The Smashing Pumpkins will release a deluxe reissue of their 1995 album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness in celebration of its 30th anniversary.
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was originally released Oct. 23, 1995 as the follow-up to the band’s 1993 breakthrough album, Siamese Dream. The double, 28-track album featured a number of the band’s biggest hits including “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” “1979,” “Zero,” “Tonight, Tonight” and “Thirty-Three.” It was also the last Smashing Pumpkins album to include the original lineup of singer/guitarist Billy Corgan, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, guitarist James Iha and bassist D’arcy Wretzky.
The expanded set features the original track list accompanied by over 80 minutes of previously unreleased live recordings from the Pumpkins’ 1996 tour, and will be released in various configurations including a new, four-CD set, as well as a digital version and as a six-LP vinyl box set (accompanied by a hardcover book of new liner notes written by frontman Billy Corgan). Included in the expanded set is a live version of the song “Geek USA” performed during a tour stop in San Diego on Jan. 30, 1996; take a listen: HERE.
Corgan said in a statement: “Unearthing these live recordings from the original lineup’s true, last large-scale tour was a labor of love, and for me certainly a bittersweet as once we blew apart in 1996, we were never quite the same: be it emotionally, or spiritually. Thankfully, I can say this as the band is now enjoying our greatest public success since that time, and one can hear in these tapes the raw power that such nascent faith afforded us, then, and the will and wisdom to persevere that followed.”
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (30th Anniversary) is due out Nov. 21; preorder: HERE.
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