Search Results for: billy corgan

Early in July, Rusty Shaffer, the founder of Optek, a small music company in Reno, Nev., visited Salon’s offices to show me his invention, the Fretlight guitar. Though it looks and feels like a standard, rock ‘n’ roll-ready instrument, the Fretlight contains a set of LEDs invisibly embedded inside its fretboard — connect the guitar to a computer and the lights spark up to indicate where to put your fingers in order to play a chord. Shaffer is certain that his guitar is a great leap forward for the normally tech-averse guitar industry; the Fretlight, he says, will transform guitar… Read more »

Less than a month removed from her sojourn in a Los Angeles lockup, Paris Hilton is itching to make the transition from jailbird to songbird. “I’m already working on my new record,” Hilton tells E! Online. “I’ve been in meetings with Scott [Storch] and we’ve been working on it.” Storch is the the überproducer who helped guide Hilton through her eponymous first album. He’s also known for his chart-busting work with Beyoncé Knowles, Christina Aguilera, R. Kelly, 50 Cent and Dr. Dre. “I’ve been working on it with Scott for a few weeks,” adds Hilton, whose most recent musical endeavor… Read more »

Some of the world’s biggest names in music were all about Saving Our Selves this weekend. SOS, of course, referring to the campaign being touted Saturday across the globe at the seven-continent, 24-hour Live Earth concert extravaganza, a worldwide shout-out to individuals, political leaders, corporations and every other entity capable of helping put a stop to the environmental scourge that is global warming. In a partnership with Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and other U.S.-based and international organizations, Live 8 executive producer Kevin Wall put together a bill that included the Police, Madonna, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica,… Read more »

The Smashing Pumpkins announced Monday they will give nine concerts in Asheville and eight in San Francisco this summer in the band’s first residencies in more than a decade. The band will perform at the Orange Peel in Asheville on dates from June 23 to July 5, and at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco on dates from July 22 to August 1. According to information posted on the band’s Web site, fans attending any of the shows are allowed to capture them with audio and video recorders. “They were looking for one West Coast venue and one East Coast… Read more »

Smashing Pumpkins fans are eager to find out who is joining Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin in the soon-to-relaunch group and to hear its upcoming reunion album, Zeitgeist. But a pair of 21-year-old men might have taken their fandom a bit too far over the weekend. At the same time, MTV News reached out to the woman who has reportedly been tapped to be the new Pumpkins bassist and found out … well, that we’ll all find out who’s joining Jimmy and Billy in a few weeks. Joshua Kuhl of Madison, Wisconsin, and Simon Brown of Rockford, Illinois, allegedly… Read more »

The Smashing Pumpkins have been gone for seven years, but they’ve got a much-anticipated new album called Zeitgeist due in about two months. So what better time to pay tribute to Billy Corgan and company than … well, right now? That’s the thinking behind an upcoming Pumpkins tribute project, spearheaded by MySpace and featuring acts like Panic! at the Disco, 30 Seconds to Mars, (+44) and the Academy Is … taking cracks at their favorite SP tracks. According to a source at MySpace, the project (currently known as, uh, “The MySpace Smashing Pumpkins Tribute Project”) will launch on May 14,… Read more »

Britney Spears is certainly not the first celebrity to go off the rails in full view of her once-adoring public. But hers is one of the most spectacular falls from grace in recent memory, meticulously documented by paparazzi and bystanders, and uploaded instantly for the titillation of the masses. At 25 she’s certainly young enough to resume her career after she regroups, and for perspective, we’ve compiled some of the most notorious celebrity flameouts of the past 10 years, along with the success (or not) of their efforts to get back on track. We’ve rated these 1-4 in ascending order… Read more »

The Smashing Pumpkins have christened their reunion album “Zeitgeist” and announced an unusual release date of July 7, a Saturday, for the project, which willl be issued by Reprise. The news was broken this morning to fans that had been added by the band as a “friend” on MySpace.com. However, a Reprise spokesperson tells Billboard.com the label has yet to settle on a specific release date for the album beyond “summer.” Frontman Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin are the lone original members in this new incarnation of the group. The pair has been working in the studio with producers… Read more »

New York – In 2001, Martin Amis, Rick Moody and other authors and artists gathered in New York to honor a peer they regarded as a giant of the times. They compared him to Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Arthur Rimbaud. They called him a bard, a shaman and a master of “art as revenge.” That man was Bob Dylan. Had he lived in England, he’d be Sir Bob Dylan, maybe even Lord. Scholarly books have compared him to Dante and Keats; admirers lobby for him to get the Nobel Prize. At a 1997 Kennedy Center ceremony, where fellow honorees… Read more »

Anyone who even slightly follows ChartAttack’s music coverage should know by know that A Perfect Circle is probably one of the most impressive “super bands” this side of Blind Faith. Heh heh… Blind Faith being “super.” Now there’s a gag! So, with the introduction of ex-Smashing Pumpkin James Iha to the fold hot on the heels of Jeordie “Twiggy Ramirez” White taking up bass duties (as former APC bassist Paz Lenchantin moved to Billy Corgan’s Zwan… inbreeding?) how does APC brainchild Billy Howerdel feel the shift went? “I couldn’t have asked for a smoother transition,” he says. “And without trying… Read more »