Artist	Song
Hum	Winder
Catherine Wheel	Ursa Major Space Station
Hole	Celebrity Skin
Catherine	Whisper
Fountains of Wayne	Denise
Veruca Salt	Celebrate You
Pavement	Range Life
James Iha	Country Girl
Ivy	Back in Our Town
Red Red Meat	Roses
Tricky	Pumpkin
Filter	Cancer
Chainsaw Kittens	My Friend Delerium
The Frogs	Enter I

Comment:

The Pumpkins' web is one of insiders and outsiders, collaborators and mentors, producers and tourmates, friends and enemies. Corgan's strong personality has been the source of more than a few feuds and hard feelings. But the band also had a reputation for giving back and bringing others under their wing. And they had strong ties to their fellow Chicagoans.


"Winder" by Hum

"Winder" appears on Hum's "Electra 2000" album, released in 1993. The first 10 seconds lead the listener to believe it's going to be a cover of "I Am One." It's hard to imagine that this song wasn't based on, or inspired by, "I Am One." It has the same kind of hard-but-swinging rhythm section and a similar guitar attack. Hum formed a year or so after the Pumpkins and only about a two-hour drive away (Champaign-Urbana vs. Chicago). They also played gigs with the Pumpkins.


"Ursa Major Space Station" by Catherine Wheel

Catherine Wheel toured Belgium and Ghent with the Pumpkins in early '92, and lead singer Rob Dickinson later contributed vocals to the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex. "Ursa Major Space Station" comes from the 1993 album "Chrome."


"Celebrity Skin" by Hole


For starters, Billy Corgan and Courtney Love were friends and lovers before she became involved with Kurt Cobain. So their relationship is complicated and deeply rooted. Corgan and Cobain were born rivals: Both were intense, troubled men; both fronted rock bands that turned them into megastars; both were the writers, voices and public faces of those bands. They worked with the same producer, Butch Vig --- Nirvana for "Nevermind," the Pumpkins for "Gish" and "Siamese Dream" --- and those albums threw them together on the charts, on the radio, on MTV and seemingly everywhere else. Even astrology set Corgan and Cobain side by side, as Pisces, and Corgan is big on star signs. The Courtney Factor simply heightened it all.

In the October 2005 issue of Spin magazine, Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers reflected on a show in 1991 where Nirvana and Pearl Jam opened for them: "Smashing Pumpkins were supposed to play, too. We were coming to L.A. at the end of a long tour with them and Pearl Jam, and the promoter wanted us to get another band on the bill because we were going into a big arena. And when I suggested that we get Nirvana, Billy Corgan, who is a friend that I respect and admire, refused to play on the bill with Kurt Cobain. They had issues, having both romanced Courtney [Love]. And so Billy chose to take himself off the bill."

The Corgan-Love connection seems to come up every other year, the latest being reports last year that Corgan had moved into her Hollywood mansion while helping her write material for her next solo album. The extent of Corgan's contributions to Hole's "Celebrity Skin" album has been debated, but it's generally accepted that he, at the very least, co-wrote several songs.


"Whisper" by Catherine


Catherine certainly are one of the bands closer to the Pumpkins. The groups gigged together, shared a practice space in Chicago in the early '90s and, for a time, Corgan moved in with D'Arcy Wretzky and Kerry Brown, the drummer for Catherine. Brown and Wretzky later married, then divorced. Catherine toured with the Pumpkins and shared members in the just-for-fun band Starchildren. Catherine guitarist Mark Rew jammed with Corgan and James Iha in the pre-Pumpkins days. Rew became the chief singer-songwriter in Catherine in 1996, when founding members Neil Jendon and Jerome Brown left. "Whisper," off the band's final album, "Hot Saki & Bedtime Stories," sounds much like "Cherub Rock"-era Pumpkins, in no small part to the guitar pyrotechnics in the solo.

To read the rest for Volume VI, click here for the miscellaneous forum.
Many thanks to Barrydali for the final track.

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