Tears for Billy Corgan

i know this isn't exactly an original topic in the coagulated world of popular music
discussion, but Billy Corgan's "Pity Me" press junket of the last few months only goes to further my suspicions that Mr. Corgan has no idea what is going on outside of his own head. He says he doesn't want to live in a Backstreet Boys world, as if Britney and the Pearlman pod bands have something to do with his downward-spiraling record sales. What Billy doesn't seem to understand is that the Pumpkins have been rotting away ever since we figured out that that thing in the dress in the video for "Today" was really a man. i can't even name their last few singles, though i have vague recollections of some song where he keeps singing "i will always be your whore" or some other The Cure-on-lame-pills type of lyric. The success of that oversized piece of pomposity MELON COLLIE AND THE INFINITE SADNESS was a fluke, and only Billy has not seemed to realize it. The Smashing Pumpkins were just like all the other "alternative bands" that stunk up the early nineties, only they happened to sell a few more records because of that annoying whine of celebration "Tonight, Tonight." Billy has been milking the same "Bullet with butterfly wings" riff ever since then, each single drawing them closer to the brink of becoming a rock and roll trivia joke. While Soundgarden had the sense to destroy the machine before it destroyed them, Billy has been so lost in his own egomania that he can't accept the fact that he hasn't written a memorable work in more than five years. Maybe the teen pop pap is ruining music, but so what? Like Bruce Springsteen sang "Everything dies, baby, that's a fact. But maybe everything that dies, someday comes back." While Billy has been offering himself up to be some kind of rock and roll Christ, the Roman's have been too busy watching TRL to care. The Smashing Pumpkins started as a child aspirin version of My Bloody Valentine and evolved into a down in the mouth Van Halen: they were just geeky enough to get the kids who feel so outcast, and
just loud enough for those about to rock. But all the geeks have found their way to Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Moby while the rockers have found sanctuary in the pimp rock posery. Somehow Billy has deluded himself into thinking that his band was more than what it is. So, blame Britney and Christina and N Sync, but it is hard to support an egomaniac when he hasn't put out something that wasn't entirely ignorable in half a decade. And he whines, and he says he wants to smash his head against the wall, but it is not like the teen pop nonsense has taken fans away from him. To the tweeners, the Smashing Pumpkins have never been anything more than a divider they pass in the
"S" section between S Club 7 and Britney Spears. Maybe Billy can get Kathie Lee's old job, or go back to standing around in the ring on ECW, but for now he insists on spending his last few moments of rock and roll glory moping about the inevitable, wanting to start a revolution that is more "esoteric" and "artsy" movement. Poor Billy, he's like one of the old cowboys in a Peckinpah film: he keeps firing his guns as he is shot from all sides, his bullets blazing until he finally falls into the dirt of rock and roll history. Good luck, Billy, in your continued self-delusion--you've made it this far.