I’ve spent the last two days searching for these, so, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been looking for them.
For the uninitiated, The Smashing Pumpkins have decided to release their last album, Machina II/Friends and Enemies of Modern Music, outside of their record company (Virgin, in the USA), via 25 copies distributed to select fans, who were free to distribute them via mp3 online. This is all 100% legal.
This is the first site I’ve found that has all 25 of the mp3s, in rather high (192kb/s) quality.
More information about this release can be found here.
[hijacking my own thread]
BTW, you wouldn’t happen to be the same Wonko the Sane that used to be on the Rush mailing list, The National Midnight Star? Or, is “Wonko the Sane” a reference to something that someone else used, and eludes me?
[/hijacking my own thread]
Yeah, I’t up. I’m presently downloading the first track. It’s so cool to see a band embrace the MP3 format!
Montfort, I was totally unaware of this, but I’m only a casual Pumpkins fan. Thanks for the info and the link.
Also, I checked FTP sites for these tracks on http://www.oth.net. There are tons of sites, but they’re all trade or ratio, so I’m using your link. Thanks again!
Gatsby, I’m a slightly casual Pumpkins fan, myself, but I was listening to Machina (the first one) in the car over the weekend and really liked it. Then, I saw something on Yahoo about this “last album” and went a-looking for it.
You’re welcome. I figured I wasn’t the only one interested.
The Pumpkins are one of my favorite bands, actually, but I wasn’t aware of this.
I’ve seen the band in concert several times, including a very small club date at St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit just before Machina came out, only like 900-1000 people.
Sorry to see them breaking up, but I’m sure the solo stuff will keep coming.
But as the anti-computer-geek here (who doesn’t even have a sound or video card for his computer), I have my work cut out for me to get this last album.
Somebody I know somewhere has to be able to download this for me and burn me a CD or two. I’ll get to work on it.
For the record, the 25 tracks make up about 92 minutes, or 12 minutes too long for a single 80 minute CD. So, you’re going to end up with 2 short CDs, which can be neatly broken down by how the Pumpkins originally released them: one 10" record, and then another set of 3 single 7"ers.
Whoooooeee! you are the third person to mistake me for another Wonko The Sane. (all three were different wonkos.)
Wonko The Sane is a minor character in the fourth book of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. It’s an obscure, but not that unusual name for netizens.
Ahh, maybe I should re-read those books one of these days. I last read them in 7th grade, about fifteen years ago, back when there were only four books in the trilogy.