Sorry for the gimmicky title, Billy, but, you gotta admit, that was one hell of a tune. So, why are you so irritated that fans want to hear it at a concert? They plunk down the money to watch The Smashing Pumpkins play live, and that money isn’t so easy to come by in a recession. Now, you’re pissed that your audience is pissed, and instead of trying to figure out why your fans, who have supported you for many years, might reasonably feel that way, you’re throwing a Piscean tantrum:

Smashing Pumpkins will no longer release albums, Billy Corgan announced this week. Enraged by fans asking for refunds at gigs, the Pumpkins frontman won’t even give them the chance to complain about new LPs. “Our primary function now is to be a singles band,” he said. “We have to come up with singles like 1979 … with songs that sound good on the radio.”

Corgan definitely hasn’t had much luck with his present Pumpkins model. He bewildered fans at recent gigs, preferring 20-minute guitar drones to classic tunes, spurning hits like “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” despite the nostalgic “20th Anniversary Tour” billing. Founding members James Iha and D’arcy Wretzky were nowhere to be seen, replaced with new musicians playing unfamiliar songs.

“Calling it a 20th anniversary tour, people expected greatest hits,” Corgan admitted this week to the Chicago Tribune. “[But] we’re not the retirement band … We didn’t come back for the cash – we came back to be great again.”

Uh, if you don’t want to lower yourself to playing your old tunes, then stop calling yourselves “The Smashing Pumpkins” and change your band name. Either that, or make like Trent Reznor–figure out how to compromise and adapt to your audience’s evolving (or, as the case may be, devolving) tastes. Instead, you’re resorting to the exact sort of “cliché” that, in the past, you’ve always vocalized your distaste for and are now taking a split-the-baby approach:

In this climate, Corgan insisted, “there is no point” to making albums. “People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest. The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance, and do the arty track to set up the single? It’s done.”

Instead of releasing blockbuster albums and playing arena gigs, Corgan vowed to “go small.” “We’ll be like a new band that can’t rely on old gimmicks … We will crack the egg like we did in 1992. without doing something embarrassing like working with Timbaland. We will find how to do our thing and make it work.”

Go small? Yo, Corgan. That’s simply not possible with an ego the size of yours, which is part of how you became a rock star in the first place. Further, nothing about you, Billy Corgan, could, in any manner, be described as Lilliputian, and yeah, I’ve heard stories, if you know what I mean.