Smashing Pumpkins: Fresh Fruit or Rotten Veg?

I read a great thing in Gina Arnold's book "Kiss This" about how the Bullet With Butterfly Wings video was based around this painting of children trying to get out of being trapped in a coal mine or something, and how incredibly obnoxious it was that Billy Corgan would equate his angst with such horrendous suffering. I liked parts of "Siamese Dream", but I think one album of semi- romantic angst and mediocre prog-Sabbath guitar work is enough. So Dud, for sticking around too long, and for inexplicably blaming their failure on Britney.

'1979' is ok, but not as good as its title. Everything else is excrement.

.. then they started putting out shitty albums. I lost interest after Melon Collie. bloated wank. and his voice became ever-more- hideous. such sludge.. they'll be most useful in that regard for documenting very clearly a band just completely losing their artistic vision and soul. I've only heard 'Machina' once, but it was so lifeless...

that said, I'll list a few of their best rare tracks so that brave souls can attempt to get another perspective on the band. they did have a few obscure b-sides and such that won't likely turn up on any best hits collection. search for these on your favorite music- trading platform ..

* daughter - a rare demo from 1989 or so, just two minutes of ethereal guitar & singing

* siamese dream - the song, not the album. very lo-fi, scratchy acid folk piece

* pulseczar - feedback-drenched psychedelia. slightly twee, too.

* their cover of Depeche Mode's 'Never Let Me Down Again' - better than the original. very light touch, just guitar, bass, drums and for once not the 'soundwall' approach ... brings you up to an imagined peak, then lets you down ..

* their cover of 'Dancing in the Moonlight' - soft, acoustic. if you don't mind his voice, this is a great song.

* obscured - a slow, drifting rock song. spacey, but subdued. nice.

* smiley - slow, simple pop. his voice on the deep end for once.

* Eye - darkwave/synthpop song from the Lost Highway soundtrack, great if you like that sort of thing

* the Moby remix of '1979' - doesn't contain anything of the original song except for that skipping vocal 'tweee-ee' effect super- slowed down. the actual music itself isn't much like Moby's usual fare, especially not like 'Play' -- imagine if the Boards of Canada had a VERY bad trip. I love this song.

* Drown -- not the most rare Pumpkins song, it was on the Reality Bites soundtrack. 3 or so minutes of rock, then 4 of the best kind of guitar feedback drone, yumm..

* Starla - only if you're into guitar wankery. Corgan goes off for about 5 minutes, and most of it is actually pretty entertaining, if not exactly Fennesz..

gish, '89 demos, set the ray to jerry, cherry, obscured: classic i believe i speak for god album(s): dud everything else: i listened to it too much when i was 15

So, continuuing with my theory, if one were to just sort of cut and re-record, you'd probably have about two good albums out of all the b-sides, machina 1 & 2, and adore stuff out there, post-melon collie. Which is what, eight albums (including a double album) total? In less than 8 years? Sounds classic to me.

Or I could just say I like 1979 and a few of their other songs to sound hip.

Gish and Pisces Iscariot are also grate, and MCIS and Adore have a few nice songs (might as well join in on the "1979" praise here). Haven't heard anything off of Machina but I have a feeling I don't want to ;)

I'm afraid I must object--Moby's remix is horribly dull. It's essentially just Billy's vocals over a repetitive electro beat (and he doesn't even go to any lengths to actually change the order of the verses). I'm a big fan of Moby's early work, but I can't stand to listen to this.

Half-Classic/Half-Dud. And why wasn't "The End Is The Beginning Is The End" or whatever that Last-Pumpkins-Video-In-Pants Batman song was called on Greatest Hits?

And this is a bad thing? Excuse me, I have to listen to some Muslimgauze now.

And why wasn't "The End Is The Beginning Is The End" or whatever that Last-Pumpkins-Video-In-Pants Batman song was called on Greatest Hits?

I think everyone involved with that film removed it from their resume.

But the real reason I post here is merely to drop this bomb you can find posted at http://www.billycorgan.com/

You know that beatles song 'I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink....'? I'm having one of those weeks...I just got 2 new kittens, brothers and sisters, named miss sami and mister thom cat...they are the best of friends, which is wonderful, but being young, they are into everything, including some things I didn't know you could get into...mister thom also seems to want to wake me up at 5am to say hello...well, the music for the rock and roll record is going really swell, just starting to get into a groove writing some songs...predominately focusing on melodies right now, leaving the words for a bit further down the road, which is unusual, but necessary...in the months to come, I am going to share some things with you that you have never heard me say...that doesn't mean I'm rewriting history, that means that I'm going to tell you the truth about who I am and what I believe in my heart...a lot of things that I have said thru the years seemed confusing, like I was hiding somethin!g, and often times I was...'why', you might ask? Many times I hid things to protect my band mates...for example, its been almost 4 years since I went on my friend tami's radio show and announced that the pumpkins were breaking up...that day, when she asked why we were breaking up, I said something silly like 'I'm tired of fighting britney blah blah'...and it went on to be widely quoted, as if I was breaking up my love, my band, because of some pop star...13 years of my life, and you know, let's pack it in cause their teeth are whiter...by saying that, I was seen as someone who was crying foul, taking his ball, and going home...which was sad cause it wans't true at all...The truth of the matter is is that james iha broke up the smashing pumpkins...not me, not jimmy, but james...did it help that d'arcy was fired for being a mean spirited drug addict, who refused to get help? No, that didn't help keep the band together, not at all...it made it very hard to go on, but we soldier! ed thru it even though our hearts were broken...But d'arcy didn't break up the band, we didn't let her...and jimmy didn't want to break up the band, not at that time...and I would have gone on forever...the smashing pumpkins were essentially my entire life...a dream I still believe in...many friends at that time suggested letting james leave, so jimmy and I could continue on under the name...but I was too loyal to the man I had started the whole thing with, and I protected him until the very end...right up until the last show on dec 2, 2000, when he thanked d'arcy on stage, but not the 2 men standing next to him...and I was loyal until he left the metro without even saying goodbye, or an 'its been great boys!', or a simple 'I love you' to us...no, james iha left the metro that night without saying goodbye to the 2 people he had won and lost and traveled the world with...so I won't be protecting him anymore...and I won't be protecting a whole lot of other people anymore...not because I don't love them (I do!!) but because ! I love myself too...I want to say one more thing, and that is I appreciate you reading this...+I want to remind you that I love you...God has given me the strength to say that to you, and I hope that you don't hide who you are...does it make me sad that I have hid myself all these years? No, it was what I had to do to survive, or at least what I 'thought' I needed to do...but surviving is not enough...we all deserve to flourish, and to know happiness and joy...that is my new dream...the smashing pumpkins gave me that, and I am eternally grateful...especially to those that shared in the dream with me...even if you bought just one cd, or came to a show, you gave us that chance...we thank you for that...even if we don't always know how to show it...be well!! William

Wow.

So, best of a bad lot, then. Neither classic nor dud. Good.

Say! Anybody heard that one album they did where they leaked it onto the Internet for free simply to piss off their record company?

i did not feel that a cd release on a major label that i was out there trying to hawk with a bunch of immoral band mates (that does not include jimmy, by the way...he is one of best men i know) was a place to talk about the deepest of issues...no, the internet is!!!

In other news, he's now gone public with an email address. Guess who's gonna have 1000+ emails by Sunday?

01. Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
02. Tonight, Tonight
03. Jellybelly
04. Here Is No Why
05. Bullet With Butterfly Wings
06. Where Boys Fear To Tread
07. Thirty-Three
08. 1979
09. Thru The Eyes Of Ruby
10. We Only Come Out At Night
11. Beautiful
12. Lily
13. By Starlight
14. Farewell And Goodnight

Truth be told, I could live without "Tonight" and "Thirty-Three" -
I guess I included them out of some obligation to remain in the
realm of the remotely possible. Billy is rather proud of these
songs, I highly doubt he would have dispensed them.

(after years of more or less rejecting Mellon Collie as the watershed "Billy is a snotty bastard" moment)

A couple of days and a harrowing plane flight later, the band makes it to a resort town called Surfer's Paradise, which is more or less the Miami Beach of Australia, a skinny coastal town about an hour south of Brisbane, pounded by waves and plagued with jellyfish, crowded with high-rise hotels popular with JApanese honeymooners. Surfer's Paradise is the jumping-off point for the Big Day Out tour, a sort of Australian Lollapalooza that Soundgarden will headline this year. In the lobby bar of one of the tallest hotels, Cornell and Thayil are settling back with a couple of beers when Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins wanders through, and decides to join them for a strawberry margarita. Corgan chatters about the pain of his life, the supposed incompetence of his band (everybody rolls their eyes), the lifesaving virtues of Jungian therapy, bands that suck. Cornell gets up to leave. Corgan tells Thayil how important Soundgarden used to be to him, and he baits him by saying that the Pumpkins sometimes do a cover of Soundgarden's "Outshined" that segues into a Depeche Mode song or something.

"I'm thinking of making my next album really new wave," Corgan says, "like '83-'84 new wave, not like Berlin. I spend all my time doing things that may be a bit tangential, but I think I'm going to go back to the core, the heart music. Echo and the Bunnymen."

This is standard stuff to anybody who has read even a single Billy Corgan profile, the basic curriculum of Pumpkins 101. But Thayil isn't buying. He's sore.

"Don't you see," Thayil says, "you're this incredibly talented guy. People like your music. You have a good band. You sell a lot of records. You don't need all this...stuff."

"What sign are you?" Corgan asks.

"What do you mean, what sign am I?" Thayil says. "What difference could that possibly make?"

"C'mon," wheedles Corgan, "when is your birthday?"

"All right, goddamn it: September 4th."

"Aha!" Corgan says. "A Virgo. You're argumentative."

"Damn right, I'm argumentative," Thayil says, and takes a long, angry pulll at his beer, "which you should know because I've been arguing with you for half an hour, not because of any sign."

"I'm a Pisces," Corgan replies. "We pick up on those things."

A minute later, Corgan, still probing, finally finds the key to Thayil's heart: "I hate how in magazine pictures, they always stick me somewhere in the back."

Thayil explodes: "What do you mean? You write all the songs, and you do all the interviews. You play the instruments on the album. You control the band to the extent that most people think of Smashing Pumpkins as the Billy Corgan Experience, and all you care about is some photograph?"

"But I hate it," Corgan says, "it means they don't think I'm the cute one."

"Ooh," Thayil says a little too loudly as Corgan walks away, "I'll bet he's going to call his therapist in Chicago, wake her up at four in the morning, and tell her about that big, mean bear who made fun of him."

The next day at the Big Day Out festival, Thayil is talking to Kim and Kelley Deal in the Breeders' dressing room when Corgan walks past wearing a long-sleeved Superman T-shirt like the one your four-year-old nephew probably owns.

"You hurt me deeply," Corgan says, touching the giant S on his chest and pouting. "You hurt me deeply in my heart." The Pumpkins go on to play the best set anybody has ever heard them play, their usual passiveness and precision overlaid with an unfamiliar scrim of anger that throws their music into brilliant relief.

Matt Cameron is a little astounded. "Kim should rent himself out as a tour shrink," he says.

I did like part of Siamese Dream back in the 90's.. in high school we used to torture certain punX0rs with deliberately off key and absurd renditions of "Disarm." And I still regard "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" as a watershed moment in the evolution of my musical tastes - the moment when I fully realized how rock lyrics could really, really, really suck. ("Holy shit, did he just say despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage???") It opened a new portal in my awareness of language, I think.

pffffAHAHAAAAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
wooo!
man, that's good stuff right there...
there was some other spin article (same time frame i think) where corgan's downing screw drivers and bitching about the fans that's equally as classic.
geez, billy + co. were better when megadoses of LSD were involved. which they were up until the end o' 94. the anger, the lovely unfocused anger and confusion, the manic panic hair.

one thing i'll give billy c., his style of 'rawking out' has far surpassed many, i love the way he used to "throw" his guitar down for a big chunky sludge deal! it was over-dramatized but highly entertaining to watch. especially when he jumped and did it.

everything after MCIS (and even parts of that) were utterly suspect and 'meh'. machina 2 being the exception, where free+rawkin collided to make 'good'.

so, classic 91-95(6?) then a little at the end. dud the rest of the way thru. SD=the album that made me listen again and again, on headphones, because i couldn't tell what the fuck that noise was @ _____ time in the song ______. few albums seem so dense, still! i know it's because of vig and his "HUGE" production, but it really works there!

hahahah....wow! What a jackass I was. I still kinda believe it, but what a needlessly obnoxious statement.

There are some fine moments on Gish (notably "Bury Me"), but I found Corgan entirely insufferable after that.

I've been misquoting this all these years! I forgot the 'deeply'!

OTM.

I'm always disturbed to find that something I've been saying for ten years came from some rock star interview circa 1995. It has happened. WTF.

Also, Chamberlin = vastly underrated drummer.

MCIS chocolate bars

https://www.vosgeschocolate.com/collections/smashing-pumpkins-x-vosges-haut-chocolat-the-mellon-collie-sessions

Quite enjoyed the stories coming out of the Courtney Love and Melissa Auf der Maur episodes (turns out Billy likes Thurston Moore fine and the beef is with Kim Gordon) and he talked about a guy from Material Issue (never heard of them) being the most talented guy in the scene he was from, and a bunch more now obscure bands.

He quite often talks about being "hurt in the heart". Is this a saying where he's from or is this just his thing?

next episode is with David Draiman, apparently with Billy going full Rogan 'I will nod along dumbly never challenging anything'.... why why why does it have to become harder to be a pumpkins fan with every single year that goes past

Kim's making great solo records, Billy and Courtney are making podcasts.

Billy's podcast seemingly exists solely to let everyone know that yes, he is still that douchebag from all those Lollapalooza stories.

Still hurting deeply in his heart over Pavement in that episode

Truly the Morrissey of grunge

Billy's podcast seemingly exists solely to let everyone know that yes, he is still that douchebag from all those Lollapalooza stories.

also that whenever he seems like a douchebag or particularly pretentious or anything, he's just playing the heel and poking fun at the ridiculousness of rock music

he's nowhere near as bad as morrissey let's be real

he's just desperate for people to love and understand his tender heart; which used to lead to wonderful music - now diminishing returns on the recorded front and too much billy in front of a camera saying words from his brain :-(

saying that, the london outdoor show i caught in the summer was the best time i've seen them (saying that, never got to see em in prime years)... setlist not even ruined by his usual choice of covers:

Glass' Theme
Heavy Metal Machine
Pentagrams
Today
Bullet With Butterfly Wings
Muzzle
1979
Porcelina of the Vast Oceans
Sighommi
Mayonaise
Take My Breath Away (Berlin cover)
Edin
Disarm
Tonight, Tonight
Cherub Rock
Jellybelly
Bodies
Ava Adore
Zero
The Everlasting Gaze (with a snippet of Black Sabbath's "N.I.B.")

he's nowhere near as bad as morrissey let's be real

this is fair

it's like, he probably could have gotten that bad but has very clearly decided not to and is just sort of a clown instead

The first SP gig I ever saw, on the Siamese tour, he came on for the encore dressed as a clown (because the UK rock critic Everett True had called him a clown in an interview) and teased his best song, 'Drown', before refusing to play it because we "didn't deserve it". They were so rubbish that night, which maybe because it was Brixton and the sound isn't great upstairs, but the vibes were off.

see that's the sort of thing where i can believe him when he says he's deliberately playing the heel lmao

I do get that but I didn't pay £13 in 1993 money to see him play the heel!

Pumpkins were great at the Palladium on the Machina tour - and tbh the Zwan show I saw in Chicago for the album release was just brilliant, an absolutely epic Mary, Star Of the Seas was the highlight. I like that album a lot more than any Pumpkins post-Siamese, if I'm honest. Billy writes great pop songs and heavy rock songs and I just think he's a very poor philosopher/provocateur.

oh yeah just because he's doing it on purpose doesn't mean it works out at all for him. like it is sort of entertaining in its own way but only from a distance, it doesn't work the same as wrestling!!!

mary star of the sea remains underrated and is at least a top 4 corgan album

when is he going to clear out the zwan vaults. we got the machina boxset at last and it was completely ridiculous and barely revelatory at all, so zwan has to be next right?

when is he going to clear out the zwan vaults.

I'm imagining when he gets over what an absolute clusterfuck that experience was for everyone involved. I get the impression it all got verrrrrrrrrry messy.

apparently he has been talking about digging through the zwan vaults (which are a complete mess) in recent months with the idea of putting out a reissue & a bunch of archival releases so i hope that won't take over a decade like machina did

I just think he's a very poor philosopher/provocateur

he's not a good wrestling promoter either

Kim's making great solo records, Billy and Courtney are making podcasts.

― an uncharacteristically irritated Mr. Rogers (stevie), Thursday, April 16, 2026 3:24 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

making great records doesn't exclude you from being an asshole

yeah, but at least you're an asshole who's making great records

Also, I really don't think Kim's an asshole. She's super-shy. I think a lot of people interpret that as assholeness, but.

I think they were characterizing her as being the worst type of gatekeeper and being controlling or something like that?

I think Aghori Mhori Mei is great, "War Dreams of Itself" in particular is a lot of fun. I listened to Atum once and I'm dragging my heels about getting back to it.

The only thing I know about Draiman was the poll about him speaking in cliches, so I'm skipping that one. I'm assuming Disturbed is nu-metal.

I can imagine Kim being shy and that appearing aloof.

I can also imagine Kim not having any time for William’s drama nonsense.

In someone's photo collection, there's got to be at least one photo of Billy dressed as a clown at Brixton, sonewhere

Shaking hands with Rosalynn Carter

I think Aghori Mhori Mei is great, "War Dreams of Itself" in particular is a lot of fun. I listened to Atum once and I'm dragging my heels about getting back to it.

"Goeth the Fall" is great!

There's a lot of Billy content these days. It was easier to take him in the 90s when his pomposity was limited to 60-second bursts on MTV or the radio. Even his early 2000s blog was interesting. But I can't really stand listening to 60-minute podcasts with him.

I've listened to about a quarter of them. Aside from the horrible Alex Jones appearances and occasional conspiracy theory stuff, I don't get why people hate him so much. He interrupts his guests a fair amount (Linda Blair seemed a bit annoyed by this) but it seems like he genuinely has a wishlist of questions he wants to ask all these people.

Kevin Cronin interview was a great listen. Don’t give af about Reo S., but listening to clearheaded stories about rock in the 70s was great

lmao at billy trying to create 'mutual understanding' between the disturbed singer (who is incredibly pro-israel) and roger waters over the iran war, only to create a feud where none previously existed (mostly because waters was previously unaware of disturbed)