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The Smashing Pumpkins to sail through Oceania for November 2011 UK tour - tickets on sale Friday 9th September

Posted: 12 years ago
The Smashing Pumpkins

When all you ever seemed to hear on the radio was Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, several bands had to wait in the wings to get heard. The Smashing Pumpkins were possibly too 'avant-garde', too psychedelic and too irritable to be radio-stars, and what do DJs and pluggers know anyway? Debut album "Gish" was quite an exceptional release, for its time, but the real breakthrough came with the 1993 follow-up, "Siamese Dream", jam-packed with solid rock songs with influences drawn from many quarters, even the dreaded maligned shoe-gazing scene. Give "Today" and "Cherub Rock" a listen and, 18 years later, they still sound fresh as a hippy's daisy.

"Siamese Dream" was actually one of five Top 10 albums issued by the band from the early '90s up until 2007, including the US #1, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness", "Adore" (which pre-empted the current fad of 'borrowing' '80s riffs, but done properly by Corgan and co) and "Machina", which features one of the best EVER opening songs to an album, "The Everlasting Gaze".

2011/12 sees the start of some serious Pumpkins' action, starting with a new album, "Oceania", the first phase of a serious reissue programme starting with those first two albums and the rarities set, "Pisces Iscargot" - plus a UK tour with their newest line-up.

It'll be the first set of British dates since 2008 and will start in Manchester on 11th November, followed by Glasgow, Newcastle, TWO shows in Brixton, Sheffield and finally, Birmingham on the 18th. We will have tickets for all shows on Friday morning at 10am, costing £37.50 for London, £35 elsewhere - with all shows expected to sell out.

Paul Pledger