Smashing Pumpkins Manila Oceania Tour: Billy Corgan is the Smashing Pumpkins is Billy Corgan

 

I don’t care what you say.

 

As much as I love James Iha‘s close-to-turbulent riffs and D’arcy kicking ass for being a female bass player (and a very good one at that!) before girl bands like Hole became fashionable, the Smashing Pumpkins is synonymous to Billy Corgan. So I don’t care that he’s a control freak who drove Iha and the other members to quit from the band. Or that he tried to recreate the Smashing Pumpkins with a band called Zwan (which was pretty decent) but ended up disbanding after one album as well. Or that he did reform the Smashing Pumpkins – always with a female bass player – but continued to change the band’s line-up as if they were  replaceable parts in an assembly line.

 

I don’t care. For me, Billy Corgan is the personality behind the Smashing Pumpkins. And he is a musical genius. I have never heard and perhaps will never hear another album as visionary in its inception and virtuoso in execution as “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”.  His lyrics are intelligent. (Listen to “Zero” and “1979” and tell me he isn’t.) His guitar playing, albeit simpler than most Metal guitarists, is precise and beautiful. Billy Corgan is an American Rock icon. Somewhere in the level of Kurt Cobain – only alive.

 

The Smashing Pumpkins Manila This August 7, 2012

 

 

When In Manila on August 7, 2012, be sure to catch Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins as they perform live at the Araneta Coliseum for their Oceania promotional tour. If you’ve already listened to the new album, the difference from their earlier work is starkly obvious. It’s a tad more mellow, a bit more electronic, even Corgan’s religious philosophy seems to have changed. There are outstanding songs like “Panopticon”, “The Celestials”, and “The Chimera” that are reminiscent of the Alternative-Metal band we’ve grown to venerate in the early 90’s.

 

Based on the setlists of their previous tour concerts, they’re doing it right by not over-committing  to their new songs, with the bulk of songs played still from “Mellon Collie” and “Siamese Dream”. Now if we may, here is a wishlist of songs we hope to hear for Smashing Pumpkins Manila.

 

1. 1979

2. X.Y.U.

3. Bullet With Butterfly Wings (because the world is a vampire…)

4. Zero

5. Tonight, Tonight

6. Cherub Rock

7. Today

8. Mayonaise

9. The Beginning is the End is the Beginning (SP fans would get this article’s title right away.)

10. Ava Adore

11. Perfect

12. The Everlasting Gaze

13. Panopticon

14. The Celestials

15. The Chimera

 

The Smashing Pumpkins “1979”

 

Smashing Pumpkins Manila is presented by Music Management International and Little Asia. For tickets, call 911-5555 or visit ticketnet.com.ph. 

 

The Smashing Pumpkins Manila Oceania Tour

August 7. Smart Araneta Coliseum

Patron (Standing) – PhP 4,555

Lower Box (Reserved Seating) – PhP 3,555

Upper Box A – PhP 1,755

Upper Box B – PhP 995

General Admission – PhP 555

 

Smashing Pumpkins Manila Oceania Tour: Billy Corgan is the Smashing Pumpkins is Billy Corgan