Billy Corgan 2021-12-22

December 22, 2021 – Highland Park, IL, US
Live performance by Billy Corgan
Artist	Billy Corgan
Date	December 22, 2021
Venue	Madame ZuZu's
Coordinates	42°11′11″N 87°48′2″W
Location	Highland Park, IL, US
Venue type	Teahouse
Capacity	300
Personnel	Billy Corgan
Prev. show archive.org Recordings Next show

On December 22, 2021, Billy Corgan did a live stream of Christmas songs on his private Instagram account. It was streamed after hours from Madame ZuZu's to no attendance apart from technical staff. The performance was recorded with Corgan stating he may later release it as part of the archival release series. A link to donate to PAWS Chicago was included with the live stream, which generated roughly $3,000 in donations.

Setlist

1. "Do You Hear What I Hear?" [Harry Simeone] (acoustic) (final performance)
2. "O Come, All Ye Faithful" [John Francis Wade] (acoustic) (final performance)
3. "What Child Is This?" [William Chatterton Dix / traditional] (abandoned) (acoustic) (only performance)
4. "What Child Is This?" [William Chatterton Dix / traditional] (acoustic) (only performance)
5. "Evergreen" (acoustic) 
6. "Merry Christmas Waltz" [Gene Autry] (acoustic) (only performance)
7. "O Tannenbaum" [Ernst Anschütz / traditional] (acoustic) (final performance)
8. "Silver Bells" [Jay Livingston / Ray Evans] (acoustic) 
9. "The Magi and the Shiny Bright" (acoustic) (final performance)
10. "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" [traditional] (acoustic) 
11. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" [Bing Crosby] (abandoned) (acoustic) (final performance)
12. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" [Bing Crosby] (acoustic) (final performance)
13. "Silent Night" [Franz Xaver Gruber / Joseph Mohr] (acoustic) 

Banter

BC: Welcome to the 2021 Corgan family Christmas spectacular. There's no Corgan family. They're all at home making dinner but thank you very much for joining me on this live special. I think this is the first time I've ever done a live thing like this, so um, thank you for inspiring it. I got to thinking after I did a few shows here at Madame ZuZu's that I wanted to share with you, um, no strings attached. I wanted to share with you the spirit of Christmas. I'll talk about what's been going on with me lately in a few songs or so, but what's most important is that you're here and that we're here together. To share in the spirit of Christmas, I want to play for you some of my favorite Christmas songs, which for historical or biographical context, I started preparing a few years ago as we were working on a Smashing Pumpkins Christmas album, which never really got off the ground, but we had sort of prepared these materials. And so I went back to those and found that I really liked what we were doing, and I'm still hopeful that at some point we can do something, so.... I was actually talking to Jimmy Chamberlin the other day about how we would actually figure out how to, heh, record these at some point without it taking six months in the middle of the summer. Anyway, that's for another day. I hope you're warm, wherever you are. I hope you're getting ready for the Christmas season, the holiday season, everyone of every faith, every background, I hope this is a special time for you and that you're with your loved ones. And um, oh, uh, one quick thing: I've added PAWS Chicago to a charitable function here. I see we've already raised a little bit of money with some donations. And uh, and I don't mean to say little bit, I'm in awe of anybody donating, thank you, every dollar counts, PAWS Chicago. If you don't know, for those of who you would maybe be outside the States, PAWS Chicago is a no-kill shelter here in the Chicago area, I've worked with them for over ten years. It's our favorite charity. We're very close to the people who run the charity. My first cats that I got way back when -- 20 years ago or so -- were from PAWS when it was just a small little storefront, now it’s in this massive operation, and it's a no-kill shelter, and the -– other than when animals are at the end of their life or they've gone, you know, mad, unfortunately as it does happen sometimes, they'll do everything in their power to place these animals with a loving home, so thank you to everyone donating. Every penny counts, every dollar counts, and for those of you who are having a hard time, I realize this is a really hard time for many people, there's lot of issues going on with the economy slash inflation, so please, I want you here, please don't feel any obligation to donate. This is my gift to you and I hope you receive it as such, and to those of you who donated, thank you, and for those you can't, just...being here is part of that spirit. And I know the PAWS family very well and the fact that they know that you're here in support of PAWS Chicago, even in spirit, means the world to them. So thank you to everybody for being here. Hope you have a wonderful time. I'll talk a little bit between songs; for the most part, I'm just going to play some songs. And for those of you who are time conscious, it's probably going to be about an hour or so, so have a great time. The microphone, which is not obviously connected to that (points at camera) is because I figured I might as well record. So even though I'm here at ZuZu's, we've got a little bit of a recording setup to record, and hopefully one day it could be an archival release in the future for the Smashing Pumpkins archives. So anyway, merry Christmas, happy holidays to everyone, and please sit back and enjoy, and I'll talk to you as we go.
Do You Hear What I Hear?
O Come, All Ye Faithful
BC: Thank you. I'm saying thank you, there's no applause, but it's in my mind, heh heh heh heh. Hope you're having a good time.
What Child Is This? (abandoned during 2nd line)
BC: God dang it! I keep messing up this song.
What Child Is This?
BC: (grunts)! I keep messing that song up. ... So when I was playing here the other night at ZuZu's, I'll give you the same introduction that I gave then on this song. This is a song that I wrote for the Pumpkins Christmas album. It's called Evergreen and it's a few years old. And uh, I guess this will be the third time I've played it public. Hope you like it. Every time I play it, I really feel the spirit, so I'm very grateful to have written this and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Evergreen
BC: (adjusts mic) Had a mic attack. Hey Nick, the mic is falling. Heh heh heh heh heh heh. Pro show, as we would say in the Pumpkins. Now this next song...is a song by the singer of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", Gene Autry, and I believe he wrote this song, I should know better. Um, if somebody wants to fact check me on that. (tuning guitar) Sorry to tune. (sighs). As I oftentimes say in the studio, I look forward to the day I never have to tune a guitar again. We're here in Chicago obviously, if you haven't figured that one out yet. Pretty dry up here. To those of you in the southern hemisphere like my friends in Australia and New Zealand, heh, (laughing) enjoy the summer.
Merry Christmas Waltz
BC: Got it. So thanks so much to everybody that's donated so far to PAWS Chicago. It's an amazing charity, so I can't thank you enough. Now when I introduced this next song here at ZuZu's for the Christmas Corgan show spectacular, um, I will repeat my introduction for you since you're all here. That was when I was a little kid many many moons ago, I used to think this song was really stupid. I just didn't get it. Who would write a song about a Christmas tree? And uh, here I am, many many moons later, playing you this Christmas song, (laughing) I actually like it. And the first night I explained the story, after I finished the song there was this kind of (slow clap), this kind of applause, like they obviously didn't like this song much either. But um, the second night I told the same story and at the end, the song got standing ovation, so, heh, wherever you are, heh, (laughing) may you stand for this one as well.
O Tannenbaum
BC: Back to tuning. So this uh, this here song...I used to sing when I was in choir in high school. I have a distinct memory of playing this –- not playing, singing this song, you know, in the bleachers with a 60 voice choir. I guess it would have been at Glenbard North, Carol Stream, Illinois circa 1983 or ‘84. And uh, it certainly is probably my favorite Christmas song. (tuning guitar) If we ever get to it.
Silver Bells
BC: Thank you again to everybody donating to PAWS. Really appreciate it. And to those of you that are hurting, and uh, you’ve had a hard year and...yeah, just praying for you and hang in there. And uh, just know that life, you know, is about the real things, you know, love and togetherness and family and good friends, good times. So I hope this is a good time for you. So this song, when I was preparing for this show, found this song kind of in amongst my stuff. And I’d kinda forgotten that -– forgotten that I’d written this song. And what's weird about it is there's a video of me playing the song, (laughing) I think even in the same shirt. And uh, I can't tell you when I wrote it. Could be three Christmases ago, be four Christmases ago, could be two, I honestly don't remember. ‘Cause probably about December 24th, I woulda gotten inspired and written the song after the kids go on to bed kind of thing, and woke up the next morning and just moved on, so I really like this a lot. And uh...yeah, I hope you like it. It's called The Magi and Shiny Bright.
The Magi and the Shiny Bright
BC: Okay. And for those of you who want to share this, um, obviously you have to follow me to see most of this. We're going to share a couple of these on the Pumpkins socials. But those of you who might want to share this with friends that you know who follow me, I'll leave this show up for about 24 hours. So please feel free, as uh, I obviously want as many people to see it, even though that I'm banned. Um, heh heh. Heh heh. Anyway, no complaining here, only happy stuff.
God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen
BC: Alright. We're almost at the end. Hope you had a good time. Kind of interesting playing without an audience, I mean, you're here (gestures at camera), but nobody else is here. In fact, even the people running the camera and the audio have left. So it's just us. So on a sad note, I'm sure most of you know -- but not everybody knows ‘cause I keep getting silly messages, which tells me that they don't know -- that my father passed away a few days ago at the age of 74. He was at home and he collapsed and had a massive heart attack and was pronounced dead on the scene and luckily was revived and lived a few more hours, but when he passed, he was being transported to another hospital via helicopter, so I love the image of my father passing off to heaven already above the earth, so...to those of you who sent me messages, I've literally received probably a thousand messages from people like you, and people in the music industry, people in the wrestling industry, people who don't even know me, um, it's been pretty impressive, and so I feel very very loved and supported, so thank you very much if you have sent me a message. And uh, if you didn't know, I understand, it's a crazy world. (laughing) It's funny to get to see, heh heh, when you're in that mood, you know, like, gettin’ these messages and you're obviously thinking a lot about your family and stuff like that. And then I'll open a message and I’m thinking, you know, it's...nicely another message like, “Oh, sorry to hear about your dad.” And it’ll be like, “Hey man, what solo, uh, (laughing) what pedal did you use on Soma?” Gotta love it. So just a couple more. And uh, to those of you who will be home for Christmas, I wish you the most happy and safe holiday. Please be careful; as you know, lots of people tend to imbibe, as we say, on the holidays, so please be careful if you're going to be on the roads. And uh, for those of you who can't make it home to your family, to our service members who are stationed overseas, stuff like that, I can only send you the best and I hope that this little show brings you a little closer to home.
I'll Be Home for Christmas (abandoned after a few seconds when noise from the nearby train can be heard)
BC: Ah, and here comes the train. Heh heh heh.
I'll Be Home for Christmas
BC: Okay, last song. Thanks again. We’ve raised almost -– we've raised $2,729.72. That's pretty amazing, thank you. If you knew how many puppies and kitties that'll save, you could blow your mind. Thank you so much. PAWS does cool stuff like...they have a van that goes into different communities and helps spay and neuter pets, which has really significantly driven down the stray population in Chicago, I think by something like 70 percent, it’s this crazy number. And uh, really reduced the number of animals that are gonna be euthanized in traditional shelters. So thank you again, it means a lot to my family. I know that Chloe -- although she isn't here –- is watching and criticizing me, just kidding. Heh heh heh heh. I'll get home and I'll be like –- I’ll get home and I’ll be like “Why does she keep stopping? Why are you complaining?” Heh heh heh.
Silent Night
BC: Merry Christmas everyone. Thank you.