Red Mosquito

matt reeder wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:

matt reeder wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:I didn't realize Zwan had any songs apart from the album. I'd definitely be interested in hearing that stuff.

There's like 60 or 70. Enough for a 4-5 CD boxset, which may happen at some point.

Studio recordings, or live audience tapes?

Nobody knows for sure but I'd be shocked if there weren't studio or demo recordings of every single song. If not 10 recordings of every song. Plus tons of live versions, rehearsal tapes, etc. Billy recorded everything.

.

I meant currently available -- mostly live audience stuff?

matt reeder wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:I didn't realize Zwan had any songs apart from the album. I'd definitely be interested in hearing that stuff.

Kevin, I assume you may have been at this show? https://archive.org/details/zwan2003-03-31.flac16

I was! It was a wonderful show -- probably musically a lot stronger than the Pumpkins show I saw in '96, though lacking the sentimental value.

Kevin Davis wrote:

matt reeder wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:I didn't realize Zwan had any songs apart from the album. I'd definitely be interested in hearing that stuff.

Kevin, I assume you may have been at this show? https://archive.org/details/zwan2003-03-31.flac16

I was! It was a wonderful show -- probably musically a lot stronger than the Pumpkins show I saw in '96, though lacking the sentimental value.

I was there, in the front row of the orchestra pit. It was a great show...lots of fun memories for me.

Kevin Davis wrote:

matt reeder wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:

matt reeder wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:I didn't realize Zwan had any songs apart from the album. I'd definitely be interested in hearing that stuff.

There's like 60 or 70. Enough for a 4-5 CD boxset, which may happen at some point.

Studio recordings, or live audience tapes?

Nobody knows for sure but I'd be shocked if there weren't studio or demo recordings of every single song. If not 10 recordings of every song. Plus tons of live versions, rehearsal tapes, etc. Billy recorded everything.

.

I meant currently available -- mostly live audience stuff?

All live stuff, but lots of FMs and preFMs from 2003. See the bootlegs I posted above - the last three are excellent sounding FM broadcasts with quite a few non-album tracks (almost all of which are better than a decent number of the things on the Zwan album). Check out "Spilled Milk" - it's like Billy decided to plagiarize "Silverfuck", but it's still a pretty great song. The piano versions of "Endless Summer" and "Desire" on the 2/08/2003 bootleg are stellar as well.

Simple Torture wrote:

matt reeder wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:

matt reeder wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:I didn't realize Zwan had any songs apart from the album. I'd definitely be interested in hearing that stuff.

There's like 60 or 70. Enough for a 4-5 CD boxset, which may happen at some point.

Studio recordings, or live audience tapes?

Nobody knows for sure but I'd be shocked if there weren't studio or demo recordings of every single song. If not 10 recordings of every song. Plus tons of live versions, rehearsal tapes, etc. Billy recorded everything.

There can't be the same label hang-ups for Zwan that's plaguing the Machina reissue, right? I'm sort of surprised Billy doesn't skip Machina (sad face) and head straight to Zwan for a big box set.

Probably. But those albums didn't sell, and there isn't a lot of nostalgia for them, so I'm sure the label told Billy he has to curtail his reissues down to manageable size / price and he doesn't want to do that. Machina in particular was going to be an enormous reissue, and very complicated; I don't doubt that's why it was put on hold, along with various label issues.

Honestly is such a great song.

Reading about the Zwan breakup is pretty hilarious.

verb_to_trust wrote:Reading about the Zwan breakup is pretty hilarious.

Link please.

Billy Corgan announced the band had broken up on Chicago's WGN, on September 15, 2003. "I really enjoyed my experience with Zwan, but at the end of the day, without that sense of deeper family loyalty, it just becomes like anything else," Corgan said.[citation needed]

On April 24, 2005 in the Chicago Tribune, Corgan commented briefly on the breakup of the band: "The music wasn't the big problem, it was more their attitude... Sex acts between band members in public. People carrying drugs across borders. Pajo sleeping with the producer's girlfriend while we were making the record."[4]

In the May 27, 2005 edition of Entertainment Weekly, Corgan elaborated on his version of what went wrong:

“ Sex and drugs and junk. Tick off the list: heroin, band members having relationships...You don't trust the person next to you. I'm on the bus. I send an email to somebody and I throw my BlackBerry in my little day bag. The next day, my ex-girlfriend calls me screaming. Somebody in the group went into my BlackBerry and forwarded her an e-mail that another girl sends me. I mean, that's the kind of stuff we were dealing with. ”
Pajo denied Corgan's accusations in the same article. "Pretty much everything that he said has been exaggerated and blown out of proportion," he said. "The drug stuff in particular. I know there was no heroin." Adds Lenchantin, "I believe that we were a really good team. I am moving on and onward. I hope that our paths will meet again in peace."

In the same Entertainment Weekly article, Corgan disclosed that things went wrong at some of the very first recording sessions. "...it was like, 'What do you mean the guitar's out of tune? What do you mean I have to be there at 11? What do you mean I can't order $100 of lobster every day?' I mean, like, bad. But it was too late. It was already public. The album was going out. So I did what I always did: try to make the best of a situation and start covering up. Put on a good face. And honestly, I'm glad the thing didn't sell, because if it had sold well it would have been really tough. I would look like I was going to walk away from something that I'd just built."

He also stated that he can no longer listen to Mary Star of the Sea, because to him it sounds like "thousands of lies upon lies upon lies. It's a shame because there's tons of music unreleased that will just sit in a box until I can stomach it." When asked which of his two former bands would ever reform, he said, "Pumpkins. You'll never see Zwan. I'll never go anywhere near those people. Ever. I mean, I detest them. You can put that in capital letters. Bad people. James and D'arcy are good people. They might be misguided people, but they're good people."

I hung out with Zwan backstage at the Double Door a little bit. I spent most of that time talking to Jimmy Chamberlain. What a cool guy he is.

They played the Double Door huh? I knew the Pumpkins did back in the day.

verb_to_trust wrote:They played the Double Door huh? I knew the Pumpkins did back in the day.

Yeah, I think it was a 3-nighter. I took photos of the marquee and some other things. They will probably be worth nothing ever.

Zwan was a really weird band for their time and moment. I never paid attention to them, i dont know why...maybe i was a little tired of Billy at the time and Honestly sounded really Pumpkin for me at the time.

I assume they were a light and fluffy version of Smashing Pumpkins, but I've never heard the entire album. Not a fan of Honestly, though.

But what do I know. I love Zeitgeist, bad production aside.

I tried to listen to the whole Zwan album the other night. I didn't make it.

So Billy had a solo album produced by Rick Rubin.

Well, i always thought he needed a producer for so long, i consider this good news.

matt reeder wrote:This is a song that never got released officially; it was on the soundtrack of a movie called Spun. I've been waiting for some sort of lossless version of this to surface for years and I'm beginning to think it won't ever happen.

Their acoustic version of Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast from Spun is great:

verb_to_trust wrote:I tried to listen to the whole Zwan album the other night. I didn't make it.

Cut it down to 10 tracks resequence it and add two songs that were cut from the album(*):

1. Lyric
2. Settle Down
3. El Sol
4. Honestly
5. Of A Broken Heart
6. Ride A Black Swan
7. Riverview*
8. Desire
9. Jesus I / Mary, Star of the Sea
10. Spilled Milk*

That's a much better album without some of the detritus that drags it down. I have no clue why they cut "Riverview" and "Spilled Milk"; those are better than most of what made the album. At least they played them at their BBC session and we have essentially studio versions of both.

Oh, and the album is brickwalled to death too. So maybe I need to make some sort of compilation.

matt reeder wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:I tried to listen to the whole Zwan album the other night. I didn't make it.

Cut it down to 10 tracks resequence it and add two songs that were cut from the album(*):

1. Lyric
2. Settle Down
3. El Sol
4. Honestly
5. Of A Broken Heart
6. Ride A Black Swan
7. Riverview*
8. Desire
9. Jesus I / Mary, Star of the Sea
10. Spilled Milk*

That's a much better album without some of the detritus that drags it down. I have no clue why they cut "Riverview" and "Spilled Milk"; those are better than most of what made the album. At least they played them at their BBC session and we have essentially studio versions of both.

Oh, and the album is brickwalled to death too. So maybe I need to make some sort of compilation.

I would love that.

man, brittany murphy really was smokin'.

AndySlash wrote:man, brittany murphy really was smokin'.

No, she wasnt.