Pumpkins To Reissue Catalog, Bad Rabbits Channel Bald Billy

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on May 3, 2011 7:00PM

We know that for all the grief we give Corgan it might be difficult to believe that we were once huge fans of The Smashing Pumpkins' earlier albums, and that even a few tracks later in the group's career still give us great pleasure. So news that the great pumpkin, Billy Corgan, finally has control of all of his band's back catalog and plans to reissue all of it and stuff the re-releases with unreleased tracks and b-sides is actually pretty exciting news.

This year should see expanded editions of Gish, Siamese Dream, and the b-side / non-album track collection Pisces Iscariot. 2012 will usher in new editions of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, that album's The Aeroplane Flies High singles set and the underrated and beautifully understated Adore. After that things get dicier, though we admit that the 2013 rejoining of the officially released Machina/The Machines of God with the officially unreleased Machina II: The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music -- previously only available earlier in the aughts as download Corgan threw out there to give fans an idea of what the project was meant to sound like -- has us intrigued. We are confused by the inclusion of Pisces Iscariot and The Aeroplane Flies High, since they would seem to already append their material to the appropriate album re-releases, but perhaps each collection will get the expanded Odds & Sods treatment?

No word on whether Corgan's announcement had any effect on Boston's Bad Rabbits' choice to tackle The Smashing Pumpkins' "1979" for the latest installment of their Live Covers Sessions Series, but we'll use the Pumpkins' reissue news as an excuse to post the resulting video and MP3.

Download: Bad Rabbits "1979"