Pitchfork

Photo by Matt Ziegler

Not letting their music get overshadowed by their typically dramatic activities from earlier this year, Smashing Pumpkins revealed their plans for the rest of the year to ArtisanNews.com (as reposted on their website.)

In the video interview, Billy Corgan (standing next to a silent but restless Jimmy Chamberlain) said, "We're working on a DVD that's sort of a documentary of our residency Fillmore shows. We're going to put out hopefully some of our early demos for Christmas, probably put out a new Pumpkins single with new Pumpkins in the fall and then do a fall tour, and then we start putting out a new Pumpkins album probably beginning next year."

And there you have it: the Pumpkins' 2008 in a nutshell, albeit sans specifics.

Apparently, the documentary puts a Pumpkins spin on the age-old quandary of the established artists who can't accept that their best songs are behind them.

Corgan told ArtisanNews.com, "It was interesting, because we didn't do what you would've expected us to do coming back after seven years. We decided to play these small shows and also write new songs while we were doing it and play lots of different songs from our catalog, and we were met head on by the new American audience that just basically wants greatest hits. So it was a very interesting dynamic.

"It kind of surprised us, and the documentary we're making actually sort of charts the progress of our sort of optimism to the shows going in to sort of being surprised and shocked by some of the reactions we were getting and then the songs that came out of that process. It's not a bad thing, because the world is changing and I think we were sort of blindsided a little bit by the world that we're living in now. Which I think now we're totally acclimated to. It doesn't shock us at all but at the time was sort of surprising."

Finally, Smashing Pumpkins announced more chances for longtime fans to see the band play not nearly enough of the hits that won them over in the first place: a series of 20th anniversary shows this September in NYC, L.A., and Chicago, the band's hometown. The ArtisanNews.com report says the Pumpkins "plan to have special guests at each show." We imagine an Iha or a D'arcy would be too much to ask.

Thanks to reader Keith Beshwate for the tip.