Say what you will about Billy Corgan, but the dude is one hell of a hard worker. Along with the Smashing Pumpkins’ Teargarden By Kaleidyscope project, “album within an album” Oceania, and upcoming U.S. tour, Corgan has just launched an archives project called the ‘Smashing Pumpkins Record Club’.
The first offering, available in exchange for an email address, is a rough demo of “Drown”, a song which later appeared on the soundtrack for Cameron Crowe’s 1992 film, Singles. Per the word’s of Corgan himself (via Hipsters United):
…the first song we’re going to release for free is a demo recording of “Drown”, which we found in going through the archives. It was recorded roughly around the end of ’91, early ’92, somewhere in the Gish touring we were writing songs which we hoped were going to be for Siamese Dream. And I believe in a couple days we recorded five demos: “Luna”, “STP”, “Drown”, “Silver[fuck]”, and something else I can’t remember. And so this is the actual demo from that time. And as part of what we’re going to do here with the Record Club, we’re going to provide certain materials that the band worked with to make its decisions. So although we eventually hope to offer this demo for sale, remixed and updated to 96k 24-bit status, which all our releases will be available as 96k 24-bit unmastered files, the “Drown” here that you’ll have will be the actual rough mix from the time. Which we actually think is kind of cool, because even though it’s a little bit of a lower fidelity than we’ll eventually offer the song at, you do get a sense of what the band was listening to at the time… I think I’ve already said that.
Additional free releases will be offered to Record Club members in the weeks ahead. For more information, check out the band’s website.
Below, we have the final version of “Drown”, along with the band’s upcoming tour dates.
Smashing Pumpkins – “Drown”
Smashing Pumpkins 2011 Tour Dates:
10/05 – Los Angeles, CA @ Wiltern
10/07 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theatre
10/08 – Las Vegas, NV @ Cosmopolitan
10/10 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
10/13 – Milwaukee, WI @ Riverside Theatre
10/14 – Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre
10/15 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore
10/17 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
10/18 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5
10/19 – Providence, RI @ Lupo’s
10/21 – Boston, MA @ Orpheum Theatre
10/22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Tower Theatre
11/02 – Stockholm, SE @ Annexet
11/07 – Brussels, BE @ Forrest National
11/08 – Amsterdam, NL @ HMH
11/09 – Paris, FR @ Zenith
11/21 – Bremen, DE @ Pier 2
11/23 – Berlin, DE @ Tempodrom
11/24 – Cologne, DE @ Palladium
11/25 – Offenbach, DE @ Stadhalle
11/27 – Munich, DE @ Zenith
12/03 – Luxembourg @ Rockhal
