Showing the grasp of the youth market that’s always been the musical-instrument industry’s forte, Fender announced yesterday that it will be issuing a Billy Corgan guitar. For our younger readers, Billy Corgan was the singer and songwriter of a band called the Smashing Pumpkins, who were popular until he went steampunk and made an album about a musician named Glass who talked to God and whose fans were called the Ghost Children. Then he was in a band called Zwan that definitely did not have God’s ear and began acting ever more strangely, to the point where even Homer Simpson might have taken back his praise for Corgan in the Simpsons‘ “Homerpalooza” episode: “You know, my kids think you’re the greatest. And thanks to your gloomy music, they’ve finally stopped dreaming of a future I can’t possibly provide.”

But now those of us who are as old as me (and, ahem, saw the Pumpkins play at Twisters in Richmond, Va., in 1991 (cough! wheeze!) can give our kids Billy Corgan guitars and say, Hey, here’s the tool of my generation, Generation X! And here’s his guitar!

(press release after the jump)
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For those of you keeping score: Tom Petty’s Super Bowl halftime show was enjoyable, though not Advanced. Mike Campbell’s last-scene of-Joe Dirt–like dreads, however? Completely Advanced.