There's another way if I leave here today.

With James Iha's remix of Stellastarr*'s Sweet Troubled Soul circulating around the blog world, I've been listening to a lot of the Smashing Pumpkins lately. They're definitely one of my all time favorite bands and one of the first bands that I became extremely enthralled with as a teenager. James sang on a few Pumpkins tracks. When I saw the Pumpkins at their final Atlanta show in 2000, one of the biggest cheers from the crowd took place when the band started to play the first few notes of Blew Away. And when James, in a very stylish white suite, started to sing, the cheers grew even louder. It was a great thing to witness, since I'm sure most of us had never heard him sing in person. And Blew Away is a great song too.

Being a Cure fan, I was really excited when I heard on the Week In Rock (remember that show?) that The Pumpkins were covering A Night Like This for their Aeroplane Flies High boxset (which I've been dying to post a bunch of songs from and may do tomorrow or something). They played a clip from it, and I was kind of surprised when I heard that it was James and Not Billy singing.

In 1997, James said this in an interview with Guitar world about the track.:

This is one of my favorite Cure songs, but in doing a cover we always tried to change something about it. I decided to make it a slow, acoustic dirge with different drum feels for each part instead of a straight beat through the whole song. There's also a cello, which gives it a gothic feel. At the end, it sorta rocks out with some Big Muff and Neil Young & Crazy Horse kind of rhythm guitars.

James released a solo record in 1998 called Let it Come Down. I definitely enjoy that record alot more now then I did back then. I don't know if he's still writing songs, but it would be cool to get a second solo record from him one of these days, even if it turned out to be completely different from Let it Come Down.

So here's some Iha for you.

The Smashing Pumpkins- Blew Away (from Pisces Iscariot)
The Smashing Pumpkins- A Night Like This (Cure cover from The Aeroplane Flies High)

(from Let it Come Down)
James Iha- Beauty
James Iha- Winter
James Iha- Jealousy *highly recommended*

Also, here's James' remix of Sweet Troubled Soul

Stellastarr*- Sweet Troubled Soul (James Iha remix)

James at MisSHAPES, dressed as Thurston Howell III for Halloween