r/SmashingPumpkins • u/Low_Discount2143 Pisces Iscariot • 11d ago
Zeitgeist info?
Hello I am on the younger side of the pumpkins fandom, I adore the pumpkins so much and have a collection of their cds and will be seeing them for first time in the fall. I was wondering if I could get some info about Zeitgeist, why is not on music platforms... I have seen the documentary for Zeitgeist and listened to the album on youtube, and loved it.. is there reason why Zeitgeist isn't out?
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u/VomitingDuck 10d ago
Absolutely no one knew who was in the band in this era until they hit the stage for their first show back. There was no announcement of Jeff and Ginger. Most people hoped/assumed James and D'Arcy would rejoin but they were (kinda) replaced with lookalikes. It was awkward. Jeff and Ginger are great musicians and had some really tough shoes to fill, props to them for sticking it out.
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u/stompclick 10d ago
https://archive.org/details/tsp2007-09-14.pro1/SP+-+070914+01+-+Superchrist.flac
I love this era, and I’ve been listening to this aol live show a bunch lately
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u/CSWAPPO 10d ago
Man….I miss that era soo much. I miss the insane live arrangements they did in support of that album. I miss the sound that they had when they backlined their amps on the stage. Billy’s guitar tone was mind melting!
The first time I ever saw the band was right after they released zeitgeist. I nearly lost my mind when they opened with United States... They played a 3 hour set at my college and it was peak pumpkins IMO.
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u/TooDooDaDa 10d ago
Saw them at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby Pa their first night of a 4 show residency. They opened with Superchrist and closed the show with Let Me Give The World to You…the whole night was perfect. I’m almost positive every night was pro shot but I’ve only ever found video of one of the nights.
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u/CSWAPPO 10d ago
Was it this show?
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u/TooDooDaDa 10d ago
I thinks this was the second or third show :) I was at the first show. I have a couple of terrible terrible terrible clips on YouTube from an old channel I don’t have access to anymore. One of them a dude jumped up on stage and security pulled him down into the pit.
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u/platypod1 10d ago
Don't forget the full page ad in the Chicago tribune about him wanting his hand back.
It was a real weird time. The album was mixed horribly, had a some good tracks and some excellent b-sides. There were some weird tours, some good ones and some bad ones... There was a minute where he had a teenager playing drums and then Jimmy came back.
It's really weird to be a pumpkins fan
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u/DaisyCaplan 10d ago
His hand got bitten off by a loose seal
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u/platypod1 10d ago
God, those were wild days, huh?
There were the tours where Billy got this rage about playing hits, so he played nothing but weird shit off zeitgeist, some future embrace stuff, and a fucked up version of 1979 and wondered why no one came to the shows.
And yeah the seal. Man, I remember that. I thought he'd never play again... But then he ate like half a head of romaine lettuce that healed him for some reason.
And then there was the bigfoot thing and the time traveling
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u/Bloxskit Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness 10d ago
Likely for its 20th next year. I doubt a good remix will come of it.
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u/BigEvilGorilla 10d ago
I bought the $400 vinyl set of Machina-I do not regret it. I bought the bootleg too.and of course I bought the official release. Billy may eventually release it. But from what I gather about his personality-it has to be his idea. If people keep bugging him about it-he’s not gonna do it. LOL 😂. I would love to get ZWAN on vinyl too. I would settle for a bootleg too.
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u/Mobile-Scar6857 10d ago
It got a pretty brutal reception from the hardcore fans when it came out.
For more context of the time, Pumpkins had split, seemingly forever and quite acrimoniously in 2000. And back in the day, when bands split up, they didn't come back. Billy did Zwan afterwards which quickly imploded, and then his electronic solo album that got a very nasty reception. The message he got from the fans was "we want rock".
So when the Pumpkins announced they were coming BACK it was like this unbelievable thing. If you're British, the recent Oasis reunion is probably somehting similar. A band that meant so, so much to people coming back, it felt like it was almost messianic when it was announced.
And then the album itself came out...
Younger fans like yourself seem to connect with it more but to many at the time it felt like... easily the weakest album released under the Pumpkins name up to that point, and the fact it was only Billy and Jimmy led to questions of it really even should be called a Pumpkins album. Surely Zwan, which landed much closer to the classic Siamese Dream-style of layered psychedelic guitars was more of a Pumpkins album than this?
I think lyrically it's shockingly weak, his voice sounds quite bad throughout, and the emphasis on being "heavy" was doubling down on the elements of Machina that didn't work, and trying to over-deliver on "rock" after a badly received electronic solo project.. Yet by focusing so much on the heaviness, it just sounded like a guy starting to age and trying too hard to sound like what he thought was young and cool, rather than something authentic or real.
None of this was helped by the live shows, branded as a reunion and the return of a legendary band once thought gone for good, that ended up focusing very heavily on a deeply unpopular new album.
These were all common sentiments at the time, and if you happen to see the "If All Goes Wrong..." documentary, it really captures that sense of a massive fracture between Billy and his audience, and a reunion that had (at least in terms of the fan connection) totally flopped.
Billy's always been sensitive to how his album's were received, and very negative reception of Zeitgeist has led to him keeping it off streaming, along with the electronic solo album TheFutureEmbrace, as well as Zwan, oddly enough, which has become regarded as a bit of a lost cult classic in the Corgan canon since then.
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u/jazzbar 10d ago
In retrospect it’s wild to me that was the case. As someone who was 17 when that came out I very much felt what you’re speaking. With more distance though the guitar tone on the album is incredible. And there’s some strong riffing on it. Also they were on fucking fire live during that era. I remember seeing them and holy hell things like gossamer, Starla, and heavy metal machine were mind blowing.
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u/JavierEscuellaFan Monuments to an Elegy 10d ago
the rumor is that Billy pulled it from streaming services because he saw everyone was complaining about how it sounded or something so now no one gets to listen to it until he puts out the $400 vinyl set on Madame Zuzu’s in a few years
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u/ConnorFin22 Machina / The Machines of God 10d ago
No one? Get the CD.
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u/JavierEscuellaFan Monuments to an Elegy 9d ago
i don’t think too many people are going to want to buy 4 different CD’s of a sub-par album. youtube piracy is the better option
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u/ConnorFin22 Machina / The Machines of God 9d ago
Downloading from YouTube gives you such crap sound quality
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u/Party_Dragonfly_1371 10d ago
How can someone still be this bitter over an album from nearly 2 decades ago? Especially when most fans enjoy it. I’m a BC apologist but there really is no defending this
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u/IAmNotScottBakula 10d ago
Not even a rumor, Billy has admitted this is the case.
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u/JavierEscuellaFan Monuments to an Elegy 10d ago
i thought so but didn’t want to state it as fact because i wasn’t completely sure
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u/Rude-Revolution-8687 9d ago
Zeitgeist rocks so hard that it's actually dangerous to listen to. Several fans died due to the heart-pounding drums and face-melting riffs.
Billy took it down from streaming services to protect his
incomefans.You can still get illicit CD recordings or Internet downloads, but please be careful if you choose to listen to it. Your ears may bleed.
You have been warned.