Billy Corgan

In the nineteen-nineties, many world events unfolded. There was some war in Iraq or Iran or some other place where there are sand, camels, and angry brown people. The President of some country got some poon from his young and ugly aide (well, maybe more than one, but only one made news and the Starr Report). Since asked to define "Billy Corgan," however, we should focus on the music world. And, even more specifically, on the Alternative Rock world. Alternative Rock started rolling with a bang in 1994 when Kurt Cobain put a .22 to his head. Same year, some weasly looking guy named Perry Farrell started up this little rockfest called Lollapalooza. The year before that, though, marked the most momentous event in Alterna-Rock history. Billy Corgan led the greatest band on earth to release a little album called.........(the ............'s are for dramatic impact)Siamese Dream. This great band was (and may again be)called The Smashing Pumpkins. Billy Corgan, at the time young and hairsome, sang his androgynous heart out for our listening pleasure. He'd been doing this for some time, but only with the death of a wanted-to-be was Alternative Rock and what was left of it brought to the forefront. Most bands that called themselves "Alternative" just sucked. Not so with a few. A very few, of which The Smashing Pumpkins was (were?) one. Billy can be defined by the band, as it can be defined by him, and so on and so forth until about the year 2000. That year, the Billster called it quits with The Smashing Pumpkins, licked his now-bald-headed wounds (the receding hairline gave way to a wax job around October 1995) for awhile, and then came out with a Rock Storm called Zwan. Zwan was the greatest rock band ever. Yes, even greater than The Smashing Pumpkins, but sometimes super-greatness just can't live up to pretty-damned-good-but longer-lasting-greatness. Billy was disheartened with this turn of events, but licked his wounds and played with a few small titties (and probably let the owners of said titties lick his "wounds") for a couple of years before he concurrently released a solo album and took out a $3500 ad in the Sun-Times (or was it the Tribune?) saying that he wanted his band back. This probably tapped him, as The Future Embrace didn't sell well. Neither did his poetry book, which I forgot to mention and probably should just leave out, because it would be an embarrassment to the man. Presently, the bald self-proclaimed genius and nearly-forty-year-old, angst-ridden shell of a man who lives with his two kittens in a 6-million-dollar mansion on the shores of Lake Michigan (or whichever one is in Chicago) is in the studio with the new "Smashing Pumpkins," consisting of himself, Jimmy Chamberlin (the band's original drummer), probably Melissa Auf der Maur (who claims that her services--whatever they may be--are always open to Corgan), and some other dude that hasn't really been named yet but has been rumored to be everyone from the band's original second guitarist (is that an oxymoron?), James Iha, to my uncle.