TS: Billy Corgan vs. Stephen Malkmus

billy, duh

Malkmus: as singer, songwriter, guitarist. I don't care now, but laconic >>> vomiting on sleeve

I expect no one to agree

how is this even a thing? malkmus.

pavement suck

now

Malkmus by a million miles

don't care about his post-Pavement career at all but his catalog of Pavement songs is just more interesting than the album-and-a-half of decent material that Corgan mustered. Alfred otm about the laconic >>>>vomit-on-sleeve thing lol

I don't like Pavement as much now as I did 20 years ago, but I still think they're okay. Outside of Gish, I give no fucks about Smashing Pumpkins now and have long found Billy Corgan insufferable.

Malkmus by technicality.

stepping away from this thread forever because it's already making me mad and you people suck

I shouldn't have used this binary because stuff like "Appels and Oranjes" is as laconic as Pavement, and Malkmus could write solo "I had a cra gin and tonic/It wounded me," which as florid as an Corganerie.

* "I had a crap"

vomiting >>>>> laconic

malkmus is way dreamier. corgan is anti-dreamy.

the messiness and openness of Corgan's writing is much more moving and engaging to me than the coy, cold sarcasm and stoned wordplay of Malkmus. I love Crooked Rain and most of Wowee Zowee, and a handful of songs here and there, but stylistically and philosophically, Corgan takes it, because he makes music to believe in.

"corgan is anti-dreamy" whaaaa!!!!!!

instinctively I'm all for dying of repression than telling people shit. Plus, Malkmus is sexier playing guitar and looking the part.

Corgan is ugly.

i don't want to cause crut to burst into flames but smashing pumpkins lyrics are so dumb they make me want to die

xp Alfred 100% otm

Well this thread took a weird turn almost immediately.

ugly >>>> looking the part

Malkmus and Corgan have won and claimed their respective bases, so it's a draw.

damn alfred even in this pic?

http://plannedbanter.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/billy110.jpg

y'all don't understand. this is the core, the heart music

guys

the lyrics to "disarm"

what i choose is my choice
...
the killer in me is the killer in you

i realize typing out lyrics on a website is unfair but
yuck

"obscured" is way dreamy

nothing made me feel more alienated from my social cohort than the popularity of smashing pumpkins when i was in high school

both are shallow songwriters, although Corgan less willingly so (I doubt Malkmus would blanche at being told he was), but Corgan gets a pass for helping songwriters who understand shallowness-is-depth (e.g. Courtney Love) better than he.

I'm not making sense, so I'll just claim Malkmus' 'flash' had no chance of mainstream acceptance, while Corgan's eventually expired its half life.

Corgan looks like he suffered from halitosis to accompany his neurosis.

y'all don't understand. this is the core, the heart music

― bun b bag (crüt),

no idea what cores and hearts are

(asking for posts very much in character attention but hey)

Malkmus was always so mean to Spiral Stairs. But he never went on Alex Jones spouting paranoid bullshit, so him.

During the Pavement days, I always wished for more Spiral Stairs songs. Then Pavement broke up and we got Preston School of Industry and I was forced to eat my words. Malkmus knew the truth.

This is going to be one of those "the fight is so vicious because the stakes are so small" situations, isn't it.

i think this poll could literally change the world

Corgan takes it, because he makes music to believe in.

lol

I mean maybe if Billy had written a decent gospel song or something but c'mon now let's be serious

i feel like it is just obvious! i would vote for a day-old sandwich i left in my purse overnight over billy corgan! let alone malkmus, whom i love.

narcissism is not really a viable belief system unless your church only has one member: you

xp

"believe in me as i believe in you"

separate the artist from the art

i feel like it is just obvious! i would vote for a day-old sandwich i left in my purse overnight over billy corgan! let alone malkmus, whom i love.

― horseshoe,

Corgan:

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/62/d0/f9/62d0f9216a0097ff148d03c1c1b7f79e.jpg

Billy Corgan vs. Dave Mustaine

his narcissism is all over his art, is the problem

well one of the problems anyway

Alfred, you sure that spread isn't from another Billy- Crystal- in This Is Spinal Tap?

i feel like it is just obvious! i would vote for a day-old sandwich i left in my purse overnight over billy corgan!

― horseshoe, Monday, October 13, 2014 6:51 PM (

his narcissism is a feature not a bug

his narcissism is all over his art, is the problem

well one of the problems anyway

― Οὖτις, Monday, October 13, 2014 7:00 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

anymore than John Lennon or Kurt Cobain? probably less

I did like that one one-off of his that da croupier had a screen name after- Zwan.

Loved and still love both. Ranged Life's ~shots fired~ lyrics were traumatic at the time. For a minute or so, but still. Corgan quite literally grew up to be an insufferable dumbass, Malkmus became the awkward, quiet uncle who drinks a bit too much and you feel kind of sorry for at family reunions. Both shot to fame only to completely bomb after that. Corgan went all out berserk religion and wrestling style, Malkmus resigned to some "ok" noodling on his guitar being nothing better than a very poor man's Ted Leo-imitation.

Corgan sunk deeper, but at least he jumped the shark grotesquely and in an enjoyable/insufferable way. Malkmus just seems to try to disappear more and more, trying to be "witty" in the process, releasing mediocre albums every three years.

Voting Corgan. He tanked it but he tanked it good.

That one is actually not that bad, but the cage one is a bad idea wherever you look at it. It butchers the song, he looks and sounds like a tool and it's a bad ad. I don't see which audience would look at it and go: that's awesome dude!

the core audience, the heart audience

These two, though. They're a strong case for why aging sucks.

― Moka, Friday, October 17, 2014 3:43 PM (Yesterday)

i don't understand this.. Malkmus' music is consistently decent to good and the guy seems pretty healthy.. well-mosturized, at least.

last couple Jicks records are up there w/face the truth, their music is better than anything Thurston, Beck, or Lee Ranaldo have put out for years. And sure, rating Jicks albums is a subjective endeavor. But, shit, Malk's post-pavement output is as consistent as Starbucks. Can't say much for Billy Corgan, but yeah, Siamese Dream is awesome.

Billy Corgan > Beck > Milkymoose

TS: Pavement / Smashing Pumpkins

Ray Rogers: You've said that [your last album] Siamese Dream was born out of a lot of personal and band-related crises. What was the impetus for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness?

Billy Corgan:It was basically a big "fuck-off" to anyone who has doubted us as a band. In a positive way, I wanted to really embrace the notions of creativity, to just go as far out as we wanted to go and not get too hung up about the commercial aspects.

RR:What kinds of doubts are you talking about?

BC: Doubts about the band actually coming together to make a record. I wanted to squash all that like a bug.

James Iha: It's a double record-that just doesn't happen if people aren't together on every level.

RR:Billy, you got a lot a lot of criticism last time around for playing some of the guitar and bass parts [on Siamese Dream]. How did you react to that with this record?

BC: We worked out systems by which those things wouldn't happen this time. Nobody understands the scenario: We were under different pressures, different economic constraints. Not everybody moves as quickly as I do. James comes up with great ideas; it just takes him twice as long as it takes me. So I try not to penalize anybody for the speed at which they move.

JI: It doesn't really take me twice as long.

BC:It's a general comment.

DH: Well, yeah.

These two, though. They're a strong case for why aging sucks.

― Moka, Friday, October 17, 2014 3:43 PM (Yesterday)

i don't understand this.. Malkmus' music is consistently decent to good and the guy seems pretty healthy.. well-mosturized, at least.

last couple Jicks records are up there w/face the truth, their music is better than anything Thurston, Beck, or Lee Ranaldo have put out for years. And sure, rating Jicks albums is a subjective endeavor. But, shit, Malk's post-pavement output is as consistent as Starbucks. Can't say much for Billy Corgan, but yeah, Siamese Dream is awesome.

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Saturday, October 18, 2014 1:08 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh man, that new Pumpkins single. As a song it's whatever, but the production is so late-model CVS Bangers. It's on some Edwin McCain shit.

malkmus = boring uncle good at crossword
corgan = crazy cat lady

struck by a surface thought that it seems so incongruous pavement came out of suburban california, how do teenagers get into the fall or the replacements or w/e in stockton in the late 80s? record stores? hippie burnouts like gary young?

outic probably knows

college

yeah

or did SM & Spiral have a hs band (lakespeed?) doing that sort of stuff?

College radio, NME/MelodyMaker, bay area weirdos

The myth is that Pavement came out of central California. Malkmus only lived there sporadically during summer/holiday breaks from 1983 on (boarding school in Carpenteria before getting expelled, then Charlottesville, VA). He had been living in New York (with future Pavement member Bob Nasty and then-bandmate DC Berman) by the time the first single Slay Tracks was released.

the next Pumpkins record is called Monuments to an Elegy. feel like I am being personally trolled with this title

http://www.netphoria.org/wp-content/gallery/billy-corgan/bc20.jpg

Easy choice, this.

new smashing pumpkins single almost makes me wish i could switch my vote to malkmus

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted Corgan. Weirdo freakshow over Portland hipster in a rock band. Also, Zero will never not be amazing to sing along to in a car. As much as I think Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain album is as close to a perfect album as a rock band should hope for, singing "Emptiness is loneliness/ and loneliness is cleanliness/and cleanliness and godliness/ and God is Empty, just like Me" will be a joy that will amuse me well into my 70s.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Lol lotta votes!

a lot of incorrect votes

32 to be exact

The right guy won.

This is one of the biggest votecounts I've ever seen in an ILM poll. Not sure how I feel about that.

perfect.

oh wait, i was thinking of Billy Ocean. my bad.

malky got exactly 3 times more votes than corgy :(

plus 2

Do we even have 130 active users on this forum?

Malkmus had it way to easy. Corgan would even lose in a favorite member of the SP poll.

Too easy*

"Destroy the mind, destroy the body, but you cannot destroy the heart."

FWIW, I think this is the best lyric BC ever wrote. it'd be cool to see what y'all think is SM's best line.

probably my fave Malkmus lyric is from "I owned Corgan in that ILX poll / I'm not from Portland I'm from Charlottes-vee-ole"

while yes, corgan got less than a quarter of the votes, i think he should be very flattered 38 people here love him more than malkmus

woops, 32.

every one of those votes was from the heart. all the pro-malkmus votes were ironic.

i'm on a pisces, we pick up on those things

now let's do james iha vs spiral stairs

*i'm a pisces

there is not a person that doesn't have an opinion about this, is the point.

We should have a favorite member of the Smashing Pumpkins poll. I honestly don't think Corgan could even win that.

Moka: DO IT!

Ok. But there are three options for the poll:

Original members which would be - Iha, Corgan, D'Arcy and Chamberlin only.
All album members: Billy Corgan, Jeff Schroeder. James Iha, D'arcy Wretzky, Jimmy Chamberlin, Melissa Auf der Maur, Mike Byrne, Nicole Fiorentino.
All album members + touring members.

I think I'll go for the second option.

don't forget Tommy Lee lol

which one's the teenager that won that contest I vote for them

Yeah, agreed on the second option. Jonathan Melvoin rip :-/

Shit I forgot Tommy Lee.

Who is your favorite member of the Smashing Pumpkins?