The Smashing Pumpkins to Visit the Music Farm

By Marielle Hartmann

On Saturday July 17, the Smashing Pumpkins will be performing at the Music Farm in downtown Charleston. Selling out within eight minutes of the tickets going on sale, the show is one of twelve concerts on their Teargarden by Kaleidyscope Tour that is starting in Cleveland, Ohio and ending in Osaka, Japan.

Smashing Pumpkins announced on their website in early June that they would be doing a 12-show series of intimate venues and invite a select group of fans to attend their sound checks.

Lead singer, Billy Corgan, announced on their website, “We’re going to do something unique, which is play an invite-only set during sound check of almost all new unreleased songs. We’re still figuring out a way to make it possible for some of the fans who’ll be waiting outside in line to get in for that.”

The internationally renowned band has continued with their decision to perform at more intimate venues because “it allows the band the opportunity to take some chances musically,” explained Corgan. They recently broadcasted a live rehearsal session in Los Angeles online: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-from-coldwater-studio.

The Pumpkins released their four-song EP, Teargarden By Kaleidyscope Vol.1: Songs For a Sailor, this past May. This is the first of 11 EP’s that will be released online, surprisingly, for free.

When asked during an interview by Beatweek magazine why the band was releasing the complete 44-song series for free, Billy Corgan stated, “Well, as I’ve said a few times free isn’t free. It isn’t easy taking all this on my own, but the reason I choose to do it is I didn’t want to negotiate anymore with a broken system until it is fixed. I wanted to move at the speed the internet is moving, which of course is lightning speed. In this thinking I have tremendous flexibility to reach people in all sorts of different contexts without constantly asking them to give me more, more, more. Right now it is all about the music and I love it.”

The band’s lineup, which has changed multiple times over the past 22 years, includes Jeff Schroeder on guitar, Mike Byrne on drums, and Nicole Fiorentino on bass. The original lineup, beginning in 1988, had included James Iha, D’arcy Wretzky, Jimmy Chamberlin and Billy Corgan. But due to much internal fighting, drug abuse and shrinking record sales, the band split up in 2000. Other rotating band members have included Melissa Auf Der Mauer, Ginger Pooley, Jonathan Melvoin, Matt Walker, and Dennis Flemion.

Billy Corgan stated, “I haven’t been this comfortable in a band situation since about 1995. Musically, we seem to have wound our way back to a more kinetic, electric and psychedelic sound that reminds me of Smashing Pumpkins in Gish-Siamese era.”

The Smashing Pumpkins have never fit into one genre before. Their musical style includes elements of gothic rock, psychedelic rock, electronica and heavy metal. Billy Corgan has always been the main lyricist and his songs have been described by William Shaw of Details magazine as “anguished, bruised reports from Billy Corgan’s nightmare-land.”

Their most recent album is one of eight. Their third album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, released in 1995, is their most successful album to date. It went platinum in the U.S. nine times and became the best-selling double album of the decade to date.

In 1997 it received seven Grammy Award nominations, including Album of the Year. They ended up winning the Best Hard Rock Performance category for the lead single off the album titled, “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”. That year they also won Favorite Alternative Artist for the American Music Awards. In 1998, they won the Grammy Awards’ Best Hard Rock Performance again for “The End is the Beginning.”

The band cites post-punk and gothic rock bands such as The Cure, Joy Division/New Order, Bauhaus and Depeche Mode as some of their main influences. Many current music artists have cited Smashing Pumpkins as their influence including such diverse artists as Nelly Furtado, My Chemical Romance, Kill Hannah, Silversun Pickups and the Deftones.

This will be the Smashing Pumpkins first visit to the Music Farm and to Charleston, SC. When the band's tour manager called All-In Entertainment and Music Farm representative, Greg D'Angio, this past May to do a performance at the Farm, D'Angio responded, "That's effing awesome. Let's do it!"

When asked why the Pumpkins would choose the Music Farm over other venues in the southeast, D'Angio said, "Well, I think the Farm has a good reputation here in the concert business. We try to create good and lasting relationships with all of our visitors. We take care of them and they always seem to enjoy what the city has to offer them while they stay. Many of the bands who perform at the Farm come back for second or even third visits."

Hopefully the Smashing Pumpkins will enjoy their stay enough to want to come back. This concert will probably be one of the most memorable that the Music Farm will be hosting this summer.

"I think the audience is probably going to be the most interesting array of people to attend a concert here this summer. Since the Pumpkins are from the 90's era, there's going to be a middle-aged crowd and a lot of ex-goth types. There will also be a bunch of young people your age there too. Probably even some high schoolers. It will definitely be an interesting vibe to say the least. And the show is sold out, so all these people are going to be getting very close," stated D'Angio.

The Pumpkins' new album has received some good press attention and the last time the band was on tour was in 2008. Hopefully, playing at small concert venues is the new trend for big bands like the Pumpkins because the people of Charleston would love to have them return and for others to follow in their footsteps.