Picture this: Billy Corgan (with hair) in a black Superman T-shirt strumming a black Ovation acoustic guitar to a crowd of kids inside a Chicago Tower Records in 1993. Thankfully you don’t have to expend too much mental energy, since this Siamese Dream-era show has been preserved in pristine condition on YouTube.
But on September 17, you can actually be there. The band announced it will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its album Siamese Dream by staging a modern update of this very show in Highland Park, Illinois. The set will take place at a Tower Records pop-up inside Madame ZuZu’s Tea Shop and Art Studio, a cafe Corgan himself owns with Chloé Mendel.
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Beginning September 14, the cafe will be transformed into Tower Records location with exclusive Smashing Pumpkins releases and merch available for sale. The celebration culminates in two separate performances harkening back to that beloved acoustic ’93 set. The second show will be livestreamed via the website Veeps.
Here’s the kicker: The band will play the same eight-song set it performed at the ’93 show. Real Pumpkinheads know the acoustic version of “Mayonaise” goes extremely hard.
“The Smashing Pumpkins played an unforgettable in store performance at Tower Records, Chicago,” the president of Tower Records, Danny Zeijdel, said in a statement accompanying the news. “We’re excited to celebrate Siamese Dream once again, 30 years after hosting the original album release party. In the future, we intend to provide the same platform for young, emerging artists. We will continue with this at Tower in Brooklyn and new online experiences forthcoming.”
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In 2011, Corgan talked about how he meticulously put Siamese Dream together even amid a deepening mental-health crisis. ““Even though it wasn’t the one that sold the most, it’s the one that seems to have come through the best,” he told NME. “As dark a records as Siamese Dream is, there’s a lot of fun in it, it’s almost like we’re kind of laughing at how stupid the whole thing is. It’s like, here’s my pop song about suicide and here’s my epic song about child abuse, and here’s my big middle finger to the indie world.”
Tickets are available here.
Photo by Paul Elledge / Courtesy High Rise PR