And all you are is brand new

After months of silence Billy Corgan finally posted a bulletin last night on myspace.

Subject: Cowboy Back in Action

Hello everyone!

I have finally returned to myspace to check up on things. How is everyone doing? I have been away for some time now working on some very exciting things to come! I will be back to update more on things soon! Be good!

bc

Gina posted some classic Smashing Pumpkins tracks the other day (and a cover of Landslide yesterday!), and so I thought I'd continue the SP love.

One of the best things I ever spent my money on was The Smashing Pumpkins' Aeroplane Flies High box set. Wouldn't it be great if after every band's album, you could get a box set of all of the album's singles and b-sides? 'Cause there's always that one single that's nearly impossible to find, or those b-sides that you've heard about but have never actually heard.

The Aeroplane Flies High was packaged in this really cute black and white box. Billy wanted the box to look like the old time 45 boxes that he used to have as a kid. The box set contains five cds. Each cd contains a single from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness as well as tons of extra songs. My favorites are the cd singles for 1979 and Bullet With Butterfly Wings.

1979 contains that single, as well as two of my favorite Pumpkins songs. While Siamese Dream is my favorite Pumpkins record, there's just so much great stuff that the band wrote during those Mellon Collie years. Ugly and Set the Ray to Jerry are two standout tracks on the box set. Set the Ray to Jerry is a song that I honestly listen to every single day. There's such a hypnotic quality about it, that I can't help but listen to it on repeat. And Ugly, well, the title is pretty much self explanatory.

The songs from the Bullet with Butterfly Wings single are mostly all covers. I posted the Cure cover on Wednesday, but that's not even the best one. I think the Pumpkins' version of The Cars song You're all I've Got Tonight is incredible. I love all the quiet and pretty Pumpkins songs, but really, they're at their best when they're just rocking the hell out. And they definitely do that on this Cars cover.

They also do a great job of covering the Missing Person's track Destination Unknown. I actually like their version better than the original. The Pumpkins ability to completely transform a song definitely shows in their version of the Blondie classic Dreaming. It sounds nothing like the original. When I saw a solo acoustic set by Billy 5 years ago, I asked him if they were planning on doing anymore covers. He said that they probably wouldn't, but that when they did do a cover, they wanted to either make it as a tribute to the band they're covering, or just completely fuck it up (in a good way of course).

The other cover that I really like from the Boxset is on the Thirty Three single. My Blue Heaven is a very old jazz song. It was written by Walter Donaldson and George Whiting in the 1920s and it's been recorded by people like Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Fats Domino, Jackie Gleason, Lena Horne, and Jerry Lee Lewis just to name a few. Billy's interpretation of it is pretty simple actually. It's just him singing and playing the piano, but I think it's really beautiful.

A lot of bands just kind of throw on any old song for the b-sides of their singles. But all of the songs on The Aeroplane Flies High were just as good as the songs that made it onto the Mellon Collie cd. So I gonna post a couple from each single. Be sure to check out all the covers from Bullet With Butterfly Wings and Set the Ray to Jerry.

(from Bullet With Butterfly Wings)
The Smashing Pumpkins- You're All I've Got Tonight *highly recommended*
The Smashing Pumpkins- Destination Unknown
The Smashing Pumpkins- Dreaming

(from 1979)
The Smashing Pumpkins- Ugly
The Smashing Pumpkins- Set to Ray to Jerry *highly recommended*

(from Tonight Tonight)
The Smashing Pumpkins- Rotten Apples
The Smashing Pumpkins- Meladori Magpie

(from Zero)
The Smashing Pumpkins- God
The Smashing Pumpkins- Pennies

(from thirty-Three)
The Smashing Pumpkins- Transformer
The Smashing Pumpkins- My Blue Heaven *highly recommended*

Finally, while I didn't do much in high school, I made sure to fill up all the room they gave me for my senior quote with words of wisdom from the Pumpkins. Yesterday, I scanned this from my St. Pius X senior yearbook.

Tolda ya I was a hardcore Pumpkins fan in high school. Even though my favorite band was and still is The Cure, Pumpkins lyrics were made for senior yearbook quotes :)