OK, Corgan..enough.

[The Curmudgeon]

When it comes to slavishly following certain bands and buying everything they do, certain bands are more rewarding than others, filling their singles with bonus tracks (Ash, Manic Street Preachers) rather than pointless remixes or live tracks (Bowie, R.E.M).

Thankfully, the Smashing Pumpkins are of the latter, and Corgan seems determined to get as much music to his fans any way possible. You think Prince is prolific? He is, but a lot of that music never sees the light of day. Corgan on the other hand? Check this out;

Alongside their canon 9 studio albums and 42 singles, they've also released

4 live albums
A reissue of their first album Gish, with an 18 track bonus disc.
A reissue of their second album, with an 18 track bonus disc.
A reissue of Pisces Iscariot, a b-side and unreleased track compilation, with a 17 track bonus disc.
A reissue of their third album, Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, with 64 bonus tracks.
A companion album to their fifth album Machina (this being Machina II) that remains unreleased but is getting the bonus disc reissue treatment this year.
A greatest hits album with a, you guessed it, 16 track bonus disc.
The Aeroplane Flies High, a box set of the Mellon Collie singles, with extra tracks (a 2 track single became a six track EP).
5 separate EP's.
A reissue of the Aeroplane Flies High box set with 90(!) bonus tracks
Or the iTunes only "B-Sides and Rarities" collection of 114 tracks.

Now I'm not saying all these tracks are new songs. They're not, a lot of them are alternate cuts, extended mixes etc. question is - is there anyone who really wants to hear this stuff other than Corgan himself? Even a completist nut like myself is tapping out here.

I get the idea that Corgan wants everything to be heard, that nothing goes to waste or gets left forgotten in the studio archives.

But is he in danger of over saturating his fan base and releasing just too much music? Should some record label just say "NO" to this guy? What do you think?

[trashcanman]

I guess it depends on the quality. If it's solid gold and the fans keep on buying it and are happy with it, then no reason to stop. The pricing is a bit excessive, which has kept me away so far, but overall I think something like this is really cool for the hardcore fans. It might be good for him to release all of the bonus material in a boxed set unto itself like Sublime did so that fans don't have to rebuy all of the albums, though.

[The Curmudgeon]

I've found the Gish and Siamese Dream re-issues to be reasonably priced, but the Mellon Collie one is just too expensive to consider for a double-dip.

That's actually a really good idea about the bonus only box set. What did Sublime do?

[trashcanman]

Well, they actually had more unreleased material than they had actual albums so rather than trying to cram it onto reissues, they just released a big boxed set of all of it and even included a great DVD with a lot of unreleased early videos and live footage. I'd very much prefer that route since usually I'm loathe to pay double to purchase the same album I already bought just to hear the cast-off tracks.