Tour: Smashing Pumpkins Tour 2008

Tour Dates: August 2008 - Ongoing

Genre: Alternative Rock

Band Members: Billy Corgan, James Iha, D'arcy Wretzky, Jimmy Chamberlin

Similar to: Radiohead and , REM

Fun fact: The Smashing Pumpkins took their name from a British slang expression.

Official Website: www.smashingpumpkins.com

Smashing Pumpkins Tickets. 20th Anniversary Tour!

Smashing Pumpkins tickets to their 20th Annniversary Tour are being snapped up as fast as they can print them. Following their recent massive trip around Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Costa Rica, the Smashing Pumpkins are about to hit the USA, beginning in Davenport, Iowa for what is bound to be an awesome run of Smashing Pumpkins concerts. The Pumpkins 2007 release, Zeitgeist, was folllowed in January, 2008 by their American Gothic EP and it was then that Billy Corgan announced the intention to hit the road. Corgan and creative partner Jimmy Chamberlin have been hard at work pumping out inspired sounds and with Jeff Schroeder, Ginger Reyes and Lisa Hamilton, it appears a new phoenix has risen. Buy Smashing Pumpkins tickets now before they're all gone. This tour will showcase the latest efforts from one of Alt Rock's best bands in living memory. Soak up the vibes and go hear those layered shifts, the arcing twilight that is the hallmark of a pure Corgan song. The Smashing Pumpkins tour schedule is on this page, so take your pick and hit that trail.

Biography: Billy Corgan was nineteen years old when he left Chicago, Illinois, moving to St. Petersburg, Florida with his band The Marked. The Goth band disintegrated following a run of less than mediocre commercial success, and Corgan returned to Chicago. While working in a record store there, he met James Iha and they started writing imaginative but often dark songs together that had a distinct tinge of The Cure and New Order about them.

Corgan met D'arcy Wretzky at a concert in 1988. Upon discovering Wretzky was a bass player, Corgan informed D'arcy that his outfit needed a bassist and Wretzky joined the band. The Smashing Pumpkins debuted on July 9, 1988, at the Polish bar Chicago 21, a performance involving just Corgan and Iha with a drum machine. After a show at the Avalon Nightclub when the band appeared as a trio, jazz drummer Jimmy Chamberlin joined the band due to a friend of Corgan's speaking of his drumming prowess. Chamberlin's jazz-style drumming lent a unique ring and solidity to the band lacking in other alternative rock outfits, and this was quickly noted in musical circles. In fact, Chamberlin knew little if anything of alternative rock, and this seemed to drive the band in an awesome new direction.

The band set off on their rock 'n' roll journey, on a tour in which they supported legendary rockers Guns 'n' Roses. This might sound odd to those not familiar with the Pumpkins earlier phase, but it makes sense that people who seek good rocking Led Zepplin tickets, for instance, are the very same who seek Smashing Pumpkins tickets. Credibility is eternal. At this time, inner problems began to surface, and Iha and Wretzky (who'd been romantically linked for a while) underwent a ill-tempered breakup. Chamberlin became addicted to narcotics and alcohol, and Corgan became depressed, as things seemed about to fall apart for the Smashing Pumpkins.

The emergence of grunge in the American mainstream in the form of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, meant the Smashing Pumpkins were suddenly perched on the brink of a goldmine. They had the talent and the originality to make it big in this blooming new musical genre. Their 1991 debut album Gish was followed by the 1993 album, Siamese Dream, which went straight into the Billboard charts at number ten and sold over four million copies in the U.S. alone. Corgan dated Courtney Love, the band battled to keep Chamberlin off and away from drugs, and ran the gauntlet of a barrage of negative reviews from the alternative rock press and fellow musicians. In 1994, Virgin released the rare tracks compilation Pisces Iscariot which bettered Siamese Dream on the Billboard charts, making the Number 4 spot. At this time a video was released entitled Vieuphoria, featuring an interesting mixture of concerts and attendant behind-the-scenes footage. After headlining on the 1994 Lollapalooza tour and at the1995Reading Festival, the band disappeared to create their next album, which proved to be a worldbeater.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was a double album containing twenty-eight tracks over two hours in length. The songs were arranged to symbolize the cycle of life and death. Mellon Collie was certified an amazing nine times platinum in the USA and enjoys the title of best-selling double album of that decade to date. It also received seven 1996 Grammy Award nominations, including Album of the Year. The Pumpkins had truly arrived.

The band were now involved in a number of unsavory incidents, as they went out and toured to support the fantastic new album. A fan was crushed to death in Dublin, and two months later in New York City, touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin and Chamberlin both overdosed on heroin. Melvoin died, and Chamberlin was fired from the band, which continued to play the tour using subsititutes, a decision Corgan went on to admit was a bad one. After this, the Pumpkins began to make statements to the effect that music was "stale" and that electronica would become the only viable route for bands to follow in the future.

1998's Adore represented a significant change of style from the Pumpkins' previous guitar-based rock, veering into the much fabled electronica, and more personnel rearrangements occurred during the release of the next album Machina/The Machines of God. On December 2, 2000, The Smashing Pumpkins played a farewell four-hour-long show at The Metro, the same Chicago club where their career had begun twelve years earlier. Since the there have been reunions by Corgan and Chamberlin, and refusals to reunite from Iha. The band has played some shows since then with new members, and we can only wait and discover what the band's new album, Zeitgeist, scheduled to be released July 10, 2007, will sound like. The wait is almost over…