Billy Corgan made a massive announcement just moments ago about his plans for the next Smashing Pumpkins album. Starting around Halloween of this year, Corgan says he plans to release one song at a time for free online of a 44-song album called Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. “There will be no strings attached. Free will mean free,” he says, but for fans interested in getting an exclusive physical product, 11 4-song EPs, aka “mini-box sets,” will be put up for sale.

Think a 44-song album is too ambitious? Recording of the first four songs just began yesterday in Chicago and Corgan says that 53 songs have already been written for possible inclusion on Teargarden by Kaleidyscope.

Just when I thought double albums were starting to disappear, here we have a quadruple album. Damn, that 19-year-old drummer is a lucky kid.

**Update: Hipsters United says Corgan and producer Kerry Brown hinted (on Dave Navarro’s radio show) the following song will be the first single:

The first and only time I saw the Smashing Pumpkins live was at the Hartford Civic Center in 1996 when my sister, who had just gotten her driver’s license, let me tag along. The Pumpkins played a brilliant 2-3 hour set, but we were seated on the 2nd balcony, making it one of those stick figure rock shows arenas are famous for. Needless to say, I would’ve killed for a spot at one of Corgan’s recent extremely intimate club/coffeehouse gigs in southern California.

The good news, however, is that streaming video, live-blogging, and Twitter can now take us all along for the ride ‘cause there are high quality videos and audio everywhere online from this tour. Furthermore, Hipsters United, the preeminent Smashing Pumpkins fan blog, covered Corgan’s tour extensively and though I’ve done my best to pick out a few bits, I highly suggest you pay them a visit for a peek into the wild ride SP fans have been on while Corgan, Dave Navarro, Mike Byrne, Ysanne Spevack, Kevin Dippold, Mark Weitz, Mark Tulin, Linda Strawberry, and Kerry Brown traveled from Visalia to San Diego, and back up to L.A.

Corgan played lots of new material and cover songs on the tour, including a duet, with Sierra Swan, of Willie Nelson and Shirley Collie’s “Willingly” (watch a great vid here), Jethro Tull’s “A New Day Yesterday,” Pink Floyd’s “Lucifer Sam,” Velvet Undergound’s “Femme Fatale,” Bonnie Dobson’s “Morning Dew” (made famous by the Grateful Dead) and, of course, The Seeds’ “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine.”

Between embracing cameras at the shows, hiring a drummer who’s 23 years his junior and playing these über-intimate gigs, Corgan is doing a great job at reconnecting with his most dedicated fans of late. Even this old school SP freak.

It’s been basically set in stone for the past couple months that 19-year-old Mike Byrne has beat out over 1,000 aspiring Jimmy Chamberlin replacements for the role as the new drummer of the Smashing Pumpkins, but Billy Corgan never bothered making it official (publically) until today.

“We just kind of jammed for about 15 minutes and then talked about Fugazi for the other 15 or so minutes,” Byrne said of his first audition with Corgan, followed by the inevitable praise of his new bandmate. You can check out his quotes here, but I think Byrne put it best with simply, “Dream come true, man.”

A much more interesting bit of news popped up at the end of the announcement: Official dates/venues for Corgan’s Spirits in the Sky tour of southern California. Hipsters United originally got the scoop on these via Ticketweb. Check out the tiny venues where Corgan and his new drummer are jamming next week:

·       Wed 8/26 Visalia, CA Tazzaria

·       Thu 8/27 Santa Barbara, CA Muddy Waters

·       Fri 8/28 Long Beach, CA Open

·       Sat 8/29 Pioneertown, CA Pappy & Harriet’s Palace

·       Sun 8/30 San Diego, CA Che Cafe

·       Mon 8/31 Los Angeles, CA Hotel Cafe

Pioneertown? I totally went there when I was a little kid and got a cap gun at the gift shop. Hotel Cafe? Maybe Zach Braff will put them on a soundtrack!

Billy Corgan made an announcement last week that I assumed would be plastered across my Google homepage in no time. Days have passed, however, and our friends at Hipsters United have been reminding us, via Twitter, that this story just refuses to make a blip on the media’s radar. Let’s try to stop the countdown, shall we?

Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan is taking Spirits In The Sky on a short tour of Southern California between August 26th and 31st. You might remember Spirits In The Sky from Corgan’s recent Sky Saxon tribute concert, where the band, made up of  Mark Weitz of Strawberry Alarm Clock, Mark Tulin of Electric Prunes, Kerry Brown, Kevin Dippold, and 19-year-old SP drummer Mike Byrne, played what was believed to be a one-off show.

We don’t have any other details about these shows yet, but if and when we do, we’ll try to let you know within 100-105 hours. Meanwhile, if these turn out to be surprise gigs, just keep your eyes peeled at your local SoCal nightclub for a tall, Billy Corgan-looking guy lingering near the band loading dock.

I’m not really sure that we should listen to Harvey Danger’s Sean Nelson tell us which rock bands he wants to break up, but it does amuse me that he’s chosen to exit the music business (Harvey Danger announced their break up this spring) in a blaze of glory. Plus, “Flagpole Sitta” is quite a nostalgic jam for me, so here goes nothing:

“I was never really a fan of [Smashing Pumpkins] and watching them turn into what they did turn into—and you might have a different perspective of this—but that validated my not liking them in the first place,” Nelson told A.V. New York. Nelson concedes that Harvey Danger’s Jeff Lin and Aaron Huffman are big Gish fans, but he accuses of Billy Corgan of too much “Dude, just stop doing that.” I have no idea what that means.

As for the Coldplay dis, Nelson calls their songs “generic” and “inspired by the boring parts of Radiohead,” asking “what is the point of Coldplay?” When asked to answer that question, Nelson says, “There isn’t one. They serve no need. Anyone could sort of do what they do. And I just don’t think it’s worth doing either.”

The bands Nelson wants to reunite are extremely safe (as in not likely to offend the masses) bets (The Clash, Blur) and, come to think of it, the ones he trashes are already popularly maligned in the music critic blogosphere, so what’s the point? Dude, just stop doing that.

Mark Weitz of Strawberry Alarm Clock, Mark Tulin of Electric Prunes, Kerry Brown, Kevin Dippold, and Mike Byrne of the Smashing Pumpkins performed with Billy Corgan in Los Angeles on Friday night to honor the Seeds’ Sky Saxon, who passed away last month. The group played Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” (also the one-off band’s moniker), the Seeds’ “900 Million People Daily (All Makin’ Love),” and a new Corgan-penned tune possibly called “Freak,” Hipster United reports.

This show marks Corgan’s first public performance with Mike Byrne, a 19-year-old freshman from the Berklee School of Music who joined the Smashing Pumpkins following an open call for auditions after original drummer Jimmy Chamberlin left the band in March.

Check out Corgan’s new song here or watch embedded below.

“I Wanna Be Your Dog” singer Iggy Pop has inflicted the animalistic side of rock on grateful listeners for decades and though his latest Jazzy French literature-inspired effort Préliminaires reveals a greater intellectual depth to the Godfather of Punk, Pop has assured us that he is not going soft.

“I took great pains not to think first,” Pop told The Sun (via Pitchfork) of the online video announcement he made for his forthcoming album, “because the thing I can’t stand is a rock star who thinks he’s got brains. They’re always so damned dull!”

The Sun:

So he spontaneously had a “blurt” at dumb American bands who churn out do-it-by-numbers guitar riffs for the masses. “Anyone from Smashing Pumpkins to - what’s the one with Fred Durst?” he asks.

“Limp Bizkit,” I reply, slightly ashamed at knowing the answer. “Yeah and there are a million billion of them,” he continues. “And people think they’re gods, man.”

Poor Billy Corgan just can’t catch a break these days, but maybe he can channel that same energy Chris Martin summons when he’s accused of plagiarism and use Pop’s dis as inspiration.