"I Feel Like We Are The Real Deal"

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"We don't make music for people to take drugs to," says Billy Corgan, mastermind of the multi-platinum band Smashing Pumpkins. "We make music for people to live their life."

Singer-guitarist Corgan led the melodic, emotionally intense Smashing Pumpkins (Corgan, James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlin and D'Arcy), out of Chicago's insular indie scene to become last year's big alternative success story. He's been accused of being an egomaniac, self indulgent, depressed, an arena rock fan and a tyrant within his own band.

Indie releases from the Pumpkins sold way more than any other indie band. And, when the band's last album -- "Siamese Dream," their first for major label Virgin Records -- sold more than three and a half million copies in the U.S. alone (and was multi-platinum all over the world), the Pumpkins were branded politically incorrect within the bitchy, envious alternative rock community.

Corgan says he couldn't care less.

And so, with the release of the brand new, epic, adventurous, 28 song, double album "Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness," Corgan and his band of self-proclaimed "geeks" are aware that they've taken their indie-rock and psychedelic influences to a new level of bigtime showbiz.

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