Preview: Smashing Pumpkins in concert

Billy's half-union

What a difference a decade makes. The ‘90s saw Chicago’s best band emerge as one of rock’s biggest groups and Head Weirdo Billy Corgan as the personification of young angst unleashed through loud guitars and angry sentiments. With grunge ceding its throne to nu-metal at the end of the decade, it seemed sadly fitting that the group would break up in 2000. After a string of awful solo albums and side projects, Corgan quasi-reformed the group in 2007, reuniting with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin but failing to find the love with the band's other original members. Still, this latest incarnation of the Pumpkins has set out on a 20th anniverary tour of the band's founding. Metromix was there when it made an early stop at the United Palace Theatre in New York.