11:17 am // Wednesday, September 19, 2012

James Iha’s Look To the Sky, now out in the U.S., gets a 2.9 from Pitchfork’s Ian Cohen: “Bafflingly outdated alt-rock songs that could comfortably sidle between choice cuts from Marcy Playground and Semisonic and get their asses handed to them.”

9:27 pm // Thursday, September 13, 2012

Support for the Smashing Pumpkins at upcoming concerts in Austin and Tulsa will be provided by the Austin-based trio Ume. Opening a series of October dates for the Pumpkins will be Floridian Christian alt-rockers Anberlin. And crossing the pond to open for the Pumpkins in Michigan is Morning Parade.

6:51 pm // Tuesday, September 4, 2012

According to a tweet by Chicago area photographer Paul Elledge, Billy Corgan’s Highland Park teahouse, Madame Zuzu’s, is set to open on September 13. Elledge has photographed the band multiple times over the years, including recent promotional shots for Oceania. Corgan sat for Elledge again today on location at Madame Zuzu’s. UPDATE: Smashing Pumpkins friend site Crestfallen.com says Billy Corgan plans to perform on piano for Madame Zuzu’s opening. UPDATE (9/6): Billy Corgan has confirmed he plans to play at Madame ZuZu’s on September 13. Per a tweet this morning: “I’ll be there all day to say hello, + playing acoustic sets. Free tea too!”

12:32 am // Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Billy Corgan says, on “Rockline” radio program (listen to “Clip 3″ here), that he already has come up with a title for the next Smashing Pumpkins album.

4:32 pm // Saturday, August 25, 2012

The Smashing Pumpkins’ promised Los Angeles-area date will be at Gibson Amphitheatre on October 14. The band most recently played that venue in 2010 as part of KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas, having previously played a two-night stand there in 2008 as part of their 20th Anniversary Tour. Tickets go on sale Thursday, with a presale starting Monday, including a presale for VIP passes, details of which are available on the Smashing Pumpkins’ website.

Check out all of the band’s confirmed shows so far at SPFC.org, including the previously-rumored arena show in Brooklyn; we are still awaiting details about shows in eleven more U.S. cities.

9:51 am // Friday, August 24, 2012

Tom Breihan, writing for Stereogum: “This being my first glimpse of the live reconstituted Pumpkins in a while, I have to say that they sounded like a pretty kickass arena band.”

9:11 pm // Thursday, August 23, 2012

Billy Corgan: “I believe that when people hear the entire Veronicas record, they’ll see it’s really a record of love. It reflects Lisa’s love for her partner, and I think it reflects Jess’s love for me.”

7:33 am // Tuesday, August 7, 2012

10 days of heavy rain and resulting flooding in Manila from Typhoon Haikui forced the cancellation of the Smashing Pumpkins first ever concert in the Philippines on August 7. Billy Corgan tweeted that the concert has been rescheduled for August 8.

4:21 am // Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Billy Corgan: ”The kid [Justin Bieber] is talented; you can’t take that away from him.”

6:34 pm // Monday, July 23, 2012

James Iha will be playing two shows in New York metro area in October; he will play Manhattan’s Mercury Lounge on the 5th and Maxwell’s in Hoboken, NJ on the 6th. Tickets for both shows go on sale Friday.

6:26 pm // Monday, July 23, 2012

Melissa Auf Der Maur has acted in her first narrative feature film, Collaborator, which premiered earlier this month.

3:20 pm // Sunday, July 8, 2012

Australian edition of Rolling Stone puts dated photo of Billy Corgan on its August cover; Corgan says the magazine “insisted” on using a picture from the 1990s, declining his offer to pose for new pictures.

4:20 pm // Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Billy Corgan: “Part of what we took pride in was introducing fans to stuff like Electric Light Orchestra and Mudhoney. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re not supposed to just glorify your own subculture. That, to me, is very, very strange, but that’s what we live in now.”

9:04 pm // Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Billy Corgan on whether he would perform with the original members of Smashing Pumpkins: “There’s a wonderful book called A Course in Miracles. You can expect miracles to happen. I don’t think they have anything to offer me musically. I’d be much more interested in [mending] the personal relationships with them. Without that, the other situation doesn’t have juice for me.”

9:29 am // Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Billy Corgan: “The thing I learned most from [William] Burroughs is he was willing to put words together that don’t belong together. In that, he created a form of violence. It’s like a messy landscape by making uncomfortable word choices.”

8:13 am // Monday, July 2, 2012

For the New York Times, Jon Pareles assesses Oceania: “It’s a gleaming superstructure around a sappy core.”

11:28 pm // Thursday, June 28, 2012

After being bashed by Spin Magazine’s Marc Hogan over their “return to a major label” for Oceania, the Smashing Pumpkins score a #1 debut on the Billboard Independent Albums chart with Oceania.

7:08 pm // Sunday, June 24, 2012

Billy Corgan, on National Public Radio: “My compulsion is to be a visionary mystic, and music has been of course my most successful form of communication, but I’ve also communicated through video, poetry, and just being a public pain in the rear. That’s part of my function.”

8:50 pm // Saturday, June 23, 2012

Bob Nastanovich, in an interview with Grantland.com, on his early days with David Berman and Stephen Malkmus in the Silver Jews: “We were definitely outside the [New York indie] scene. It kind of ticked us off. [...] Maybe it was fiction, maybe it was my imagination, but it felt like people didn’t want us there. It gave you a chip on your shoulder, to the point where you wanted to figure out a way to stick it in their eye. Those Silver Jews records, there’s definitely some angst and some real disdain for the community in those records.”

8:19 pm // Friday, June 22, 2012

“I listen to a lot of classical music lately. I think that as pop music becomes very formula – I say it’s just like a bunch of McDonald’s commercials together – I think the only way that you can write something more beautiful is to engage with more melody. And if you want more melody, well you turn to masters like Beethoven or Mozart because it’s such a high level of melody. So I’m tring to elevate my mind to write a higher level of melody than say, beyond typical pop.” – Billy Corgan, speaking to a Portuguese interviewer in late May