TS: James Iha vs. Spiral Stairs

http://www.starla.org/articles/jamespk.htm

Q: LAST TIME YOU CRIED?

J: "It was actually the last time we were in Britain. There was this photographer who made a racial joke towards me and I just wanted to fucking kill the guy. It was a combination of the remark and jet lag, and it made me cry. I hope I never see the asshole again. It was kinda funny what he said, but it was still a total put-down. He was positioning us in this doorway, and he goes, 'Hey DJ Towa Towa, move over there!'. Towa Towa is like the guy from Deee-Lite. I just thought 'you fucking asshole, I'm not posing for pictures with you!'. So I cried. Just for a second. Then I thought, 'I must rock'."

i have to vote spiral stairs for kennel district etc but i admire Tinted Windows in theory

So I cried. Just for a second. Then I thought, 'I must rock'.

this is a thing of beauty

so amazing, I can't get over it, james rules

lol DJ Towa Towa

I like all of stairs' pavement songs, i like zero james iha songs, but i love the way he sings "unchain unchayyyyyyn" on "bury me".

Think the difference is Billy wouldn't have cried for just a second

my fav james

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f13NRjHgdbw

Iha's solo record is embarrassingly bad. And i do love Spiral Stairs a lot, too. But Iha? Too cool for skool.

so how much did Iha really play on Pumpkins records?

basically nothing on Gish and Siamese Dream, he plays on almost every song on Mellon Collie, plays on maybe 3/4 of Adore, less than half on Machina.

I think he played more than people give him credit for. MCIS is shady: Billy prob played 90% of everything on that. But he played those live, and very good as well, too.

Nothing on Gish and SD? C'mon, surely that can't be. Xp

if it's an E-bow part or it's going thru a wah-wah or heavy delay, it's James

it's the reverse: on the first two records, it was Butch Vig who made the judgement that James and D'arcy weren't proficient enough to record all of their parts. MCIS was a conscious effort by Corgan and producer Flood to make more a band-record. Most of the rhythm tracks on MCIS are full band in their practice space (Pumpkinland). James has lots of overdubs on MCIS that are distinctly his. Corgan and Iha's styles of playing and melodic ideas are very distinct and easy to tell apart. James is MIA on Gish and SD.

more of a*

@Spazz: I'll honestly take your word for it, even though I feel ashamed. I'll doxx myself as one of the first ppl on Listessa back in 1994, had a fan website a year later etc, but that was lol teenager. Who plays which parts on which songs? I haven't a clue. Though I do remember even Iha and d'Arcy didn't even really know which of their takes ended up on several albums.

They both have awful solo records but I think my vote inclines towards DJ Towa Towa.

World Clique is better than most of the Pumpkins' work, yeah

Did Iha solo much? Did he pick up more live than on record? Etc etc

http://36.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l5zoi4eN4G1qzcoa8o1_500.jpg

Hehe, that's on Vieuwphoria iirc? Great scene iirc

They all look amazing in that still, both individually and as a collection of humans

It's very weird to look how in their early years they looked like a 60's psychedelic tribute band and the next second they look like every other band from the 90s. Some of the Gish songs make me wonder what would have been of the band if they had continued on the 'psychedelic' route.

http://www.scentsandsubtlesounds.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/smash1_final.jpg

Was that a thing around the turn of the 90s? I remember the Posies and Redd Kross gear from 1990 ish

I swear, Jellyfish was one of the first new bands I saw once the decade turned over, and my first thought was

http://blu.stb.s-msn.com/i/53/F46719EFE61511BD01F934389E9AF.jpg

"Welp, guess I know what the 90s are going to look like."

if only

Andy Sturmer = early 70s James Taylor

Iha co-wrote Mayonaise which is arguably the best song on SD. Did Stairs write the best song on any Pavement albums?

also co-wrote Soma and I Am One

I don't really know much about spiral stairs and I guess he's alright but Iha is a class act. While Corgan would constantly bitch about every single thing around him (even calling James the worst person he's ever met which is just wrong on so many levels) James was always very private about the band's issues and seemed always chill.

Every smashing pumpkins' member is automatically likeable by simply putting up with Corgan's notorious tantrums.

SS had three really good-to-great Pavement songs: Kennel District, Date w/ Ikea and Painted Soldiers. the other few that made it to record never really did much for me. and despite being pretty much universally panned iiirc, his first solo deal had 4 or 5 really good songs. i think i tried to listen to that second PSOI record one time and just couldn't find anything worth giving a second spin

Arguably the toughest ILX poll ever, as I'm not certain who is more useless of these two.

I will always ride for this:

http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/The+Spaces+In+Between/1o9R3p?src=5

I may be one of 75 people who have spent time with all of SS's solo work, and some of it is okay, some of it cringeworthy. If dude's solo stuff packed the punch of the handful of songs he wrote for Pavement it'd be easy to support him. When that last album of his came out though it was so horrible I could barely play it twice.

http://www.last.fm/music/Pavement/_/Stub+Your+Toe

(This was a gem. Not on Youtube for some damn reason.)

I think Chamberlin deserves mention for sticking it out as long as he has, coming back and so on. Didn't have to.

Like he knew that for all those years SP would be dead in the water without him there

Billy Corgan is an undeniable creative force with kittens

wrong-ish thread

In the spirit of billy corgan, I am lobbying that he win all of his band mates' polls.

and make the threads about billy corgan

(but you are right, I posted in the wrong thread)

(and I guess you did too)

Stumbled upon the Tweedy episode of Austin City Limits this morn and thought of this thread. Now there's a Robin who left his Batman in the dust.

Farrar collaborated with Ben Gibbard (of the indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie) to create all of the music for the soundtrack for the 2009 documentary film One Fast Move or I'm Gone, about Jack Kerouac's time spent at Big Sur. The soundtrack was released on October 20, 2009.[1]

:/

i saw tweedy solo this year and he was awful, played the new record front to back and then butchered some wilco songs. voice was shot. horrible sound. farting fat insurance salesmen literally weeping the words to "i am trying to break your heart."

He was probably the same wise-ass I saw at the Wilco show in 2003 who kept yelling "CHICKAMAUGA!" between songs.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

http://i.imgur.com/Uu0tyKb.gif

I thought SS played a bigger part in pavement in the Slanted era, no? Was it really just SM that made all those cool sounds ? Couldn't be. There are two guitar parts there...

more Pavement b-side goodness from Spiral:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zcbzWunBo4

Iha is cool and a Soma co-write means the world to 17-year-old me. As for Spiral, this is pretty spot on:

SS had three really good-to-great Pavement songs: Kennel District, Date w/ Ikea and Painted Soldiers.

The rest of his stuff ranges from sketchy to pretty OK, but certainly reveals his limited range as a songwriter.

But, I mean ... Kennel District. I don't know if it's the BEST song on WZ, but it's right there. It's probably my favorite.

Plus, wasn't it Scott who essentially shepherded the reissues and the reunion tour? If not for him, we might have none of it (the reunion show I saw was fucking terrific). If nothing else, he wins this poll for that.

Probably my first descent into posting on a messageboard regularly was the old pavement disc.server forum back in the late 90s. Always wonder what happened to one of the posters on there, Western Homes.

dunno if we're talking about the same thing but the old Pavement email list that started out of Stanford was definitely a formative thing in my life

In his 1993 book, "Assembling California", describing the geology of the state, John McPhee, begins at Mussel Rock. According to McPhee, "Mussel Rock is a horse. As any geologist will tell you, a horse is a displaced rock mass that has been caught between the walls of a fault. This one appears to have got away....Green seas slammed against it and turned white. It was not a small rock. It was like a three-story building,standing in the Pacific, with brown pelicans on the roof....After a five hundred-mile northwesterly drift through southern and central California, this was where the San Andreas Fault intersected the sea."[1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjqW-NfCmcA

Always wonder what happened to one of the posters on there, Western Homes.

huh yeah I remember that guy

Your Western Homes is not forgotten.

I saw him posting in a friend's fb comments recently, still going by that name.

C'mon, this was good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kthv6a702o

Spiral's solo albums sound like Spiral. that really says it all.

KANNBERG