I’ve been spending a lot of time with The Smashing Pumpkins’ music recently. To be more specific, that of their first ‘run’. You know, that glorious period captured on Rotten Apples from 1991 thru 2000. My wife – in true enabler fashion – got a bit trigger happy in Rough Trade last year when she saw the Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness box and, with a couple of purchases since their albums to that point now sit in my record collection and indulged in a plenty.
Never knowingly non-grandiose, there was always something different about Smashing Pumpkins that stood them apart from the pack in that golden era of alt. rock in the early nineties. There’s wasn’t the raw angst of those bands hailing from the Pacific North West, instead they proffered a more richly layered and often, well, fucking gorgeous sound propelled by the distinctive voice and brilliant guitar work of Billy Corgan. The rest of the band – James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlain and D’arcy Wretzky – always looked cool as hell while Corgan maintained the look of someone apart. I was chatting about the band this weekend with the owner of my record store of choice and he maintains that Billy, while alway a bit weird, went full-on knobhead when he shaved off his hair. I think he has a point.
So, harkening back to a time when he was just a bit of a pretentious control-freak rather than full-on David Icke supporting lunatic, I thought I’d drop five examples of tunes from that period they could do no wrong while steering clear of the obvious, but still great, choices of ‘Today’, ‘Tonight, Tonight’, ‘Disarm’ etc. It’s also worth pointing out first that ‘Mayonaise’ remains the single best thing they’ve put to tape but having already blogged about that, I won’t do so again here.
Bury Me
First album Gish is full of absolute belters of which ‘Bury Me’ is a great example of the band’s harder side – delivering pummelling riffs that would be at home on a Soundgarden album underpinned with Corgan’s innate ability to unleash a guitar solo and drop down to a nagging melody and expansiveness of sound inside of four and a half minutes.
Drown
Eight and a bit minutes of brilliance complete with feedback and an E-Bow solo, on an already unimpeachable collection, ‘Drown’ felt like an outlier then on the Seattle-focused Singles soundtrack and still feels like one today in the same way as Paul Westerberg’s cuts. It is, however, a massive early highlight. It was written after Gish and serves as a bridge between that album and their next. Due to label politics – Alice In Chains etc were on Epic as was the soundtrack – it was never released as a single despite radio love. Second only to Mayoinaise for me.
Soma
A rare Corgan / Iha co-write, ‘Soma’ is the centrepiece of Siamese Dream – a six and a half minute song that manages to encapsulate every characteristic of the band’s sound, managing to move from the tender to ferocious with a dynamic few could muster.
Starla
They’d only released two studio album when Pisces Iscariot arrived in 1994 as a collection of B-sides and previously unreleased songs to demonstrate that The Smashing Pumpkins had tunes to spare before we even knew what 1995 would bring. With songs that are almost as strong as those released as many already released, Pisces Iscariot is that rarest of things – an ‘odds and sods’ album that’s nearly essential. ‘Starla’ is an 11-minute epic that should be entered as evidence that Corgan was one of the era’s greatest rock guitarists.
Muzzle
How to choose a song from the behemoth that is Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness? A 28 song double album with very little filler… One of the most ambitious and indulgent albums out there, a slab of great music that’s stocked to folds with tunes songs including ‘Tonight, Tonight’, ‘1979’, ‘Zero’, ‘Bullet with Butterfly Wings’, ‘Thirty Three’, ‘Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans’….. well, I really like ‘Muzzle’ so let’s go with that.
Mumbling About... 
It turns out we are not entirely wankers over here
12 smart people made the only correct call. A very satisfying bit of news to wake up to. Our turn in a little over a month
The right-wing on Twitter have lost their shit. I am there to tell them to kiss my ass.
I can only image. It’s a ‘rigged trial’ right? Despite it being a jury’s decision based on evidence and arguments also provided by the Orange One’s legal team?
We now have an imperial presidency and France is under the spell of a bunch of right-wing racists. What the hell is going on?
Well, thankfully (ish) the right in France fell to third in the run-off but the ridiculous state of their government is beyond words.
Aside from the fact that Macron (don’t even get me started) called for the election when nobody else in Europe panicked as much – the left coalition that won most seats is itself a fractious one and that no party has an overall majority means they’ve got a long period of twattery ahead of them as a country where it’s gonna be a struggle to get any legislation passed – imagine the House or Senate being made up of three parties each of which are as polarised as the Dems and Republicans.
I watched with horror the Supreme Court’s ruling and am at loss for words. The thing that has stuck with me was a commentator’s question of ‘imagine if another country’s president were given immunity by a court he’d populated? What would America have said about that?’
The right have seemingly gained a firm stronghold in Europe just as we in the UK have given the centre-left an majority. Very strange times
The French have well and truly ‘screwed the pooch.’ (Look THAT one up if you don’t know it.) Sounds like they’re descending into chaos just in time for the Olympics. At least they’ve held off the National Cunt for a while.
The only explanation for the Supreme Court’s decision is that their vision of America is shared with Trump’s which is an all-white, right-wing quasi-fascist oligarchy. They are hell-bent to pursue their agenda as they are accountable to no one. Our hope is that a Democratic president will replace a couple of those fascists with moderates. Maybe then the Dem president can get another immunity case up there and reverse it.
As to Biden, he had the worst debate in the history of mankind. He had one thing to do and that was to prove he has not lost it. He failed miserably and I knew it within two minutes. He is now in denial and Congress is screaming for his head. Despite all that, he still has a better shot than anyone. Kamala Harris has two things going against her in this country – Black and Female. If Trump gets back in, his first term will look like a picnic in comparison and we will be more like Hungary.
All that said, are you lot happy? You’ve (for now) gotten rid of the party of Thatcher (and dare I say Churchill). Enjoy it while you can till everybody realizes what’s wrong with it and goes back to the Conservatives
This result was a long time coming and yes, I think the country is breathing a much-needed sigh of relief.
I take election days off as my son’s school is one used as a polling station. This year while I was out and about I saw more people queuing to vote than ever before and there was a real sense of optimism and joy in the air as it was clear the Nasty Party were on the way out. It’s reminiscent of ’97’s landslide only this time the Tories have been reduced to their lowest numbers ever.
It’s not going to be an overnight change – it can’t be – but there’s a definite sense of national renewal.
We are all biting our nails over here awaiting the November election. We have gotten to the point where each side believes the other will destroy democracy. Since I have seen zero evidence of this on the Democratic side and conversely, the Orange Felon would like to tear up the Constitution and staff the “deep state” with loyalists. I think I know which party is anti-democratic. And so while there is no rioting in the streets over here or demonstrable Gaza-like suffering, we are in deep shit and everything you read is true. We are potentially living a nightmare that would literally cause some people to flee this country in fear. So much for the American experiment. Any chance you could take us back?
I think the official line is that individual cases will be examined on their own merit but on a national level the warranty has been voided by abuse.
The fact that a 76 year old convicted felon and rapist is suggesting that an 81 year old is too old and unfit to govern is staggering. That these are your only choices (excluding that nutjob who’s defaming his family legacy) is even more of a shocker. From the outside you’re in the middle of a shit sandwich.
Yes, with British understatement, I will say we are a bit perturbed, and the majority of us would prefer two other candidates. But as someone here said, I would vote for Biden’s head in a jar of blue liquid over Trump.
“I fear that I’m ordinary, just like everyone” is a pretty misguided line right? Like it’s not something that Billy Corgan really needs to worry about.
I’ve never heard ‘Drown’ before – it’s a shame it’s not on Pisces Iscariot.
I’m just the right age to have SP-obsessed friends. One played at least one Pumpkins song every day for about three years.
I’d have to wonder if it was ironic though I’m never sure with BC if it’s something he’s able to embrace as a concept.
Drown is absolutely wonderful but with one massive 11 minute plus song already on Pisces Iscariot it might have been a bit too much for the wax
Yeah, I’m not sure if self-awareness is his strong suit. But he was crazy prolific and brilliant for a while there in the 1990s.
Liz Truss comes over here and calls Biden a weak president? Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t this cunt last five minutes as PM? Less time than a fucking cabbage or something? What fucking balls.
Vance gets the nod as running mate then calls us a muslim state?! Where does he get the chutzpah.
These fucking gammons are all welcome to each other. Liz Truss tanked the economy in her short(est) time as a PM. Now she’s not even an MP you can expect her to use the free time she has appealing to the Right before interest in her inevitably dwindles
Vance once referred to Trump as Hitler. But like the rest of the spineless Republicans he got in the train that would take him to power. Frankly if a bomb dropped on the Republican convention the only thing you’d lose is a building.
Never a dull moment in US politics these days
Yes, we are able to squeeze a year’s worth of news into a week. Harris’ sudden ascendancy has given a lot of us hope. But then, so did Hillary Clinton on the longest election night of my life. This upcoming election is a steel cage death match.
It’s hard to watch from the outside, I can only imagine the torture of doing so from within.
Shall I ready the annex?
Not just yet. Hope for the best; prepare for the worst. We’ll see after the election in November. I’ve been reading about the Blitz in London when you lot lived in the Tube. I’m prepared to do that if it comes to that.
These days you’d struggle to get an ounce of kip with all the noise down there. How’s the barometer over there since Harris’ VP pick and the roll-out of the ‘just weird’ tag?
The ‘weird’ thing has strangely taken off and yet it sounds stupid to me. Ironically her pick, Wall, is the guy who said it. We are actually all pretty excited. Harris had brought some enthusiasm to the party.
At the very least we don’t have a bunch of right-wing arseholes running around burning down migrant lodging. What the fuck is up with that?
I’m guessing it’s playing them at their own game – the fact that this is a colostomy bag that’s facing criminal charges, has been found guilty of fraud and rape as well as having been impeached twice doesn’t seem to have had any impact as an attack.
Don’t even get me started…. some utter piece of shit stain Far Right fuckstick who is keeping out of the country to evade justice as long as he can, spread the dog-whistle lie that the person behind a knife attack on children was an illegal immigrant recently arrived on a boat.