popwreckoning

Pac Sun Tour has been well underway and has brought its diverse line up to many cities already. When the tour stopped by Kansas City, Beau Burchell, guitarist of the headlining act Saosin, took some time to talk about various subjects with me such as the Pac Sun Tour, having a song on a popular TV show and the band’s popularity in Indonesia of all places. Read the full interview below.

Bethany, PopWreckoning: Talk to me about this tour. How did you get hooked up with Pac Sun?
Beau Burchell, Saosin: We kind of got the offer to do the Pac Sun Tour and it just seemed like a cool a thing. The line up that they had chosen was a pretty diverse line up and we really liked that about the tour. It’s nice to tour with not all the same style of bands. It was kind of cool for us.

PW: It is a diverse line up. How have audiences reacted? Are they acting differently than your other tours?
BB: We haven’t really noticed much of a difference for us, you know? But I’m sure it is going to be different somehow. So far, I haven’t been able to tell if there is a positive or negative reaction towards it.

PW: At this show, and I’m not sure how many other dates have this, but there was a Battle of the Bands competition to open for you. Did you have any involvement with that? What do you think of having new people open every night?
BB: It was our idea to have the Battle of the Bands because we think it is a good idea to support. It seems like if you are in a band just starting out, there’s really no way to just be seen or to get out there, especially when the only really cool shows are from bands coming in from out of town. So otherwise, you’re stuck playing shows where you have to sell tickets or stuff like that, so we thought it was cool to be able to throw local bands on the tour.

PW: Awesome. Was it your idea, too, to do the in-stores or was that Pac Sun?
BB: We actually did a whole tour where we were doing in-stores and acoustic stuff, so, it was kind of a group effort.

PW: Now you just switched labels for this latest release, right? What’s changed for you with the switch?
BB: It’s actually the same record label now – with the way the record industry is going. Virgin and Capitol are owned by EMI, so now what they’re doing, Virgin is kind of the rock department and Capitol’s bands like Beatles, Coldplay and bands like that.

PW: On your new, well latest, I guess, it’s been out awhile, but on your latest release, you guys reworked three songs from an EP. Why did you decide to rework those songs?
BB: Normally, on the last record, we did the same thing. We put out these EPs before we put out the records. What we do, is on the EPs, it is just demo forms of those songs. So it is just songs as we see them at the very early stages of the song. What we’ll normally do is we’ll put out these EPs of the songs that are the demos and it is almost like little baby photos of the songs, so they can actually hear them. Then, when the record comes out, they can actually hear where they went, so it is kind of cool because then they kind of get two kind of versions of the song.

PW: I love that description of demos as baby photos. You also just had a song that came out on “NCIS” and its soundtrack. Are you fans of the show?
BB: Yeah. I watch it all the time. My uncle is actually, he, well it is funny, my uncle was just talking to my mom about it and we were talking about TV shows and I was saying that I watch “House,” “Law and Order” and stuff like that a lot. Then I said “NCIS” and he was like, “Oh I love ‘NCIS.’” So it was just funny because a week later I was like “Oh you got a watch. We have a song that’s going to be on it.” He was like, “Oh that’s awesome.”
PW: After watching that song in a scene on a show, is that kind of what you pictured for that song?
BB: Uh, no, but it was definitely cool. It was pretty rad. The guy in the show, basically, well he supposedly kills himself, while blasting that song in the car. Kind of funny. Haha. Yeah.

PW: Another song that you recently released, was an acoustic version of “Changing.” Is it hard to adapt your songs to be acoustic like that?
BB: Some of them are harder than others. Others are easier. We’ve actually reworked a lot of our songs acoustic. We try to make it so most of our songs will translate acoustically. A lot of the time, it won’t. So depending how riffy they are or what kind of song it is, it may or may not translate.
PW: I know that one of the things I hear you guys get praised for is the high energy live show and I know that can be hard to carry over to an acoustic performance.
BB: Yeah, we really can’t. We always make them super mellow versions of the song.
PW: Right, like “Changing.”
BB: I like that version better than the real version.
PW: You guys doing that song acoustic on this tour?
BB: No.

PW: Any special surprises for this tour?
BB: Normally, our light show is about twice as big as this. Tonight we drove from Denver, Colorado and it was icy, so what should have only taken us about 10 hours took us almost 20, you know? It was really tough. So we got here and got everything loaded in under two hours, so we only have half the light show. Normally, we have this big crazy light show. People leave the show deaf and blind. It’s awesome.

PW: For a final question, as this decade ends, the ‘naught’ decade, do you have a favorite musical memory of the last 10 years?
BB: Does it have to be anything at all? My favorite memory would be playing Jakarta. We played Jakarta, Indonesia and we had no idea that we were popular over there. We showed up and we had full-on armed escort through the airport. There were guys with machine guns bringing us in and we were like, “This is a little overboard, don’t you think?” And they were like, “No. You guys are huge here.” So we got there and it was like we were Korn. We played this huge tennis arena and there were billboards of us and our faces everywhere. We did this big press conference right before we played. It was crazy. It was really fun. I didn’t ask any questions and was just like this is great.
PW: That’s great. Thanks so much.
BB: Thanks a lot.

Saosin: website | myspace | @ pac sun tour, beaumont club

The Smashing Pumpkins ventured forth for a worthwhile and exhilarating, if unusually awkward, two-night stay at Kansas City’s The Midland by AMC (one would be remiss to not note the corporate sponsorship of this music venue). Singer and guitarist Billy Corgan would surely be unhappy, or would he? Despite ceaseless battles with record companies (the band is currently label-less), Corgan is palpably torn between a need for notoriety and fame, and a dogmatic, unbridled artistic freedom, and has been for some time. I quite vividly recall an intimate, sold-out performance in Lawrence, Kansas during which Corgan at some length ranted against the commercial success of Korn, and this in the early 2000s.

Band relevance is something about which Corgan obsesses. Standing in the front row and watching Corgan glance to see if I know and parrot the lyrics to “I of the Mourning” tells me that he still holds such a concern; he appears strangely pleased and displeased with his current plight, but he has a cold tonight too.

The previous evening he draconianly chastised the audience for failing to recite the lyrics to one of his key hits: Siamese Dream‘s outstanding, ironic “Today”. He had a point there, but here’s the paradox: Billy Corgan eschews success just as much as he seeks it. As much as he despises the audience, he will shake its collective hand: Corgan tonight willingly admits that he has spite for audiences, but he also mingles with the crowd, even entering the seated areas. He, for instance, does not share the same malaise that his 1990s musical rival Kurt Cobain did concerning notoriety and fame, but notwithstanding, like Cobain, Corgan certainly does not wish to pander to the audience, in principle. He, too, finds that a grave offense against his musical integrity, and perhaps rightly so.

This latest incarnation – including new players Ginger Reyes (bass guitar) and Jeff Schroeder (rhythm guitar) – is amidst a so-called anniversary tour; the band that ignited the 1990s with its drama king, artsy, theatrical Queen and Black Sabbath indebted take on “grunge,” particularly in the wake of Nirvana’s unfortunate self-immolation, is celebrating twenty years of “infinite sadness” (drug abuse, band in-fighting, major depression), as well as, no doubt, substantial commercial and aesthetic, creative success – in the past.

But one must wonder at the entire notion of an anniversary tour with a new band, let alone a new corpus of songs. The band also is planning to record a new album, the follow up to Zeitgeist (2007), after it completes this tour. As Corgan concedes tonight, the band is not a “jukebox,” which means that it wants to attain commercial success again, but by absolutely functioning artistically on its own terms. Think Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead here. It’s possible, but it’s also incredibly improbable. (New single “G.L.O.W.,” however, could help Corgan attain such heights, as it is a true, obscure, satiric late-Halloween treat.) Its appearance on video games may indeed influence youthful fans.

But to the tour: it’s exceedingly difficult to applaud such an endeavor given that two main band members are noticeably missing, and that, technically, the band did say its farewell in 2001. The band reformed only recently, after Corgan’s FutureEmbrace (2005) solo tour, and after Corgan posted an emotional, romantic ad in the Chicago Tribune. The original Smashing Pumpkins emanated a sense of eccentric, artistic sincerity and materiality, a defined, reliable notion of integrity, even if it sought and accepted financial, commercial success. The music was undeniably great and cathartic, and the lineup was part of the music. Now Corgan finds the concept “reunion” to be a negative, and he is correct because it’s not an actual re-union. But perhaps that’s no matter; new music must be created by Corgan, as he is too talented; the band must move on, although the majesty and singularity of the Smashing Pumpkins of 1990s will be forever mourned.

Corgan, Pumpkin King, has conveniently retained the band’s name, but this band isn’t the Pumpkins of yesteryear; the latest incarnation is analogous in its lineup to the band that now dubs itself Guns N’ Roses: in GNR, for instance, all of its original members, save for Icarus-like, perfectionist, egoist crooner W. Axl Rose (who notably is, like Corgan, a notorious puppet-master) are nowhere to be seen. That said, Corgan’s new band (though doubtlessly Zwan-like) does dramatically and compellingly rock and roll; one can certainly appreciate a band’s pragmatic evolution, in spite of a wistful, desirous nostalgia for this seminal, alternative group in all its magisterial brightness: The musical universe simply would not be itself without the prodigious, masterful “boy wonder” Corgan and his several comrades, without The Smashing Pumpkins, past or present.

Ironic though it may be however, the bulk of the three-hour set entailed cuts from inarguably the band’s most “commercial” CD: the superb double-album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995): from the heavy metal-leaning, torturous, amorous poetry of “Bodies” (“Love is suicide!”) to the light-sounding, catchy, and youth-evoking “1979″, basically a new wave pop song , and a song into which one can enter a lost, surreal state of idealism, the band reveled in past dignity and stardom.

Corgan and his new band embraced its triumphant history, and all of this despite Corgan’s redundant, vociferous claims to refrain from playing solely hit songs, from pandering essentially. He did spend, however, a solid twenty minutes teasing the audience with song snippets on acoustic guitar: Corgan playfully mocked the crowd by turning down song requests; he and Schroeder had fun with this, with Corgan claiming his music was all just about “good times.” Hardly. Really it was, again, Corgan’s need to be both pertinent and idolized.

Corgan is, after all, a veracious, remarkable contradiction in terms. No requests, but he will play major songs. Maybe that’s a compromise of sorts; maybe it’s Corgan simply teasing. Corgan’s zeal, for example, was most evident in quite possibly the biggest and most recognizable song from the CD, excluding “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”: during the mercurially irate and morose song “Zero,” Corgan proved that he still both relishes playing songs from the recent past and pleasing an appreciative, devoted audience; a noticeable, gothic and passionate, hyperactive intensity accompanied Corgan’s performance , and he confidently deferred to the audience for one of its critical if bawdy, encoded lines: “Wanna go for a ride?” This time the audience nailed it; it was an excellent, energetic if atypical, rushed rendition.

The band played several other songs from Mellon Collie, including a moving, pristine version of “Galapogos”, with guitarists Corgan and Schroeder underscoring the quintessential soft-loud sound dynamic of alternative music. New songs were a mix between acoustic balladry (“Sunkissed”) and Sabbath-like metal sound and fury; probably the most stimulating new bit was “I am One, pt. 2,” which was part of the two-song encore. Other highlights: show opener “Ava Adore,” during which Corgan literally skirted about the stage in full-on Freddie Mercury mode, both kicking an amplifier and throwing confetti; and also the delightful Fleetwood Mac cover about mortality, “Landslide,” which appeared on the band’s rarities CD, Pisces Iscariot (1994). If this is the last time Corgan plays his major hits, so be it; tonight –tonight — was a rare, awe-inspiring and beautiful moment.

The Smashing Pumpkins: website | myspace

Written by: William Carl Ferleman