Pitchfork: Smashing Pumpkins' Anniversary Tour Is a Shitshow

Poor setlist choices, awful-sounding music, and confounding sartorial decisions mixed with heavy doses of audience mockery: These are the reports we've been getting about the Smashing Pumpkins' "20th Anniversary Tour", and guesses at Billy Corgan's motivations can only confuse and infuriate.
Corgan lashed out at his band's fans once again at a recent Chicago gig, and this outburst comes with a YouTube video [via Stereogum].
mean, we get it, guy! You released a mediocre album and were disappointed when people thought it was mediocre.

But Billy, let's be clear: You say in that video, "Last I checked we were in an alternative band. 'Alternative' means 'different than what everyone else is doing,' including those reunion bands that go out and just play the old songs."
Incorrect! "Alternative" means nothing in 2008, and the fact that you don't seem to realize that probably has a lot to do with your confusion over people's disappointment when you don't just play your good songs instead of meandering off into formless noise jams. You can do your own thing all you want, but it's rude, to say the least, to begrudge people their expectations when they pay hundreds of dollars to see you. And you can mock "those reunion bands" all you want, but your insistence on ruining people's nostalgic fondness for your band instead of playing to it doesn't change the fact that you're cashing in, just like they are.

Personally, I don't buy that this intentional audience befuddling is some kind of pure pursuit of an artistic muse. It seems like the flailing around of an artist who has declined and is unwilling to face that truth even when his own fans proclaim it so by their reactions to his art.

While Stereogum's hypothesis that Corgan's antics could be "some Tony Clifton crowd-antagonizing performance art BS" is certainly interesting, I don't buy that either. The man has been too sincerely whiny and self-indulgent in the past for all of this to be one big joke.

So what do we take from this: Billy Corgan is crazy? We knew that. This "20th Anniversary Tour" might not live up to the expectations of longtime Pumpkins fans? We could have guessed that. Do we "give [them] another chance," as Corgan requested in a disingenuous apology to "those of you we've disappointed"?
It seems to me that Corgan himself suggested the best thing to do when he said, "It doesn't go anywhere from here. You might as well head to your cars."

Smashing Pumpkins:

11-21 Chicago, IL - Auditorium Theatre ("Black Sunshine")
11-22 Chicago, IL - Auditorium Theatre ("White Crosses")
11-24 Kansas City, MO - Midland Theater
11-25 Kansas City, MO - Midland Theater
11-26 St. Louis, MO - Fox Theatre
11-29 Las Vegas, NV - The Pearl
11-30 San Diego, CA - RIMAC Arena
12-02 Los Angeles, CA - Gibson Amphitheatre ("Black Sunshine")
12-03 Los Angeles, CA - Gibson Amphitheatre ("White Crosses")

Sadly, might be time to sell those tickets on Craigslist....