Billy Corgan to Play Rumi-Inspired Jams at Tea Shop
What drinks tea, watches wrestling and composes jams about Rumi? Apparently Billy Corgan. Earlier this week, AMC revealed that it had picked up an “Untitled Billy Corgan Wrestling Project,” in which the Smashing Pumpkins frontman would appear in an unscripted show as the creative director for an indie wrestling company called Resistance Pro. Now Corgan has said he will be focusing his attention on a more peaceful pursuit, performing a set called Sunday With Rumi at his Madame ZuZu’s Tea Shop in Highland Park, Illinois on March 30th at the very un-rock & roll hour of 1 p.m., according to the shop’s website.
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The program for Sunday With Rumi consists of four “sonic impressions on poems by the great Sufi mystic.” The show is free but the tea shop is suggesting booking reservations. Madame ZuZu’s also posted a commercial-like video in which Corgan discusses his love of tea and why he has returned to drinking caffeine with regularity for the first time in a long time.
Last month, the great Pumpkin performed an eight-hour electronic jam on the theme of Siddhartha, author Herman Hesse’s 1922 novel about spiritual self-discovery, at the teahouse. That performance was billed as being “built by modern synthesis, on the fly.” He added, “Readings of the text go hand in hand with whatever is created.” The event attracted a crowd of about 40 people, according to the Chicago Tribune, and had a “modest” line out the door. Fans came and left throughout the eight-hour experience so that everyone could get a chance to hear it.