Stand Inside Your Love

Thanks to Oh, Summer Life for pointing me towards the news that the Smashing Pumpkins are reforming. Billboard details the power struggles and events that led to the disbandment of the group. At this point in my life, I'm far from being fanatic about them anymore. The height of my fanaticism for Smashing Pumpkins started with "Siamese Dream" in the early 90's when I was in university and it continued with "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness". I was always a fan of their more mellow material including songs such as "Disarm", "1979", "Perfect", the Darcy-sung "Daydream", "Stand Inside Your Love", and the orchestral "Tonight, Tonight". Yeah, their heavier material was nifty too, but call me a softy, their mellower, quieter material is where it's at. Billy Corgan's intentions are to "renew and revive" the Pumpkins and I hope he means all four original members(or if D'Arcy can't make it, Melissa Auf Der Maur will do just fine).

Listen to/watch the archived live session Feist did for Morning Becomes Eclectic yesterday. It was Feist solo accompanying herself on guitar. She started the session off with her wonderful cover of Ron Sexsmith's "Secret Heart", and it shreds her version of the song on her album to pieces. Then, with her "fake jazz chords", she played a stunning version of "Gatekeeper". She played a song that I wasn't familiar with after that. Great versions of "Mushaboom" and "Let It Die" followed. She played a new song called "Intuition"(around the 35 min mark) which'll be on the next record she said. Around the 39 min mark[which I believe is an 'extra' performance not aired during the original Morning Becomes Eclectic broadcast yesterday], there's a performance of Feist performing an acoustic version of her cover of the Bee Gees' "Inside And Out". Can't wait for this session to turn up on dimeadozen.org.

More Cowbell has news that Evan Dando is going on tour. Some west coast Canadian dates have been announced in July as well as some mid-west US dates. I'm assuming he'll eventually make his way to Toronto.

The Dears' Natalia Yanchak kept a tour diary of her band's US/Canada May-June tour. The anonymous comment which says "natalia is the sexiest musician in canada" is not me(I swear), but man, do I agree. Gotta control myself...after all, she is pregnant(see June 10 tour diary entry).