Just when you thought Billy Corgan had reached the peak of self-absorption comes the news that he is releasing a vinyl box set of an eight-hour ambient set he performed live in a tea shop in 2014.
The Simpsons writers couldn’t come up with a better parody of Corgan, who balances a love of showy American wrestling with a penchant for the mystic. The set – which I must stress again, went for eight hours – was inspired by Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, was performed at Corgan’s own Chicago tea shop, Madame ZuZu’s, and had an audience of only 40 people.
Two-and-a-half years after the March 2014 performance, you can now buy a five-vinyl set comprising the entire thing, but it will set you back a cool $375 – or $507AUD.
The box is limited to 500 copies, and includes a number of other treats, such as lithographs from artist Linda Strawberry (who sounds straight out of the Warhol Factory), a mini Stylophone synthesizer (the instrument Corgan performed most of the epic set on) and a black trucker hat emblazoned with WPC, or William Patrick Corgan, which would have been a much better name for his wrestling association.
You can order the boxset here – for all the jokes, investors could probably make a mint from selling this in 20 years – and watch the entire set below. Oh, and here’s what the trucker hat looks like.
