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Last Updated Feb. 7, 2000
D'arcy to Appear in Court on Drug Charges
[2.09.00]
From the Chicago Tribune:
We've learned that former Smashing Pumpkins bassist D'Arcy Wretzky is scheduled to appear in court later this month after her arrest for possession of rock cocaine on the West Side. Wretzky quit the band in September. The Pumpkins have had their share of drug problems. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, who was with keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin when Melvoin overdosed on heroin in 1996, recently rejoined the band after a stint in drug rehab.
*Note: I just couldn't believe this when I heard it. Maybe D'arcy didn't quit the Pumpkins. . .*
*D'arcy says she didn't do it, do you believe her?*
Smashing Pumpkins Bring The Noise Again On MACHINA
[2.09.00]
LOS ANGELES — Emotionally, Billy Corgan is still down — way down — but he's definitely not out.
"You know I'm not dead," Corgan wails on "The Everlasting Gaze," the first song on the Smashing Pumpkins' upcoming MACHINA/the machines of God (Feb. 29), an album drenched in misery yet lined with a glimmer of hope.
Marking a thundering return to the band's hard-rocking sound, the 15-track album plumbs bandleader Corgan's eternal despair to the sound of squealing guitar feedback and pounding drum fills. But the bald singer said the band didn't set out to make a rock album.
"When we started Machina we didn't go in saying, 'We have to make a heavy record because it's time to make a heavy record,' " Corgan, 32, said Saturday (Jan. 29) while in town to appear on the television show "Politically Incorrect." Clad in his typical head-to-toe black, Corgan reclined in a low-slung armchair at the Chateau Marmont hotel and conjured the image of a demonic snake to describe his band's reassertion of its heavier side.
"It crept back up the . . . leg," Corgan said. "If we play heavy, since 1992, it's because we're motivated by what we're playing. The heaviness on Gish [the band's 1991 debut] was like climbing the walls to get out of Chicago. After that, we realized that a band can be so much more than that."
No Limitations
Corgan said the first few weeks of the MACHINA sessions were more like those for the Pumpkins' poorly received, electronic-influenced Adore (1997) than those for the band's explosive 1993 breakthrough, Siamese Dream.
On MACHINA, the New Order–like "Sunshowers" revisits the keyboards and new-wave drum machine of such Adore tracks as "Ava Adore". "The Sacred and Profane" is a dark, trip-hop tune that Corgan said was a conscious attempt at breaking new ground. Both songs represent the culmination of a bizarre, five-year journey, he said.
"The seeds for Adore, Stigmata [Corgan's 1999 film soundtrack] and MACHINA were set during the second half of Mellon Collie," Corgan said, referring to the band's multiplatinum 1995 album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which spawned the hard-rock hit "Bullet With Butterfly Wings".
"I went through some weird art transformation courtesy of [producer] Flood and found some synchronicity," Corgan said. "It seemed to open a door for me that took me into a world where there were no rules, no limitations. ... We went in fully prepared to not go back [to the rock side of the group's sound]".
Internally Changing
The album marks the return of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, who was fired in July 1996 after the fatal overdose of touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin. Chamberlin, who pleaded guilty to heroin possession, rejoined the band in 1999. His thumping rock fills can be heard on the bombastic first single, "The Everlasting Gaze" (RealAudio excerpt), and on the dense "Heavy Metal Machine," which sounds like an homage to metal pioneers Black Sabbath.
Chamberlin's lighter touch emerges on the wistful, midtempo pop tune "Try, Try, Try," a song reminiscent of the new-wavelike hit "1979," from Mellon Collie.
The album also marks the Pumpkins' final recordings with bassist and co-founder D'Arcy Wretzky, who quit the group in September, reportedly to pursue acting. Melissa Auf Der Maur, formerly of Hole, has since joined the band as a touring bassist.
In keeping with the introspective lyrics that have become Corgan's calling card, MACHINA is awash in a misery that seems both professional and personal, although juxtaposed with energized pleas of love. The dynamic pop-rock tune "Stand Inside Your Love," which builds from a whisper to a roar, features the lines, "You're everything that I want and ask for/ You're all that I'd dreamed/ Who would be the one you love/ Who wouldn't stand inside your love."
Elsewhere, Corgan seems to address the band's recent travails — which included breaks with two management teams and the disappointment of the tepid Adore reception.
"If I were dead/ Would my records sell/ Could you even tell/ Is it just as well," Corgan snarls on "Heavy Metal Machine."
Aaron Grant, a 21-year-old Michigan fan who said he'd heard the entire album already, said it had more songs with "a little catch that get you addicted" than both Adore and Mellon Collie.
Taken from Sonicnet
"We're going to do mostly in-stores, but nobody knows where we're going to pop up and play," he said. The Pumpkins ended a European tour in mid-January, cut short after Corgan was said to be suffering from a throat condition.
After the blitz of in-stores and club shows, the group will mount a larger U.S. tour beginning in April, Corgan said.
The 35-date barnstorming tour will coincide with the band's February 29 release of its fifth studio album, "Machina/The Machines Of God," a raucous, 15-song return to the band's signature mix of new-wave ballads and hard-rocking tunes.
Corgan said he was excited to take the group's new lineup on the road, especially in light of the recent addition of his longtime friend and former Hole bassist, Melissa Auf Der Maur.
"We're . . . rocking [with Melissa in the band]," the bald bandleader said enthusiastically. The group, which also includes guitarist James Iha, debuted the new lineup in December with a pair of concerts at its old hometown haunt, the Metro. The shows included such songs as "Cherub Rock" and "Ava Adore."
Taken from Smashing News
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