Long live the gourd

Over the past few weeks, I started revisiting my youth in the form of the Smashing Pumpkins, who played a formative role in my musical consciousness roundabout the mid 90s. Like probably a solid majority of fans, I feel that Siamese Dream was their best album, but in terms of first impressions, nothing matches my original exposure to the music video for "Bullet With Butterfly Wings". This video sucked out every drop of angst I had, froze it into solid form, sculpted that frozen angst into a sledgehammer, and then, for over four glorious minutes, beat me over the head with that sledgehammer made out of my own angst.

I may be pushing that imagery a bit much. Anyway, I was into the Pumpkins.

I must admit to being one of the herd who lost interest following Adore. As a result I never gave MACHINA: The Machines of God a fair shake. This was wrong of me. After a few recent listens, I feel that "Stand Inside Your Love", at least, is on a par with the rest of the SP oeuvre, with a full measure of that characteristic mixture of sheer rockitude coordinated with embarrassingly earnest expression (though perhaps not quite so embarrassingly earnest as the comments in that link).

Anyway, because I was busy cleaning up at poker at the time, I missed the big entertainment news heralding the return of the Pumpkins.

(Alternative explanations for this miss: I don't listen to music radio, and don't pay any attention to entertainment news.)

Apparently it's not clear who all exactly is going to come back to the band, but Jimmy Chamberlin seems to be a sure thing, which is key (without Chamberlin beating the hell out of those drums, it's mostly just Billy Corgan whining). The Pumpkins are a Chicago band, and Corgan ran this long whiny ad in the Tribune about how attached he is to the city--so with any luck, the new album will happen, and will be up to standards, and the corresponding tour will start in town, and I will be there for the first concert, and there will be a mosh pit, and I'll manage not to break my glasses while I'm in there.