Pumpkins Have More 'Machina' In The Can

(4/20/00, 12 p.m. ET) - Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has more material from the Machina/The Machines Of God sessions sitting in the can waiting to be released. The outspoken artist said that the material includes ballads as well as some tunes that are even heavier than the songs on Machina. Corgan told LAUNCH that the band might use it as an enticement for a new deal with another record label.

"We're out of our deal with Virgin," he explained, "So it's sort of like, do we finish it and try to create a commercial release, or do we just sort of finish it and let it sit in a box until we put out Machina/The Director's Cut in 10 years? I don't know. We're going to finish it no matter what. Whether we just put it in a box and put it out in 10 years or not."

Corgan said the band is in no rush to sign a deal with a new label, though. "Different people have broached the subject," he said. "I want to wait until the band has sort of reached its plateau point on this album before we start getting into what we're going to do. I don't think it's very respectful to the album or to Virgin to sort of be getting into business right now. There's enough going on. And there's no hurry."

-- Darren Davis, New York, and Gary Graff, Detroit

The Transformation of Billy Corgan

Here, Billy Corgan, frontman for the Smashing Pumpkins answers some random questions and gets all philosophical on us. What happened to songs about girls and cars?

Chartattack: You talk a lot about transformation. Is it transformation as a natural process or is it transformation towards a goal?

Billy Corgan: It's about changing destiny. It's saying "I see what's before me, my mentality, my spirituality, my physicality and I'm going to transform all these things into a new being." The concept of transformation is something that resonates very deeply in our spirit. That's why people daydream. They daydream about being on a beach but they daydream because they wish they had a life that gave them freedom. They wish they could be themselves.

Do you use music to change destiny?

It is a way to do that both for us and for the audience that lets our music affect them. We believe that our music can actually transform you and it has transformed us. That explains why the music has an archaic, strange language to it. It overpowers the people that connect to it. Some people find our music offensive because there's a penetration to it that's not apologetic.

The response to Adore was timid, does it mean that your fans only respond to your music when you play hard?

That fails to recognize the three million people that did buy it and that did resonate to it. Do you look down on people because they touched a small amount of people? You can't judge inherent value on mass appeal. The album wasn't designed to have mass appeal, it wasn't meant to have mass appeal. We got caught in a cultural turnover.

Pumpkins Upbeat, Despite Slow Sales

CHICAGO (AP) - Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan says the band remains upbeat even though its latest album has been dropping on the charts.

``Machina/The Machines of God'' debuted at No. 3 on Billboard magazine's pop album chart but in five weeks has slipped to No. 54, selling 340,000 copies so far.

``I'm very happy with it. I'm just glad we still have a pulse,'' Corgan told the Chicago Sun-Times. ``I don't mean the record - I mean the band in general. We're just happy to be alive.

Machinations of the Music Machine

Five weeks after his band unleashed its sixth full-length record, Billy Corgan and his Smashing Pumpkins are in an ambiguous place. Consider:

• The band's new record, "Machina/The Machines of God," has descended from its peak at No. 3 on March 18 to No. 41 this week on the Billboard album chart, despite a pre-release club tour that included a stop in Lawrence, where the band mingled with hundreds of fans at Kief's Records.
  
  
• Saturday night [04/08] the Pumpkins will open their "Sacred and Profane" tour before a sellout crowd at the 3,200-seat Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kan., a quaint venue compared to Kemper Arena and Sandstone Amphitheatre, where the band played when it came to town in 1996 and 1998.
  
  
• Just as notable, Wednesday morning Corgan was on the telephone giving a newspaper writer more than just the time of day, which happened to be a rather groggy 9 a.m.

Read what you want into it -- the average record sales, the shift to smaller venues, Corgan's cordiality with regional media -- but it all helps define music's bearings in the year 2000: Either you're megahuge or you're not. And if you're an alt-rock band, you're most probably one of the "nots."

"It's a weird world," Corgan said. "On the one hand, there's a very jaded attitude toward rock 'n' roll. The feeling in the air is, `We've seen this; it's been done; you can't surprise us.' ... A lot of people say there are no surprises on our new album, which I disagree with..."

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Stars Bilked of $6 Million

Dana Giacchetto, 37, once the hottest financial guru to young Hollywood, was scheduled to appear in Manhattan Federal Court today to face securities fraud charges that could net him 10 years in prison.

The Prada-suit-wearing fund manager allegedly took up to $20 million from accounts without telling clients such as actors Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Ben Stiller and Toby Maguire, actresses Courteney Cox Arquette and Lauren Holly, artist David Salle and disgraced Wall Street tycoon Ivan Boesky's daughter, Marianne.

The one-time rock musician also took nearly $5 million from the accounts of the rock band Phish and smaller amounts from Fred Schneider of the B-52's, Smashing Pumpkins' guitarist James Iha and bass player D'Arcy Wretzky-Brown, according to documents filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins Join Our Lady Peace's Summersault Tour

Foo Fighters and the Smashing Pumpkins are set to join Our Lady Peace for this year's Summersault tour in August, as announced by Our Lady Peace on Tuesday (April 4).

No dates have been set, but the tour is expected to hit venues from Vancouver, British Columbia to Halifax, Nova Scotia. More bands are expected to be announced shortly.

The first Summersault festival was held in 1998 and featured such artists as Garbage, Crystal Method, Sloan, Hayden, Esthero, and I Mother Earth as well as festival organizers Our Lady Peace. Summersault 2000 marks the first time the festival will tour Canada. The band conceived of the festival as a chance to play with bands they like, and had always hoped to turn the festival into a Canada-wide tour.

The band promises that details of the tour, which is being presented by Our Lady Peace with House of Blues Canada, will be posted to its Web site as soon as they become available.

Auf der Maur Climbs Out of Hole With Pumpkins' Help

Having left her wicked stepsister and turned into a Pumpkin, Melissa Auf der Maur continues to write her version of the rock and roll fairy tale. A seemingly contrary mix of the ethereal and the resolutely grounded, Auf der Maur recently jumped from Courtney Love's Hole to play bass in Billy Corgan's revamped rock opera.

During a recent appearance at the Spectrum, a 1,200-capacity club in her hometown of Montreal, Auf der Maur was given an extended ovation. Before the show, she sat down to discuss her situation — leaving a band with an emotionally volatile history of drug overdoses, personnel changes, and controversy for one with a history of drug overdoses, personnel changes, and emotional volatility.

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