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7 Music Videos More Destructive Than Vampire Weekend’s “Diane Young”

By Alison Herman on

You’d think it would be hard for a music video that’s practically a still life to offend anyone, but this year prepster darlings Vampire Weekend have been taking heat for the video for new single “Diane Young,” which shows an old Saab bursting into flames with downtown Manhattan in the background. Frontman Ezra Koenig has clarified that the vehicles in question were old, out of order, and dirt cheap — and we’d like to remind the offended car lovers that Vampire Weekend are hardly the most extreme when it comes to making destructive music videos. Read on for the most chaotic clips, from combusting drum sets to a kids’ birthday party from hell to a Hunger Games-style rap epic. … Read More

Music

Courtney Love and James Iha Collaborate on New Single "This Is War"

By Judy Berman on

What do Courtney Love and James Iha have in common? Well, besides being ’90s alt-rock survivors, both have had long, fraught relationships with Billy Corgan. (They also shared a band mate, Melissa Auf der Maur, but we digress.) So we can’t help but wonder what the Great Pumpkin might say about their collaboration on Love’s… Read More

Music

Smashing Pumpkins Announce ‘Mellon Collie’ Reissue and Deluxe Box Set

By Caroline Stanley on

If you grew up in the 1990s, then you owned a copy of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness — perhaps, you had the two-cassette tape set, like we did. Now that the band that we once loved so dearly clearly no longer exists (and, as we’d like to point out to… Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Out of precaution Tom Brokaw has been taken to a hospital in Charlotte after feeling light-headed during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. According to a statement from NBC News, “He is being evaluated and is in good spirits.” [via The Wrap]

Update from @tombrokaw: “All is well Early… Read More

Music

10 Bands That Really Need to Call It Quits

By Tom Hawking on

We greeted the prospect of listening to Oceania, the new album by Billy Corgan and some people who he’s calling Smashing Pumpkins, with the same trepidation shown by pretty much everyone else who grew up in the 1990s. Quite why Corgan insists on calling his band Smashing Pumpkins these days is unclear — when the classic line-up of that band split in 2000, Corgan formed a new band under a new name — but he chose to exhume it in 2006, and with the departure of Jimmy Chamberlin in 2009, he’s the only remaining original member. Frankly, we wish he’d stop it and move on to something new — and he’s not the only one, as you’ll read after the jump. … Read More

Music

5 Albums to Stream for Free This Week: Peaking Lights, Smashing Pumpkins

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Monday, which means it’s time for another edition of our regular start-of-the-week stream-a-thon, wherein we scour the Internet for worthy and/or noteworthy albums that are streaming this week at absolutely no cost. Today we rejoice at strange and wonderful records from Peaking Lights and Blues Control, sigh at the new one from “Smashing Pumpkins,” smile happily at being pleasantly surprised by the posthumous J Dilla record, and then bliss out to the debut album from Echo Lake. Click through and get listening. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Judy Berman on

1. Philip Seymour Hoffman has been offered a role in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. And no, it isn’t Finnick, wise guy — it’s Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee. Sure, we’ll buy that. [via Slashfilm]

2. In other, stranger casting news, Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen (aka “The Ryan Gosling of Porn”) have… Read More

Music

Stereotyping You by Your Favorite ’90s Band

By Tom Hawking on

They say music moves in 20-year cycles, and the surfeit of ’90s-influenced bands on the scene at the moment seems to suggest that maybe they’re right (whoever “they” are.) It also seems that there are plenty of original ’90s bands playing at the moment, both renascent (Garbage, Pulp) those who never went away (Pearl Jam, for instance), or those who have no right to actually exist either way and are yet somehow touring together. Anyway, with all this in mind — and, specifically, because the new Garbage album is out this week — we thought it was high time for another of our stereotyping posts. Obligatory disclaimer: this is all in fun, so don’t take offense — and also, as ever, our stereotype is in there with the rest. See if you can guess which one it is! … Read More

Music

Epic Musician Feuds of the ’90s

By Judy Berman on

What’s more surprising — that Hole have canceled a scheduled set at Australia’s Soundwave Festival because they were slated to open for Limp Bizkit, or that both bands still exist in 2011? Either way, this makes one more well-publicized feud for Courtney Love, who tweeted at the festival’s promoter, AJ Maddah, “What bloody flight of crazed fancy made you think we’d open for Limp Bizkit dude? No offense, that’s nuts.” (Lest you begin to feel some pity for Maddah, let it be known that he responded by calling her a “rotten twat.”) This Hole vs. Limp Bizkit beef, which could just as easily have happened in 1997, got us thinking about the many epic musician feuds that took place in the ’90s — a few of which did not even include Love. Reminisce with us after the jump. … Read More

Music

Video of the Day: Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins Play Twister

By Judy Berman on

The relationship between Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins — particularly Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan — has been on our minds lately, thanks to Courtney Love’s epic quote in an excerpt from Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum’s new oral history of MTV. Although the interview was supposed to be about the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video, Love, of course, took it her own way, leaving us with a paragraph that details her first time with Cobain but also includes the sentence “I’d flown there to fuck Billy Corgan, who still had lots of hair.”

In any case, today we bring you a completely context-free video, which seems to be raw footage from MTV, of Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins playing Twister together in front of a crowd of fans. The undisputed star of the clip is Krist Novoselic, who has stripped down to his briefs, greased himself up with Crisco, and eventually ends up between Dave Grohl’s legs. Cobain, meanwhile, is pretty quiet until the end, when he and his band mates turn the friendly competition into an all-out wrestling match. Smashing Pumpkins, sadly, aren’t nearly as much fun. We’ve always preferred Nirvana to Smashing Pumpkins, but now we know for sure who we would rather have partied with ca. 1992. … Read More