,000$. Boring isn’t it?

3000 subscribers at 40$=120,000$
6000 subscribers at 20$=120,000$
12,000 subscriber at 10$=120,000$

So you see, it is not a profit driven model. It is a content creation model.

If you as a community can self organize and 6000 people want to do this, then its 20$ (for the whole 12 weeks). I’d much rather stuff 20$ in my pockets from 6000 people than 3000! (That’s a joke by the way for those of you who lack the irony gene)

It ain’t gonna happen for 40$ obviously because the negative vibe in the air just makes it all so icky. And I don’t do icky anymore. If 20$ is TOO much for 12 weeks of unique, daily content and the trust isn’t there for me to deliver it, then I might as well just focus on the mainstream fan who I know already doesn’t give care for ‘the art’ and get back to the *yawn* grunge…

So that’s it. We need 6,000 people who are adventurous enough to take this journey at 20$ or I’ll just put it all in a can somewhere and move on. Your feedback is helpful and I thank you.
BC

To discuss this topic, click here for the Netphoria Message Board.

Here are Billy’s hopes and expectations for the upcoming project:

The goal is to create a working model that is not profit motivated but rather information and access motivated. In exchange for a fixed resource base fans will be let inside in an unprecedented way to the creative process of preparing to make the next SP album while also inspiring an inter-active dialogue that will help shape the work. Because of the open window, further efforts will be made to provide content so that anyone participating can more readily follow the arc over the 12 weeks, with unprecedented access to lyrical and musical content.

Everyone involved with the project is very excited to create something memorable and thought-provoking during the course of this project. Some people that would be involved include Kerry Brown, Mark Tulin, Linda Strawberry, Julie Mitchell, + Carina Round. Artistic contributors would include Justin Coloma, Kristin Burns, and Lisa Johnson.

A very important aspect to this entire project is the current interest of the fan-base. As highlighted by Billy above, the project is not profit-motivated. However, to get the project off the ground, substantial interest from YOU is needed. In order to gauge the interest, we are creating a new mailing list (sign up here) to inform everyone on progress. The concept is similar to that of the SP Archive Newsletter, however updates are not scheduled to be weekly at this time. This is the best way for us to estimate the demand for this experimental idea. If we don’t find that there is enough demand for this, the project will be set aside for a future time.

Your participation in this project will influence the progression of the music being documented.

Here are some details regarding the subscription model:

• $40 for 12 weeks. A minimum of 5 updates from the studio per week, so that’s 60 updates for $40.
• Updates would be posted in a less-than-24-hour consistency. For instance, if something happened on Monday, it would be posted no later than Tuesday
• Each update would be a minimum of 5 minutes in length. That would mean subscribers would receive at least 25 minutes of unique audio/video material per week, and at least 5 hours over the course of the 12 weeks.
• There is a possibility of live streaming video content in addition to what has been presented above.
• The updates will ultimately be part of a substantial “art film.”

In closing from Billy:

I am excited to make this offer to anyone who might be interested what goes on behind the wizard’s curtain. It is my goal to far exceed the normal docmentary process and use the moment to create something that invokes synchronicity, electricity, and faith into a moment that is ever unfolding.

To discuss this topic, click here for the Netphoria Mesage board.