Just two posts yet more than two months (sorry) ago I spoke of the Smashing Pumpkins and muttered something about Pumpkins Gold and how that might be worthy of a blog on its own. So let’s see…

The thing is SP have never been one of those bands I’d cite as among my favourites and yet there’s no questioning their quality or the fact that I like them: I do have all their albums and a couple of singles (they’re not one, in my admittedly limited experience, for b-sides of value) and toyed with tickets to see them earlier this year – except it wasn’t ‘them’ it was Billy & The New Kids so I demurred. They’re one of those bands that I’ll be sat around listening to music and when – say – the chiming opening of Today comes on I’ll think “fuck, that’s a good song” and “God, they’ve done some really awesome stuff, I should listen to Siamese Dream again…” or even “I reckon I should dig out Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness some time soon…” (strangely enough – for a non ‘fan’- I got mine when it was first released and it still has the handwritten price tag from a now defunct independent record shop where I got so many good albums upon its somewhat battered and tatty case). But then I don’t.

Instead I’ll go to that great catalog of music collections iTunes and play tracks at a time or in clusters – mixing tracks regardless of album or year like the Rotten Apples that never was. Accordingly I’ll use that as my guide for those Smashing Pumpkins tracks I consider Gold enough to warrant continual listens as based on their play count – and, yes, I know: this doesn’t include the number of times I’ve ensured various offices have heard Mayonnaise via spotify or the multiple times I’ve played Siamese Dream in full in the car. But it does help when it comes to compiling for this purpose, so those with the most plays which aren’t the already mentioned Mayonnaise (still the best):

Today

Who – of those that play – doesn’t remember learning to play the opening line to this on their guitar?

Song for A Son

One from the on-going song cycle thing (or, as I like to call it “we couldn’t get a label for this”) that is probably the best thing they’ve done to date since the original lineup went their own ways, in my mind. I love the scope of this, the so-close-to cheesiness mixed with earnest emotion. It’s like Old Pumpkins revisited.

Tonight, Tonight

Those strings were the first thing I heard of knowing it was Smashing Pumpkins. They’re still magnificent and this song deserved to be as big as it was and is.

1979

Another from Mellon… A great year (my wife’s birth year) and was also used nicely in, of all things, Clerks II. Chilled out greatness.

Drown

Given it’s placement in Singles this was, in all likelihood, the first SP song I heard, but I didn’t have a clue at that point. I was too busy enjoying Pearl Jam’s State of Love and Trust. Still am for that matter. Its inclusion on the oft-played-in-full Singles soundtrack is probably how this racked up so many plays really

Ava Adore

I know, it’s the most accessible track and the single so it could be considered a cop-out chosing this track but fuck off, this is my blog and I love this one.

Real Love, Stand Inside Your Love and That’s The Way (My Love Is) also seem to have a good strong play count but then that would turn this too much into a Best Of run-thru than a personal roundup but it should be said that Rotten Apples is one of those rare Greatest Hits releases that does stand as a decent compilation.