MELLON POLLIE AND THE INFINITE SADNESS

xxpost "Appels + Oranjes" is far and away the best thing on that album. And there are a lot of great songs on that album.

That vinyl tracklist is WILD! Wow. What's "Tonite Reprise"?

I always felt like this thing needed to end on something a little more dramatic - probably "By Starlight."

And I'm with Curt1s, "Appels + Oranjes" is my favorite Adore track, although at the time "Tear" ranked really high with me, and to this day does a more precise job of bringing back the exact feel and smell of a certain era in time than any other song, not sure why or how that happened but it did. "Perfect" is, I'm sad to say, kind of boring! Am I right that it was a single? Not that this was an album really overflowing with obvious hits, but it seems like a weird, wimpy kind of choice.

Granted, by that point Billy had taken a 90-degree turn away from the blatant arena majesty of SD/MCIS, in favor of a kind of extended love letter to particular electro goth genre work, lush and watery on one end and aching/sparse on the other. I like a lot of songs off Adore and Machina I, but they're really different animals than Melon Collie.

My fave on Adore has to be "For Martha," what a stunner. That and "Blank Page" actually outdo the closing ballads on Mellon Collie.

I'm half into DAWN of vinyl tracklist, it is better this way.

I mean TEA TIME.

"Tonite Reprise" is an acoustic guitar version of "Tonight, Tonight"

I remember seeing this post-Siamese Dream MTV news bit about how Smashing Pumpkins were readying their new album, and it included a 4 second clip of Corgan recording the vocals of "Muzzle" in their studio, and I played that 4 seconds over and over in my head for months until the album actually came out. And the finished "Muzzle" totally lived up to it - I love how the drums roll in on that song...

I think my answer would be "Thirty-Three", but i'll have to listen to this album again to work it out.

I never liked "Perfect". I liked Adore at the time, but in retrospect it has a lot more cloying, embarassing moments than Mellon Collie.

Back to Mellon Collie - "Beautiful" is the perfect soundtrack to teenagers in love in 1995.

Adore more cloying than Mellon Collie? Hmmmm...

no wai

this album is the sound of me at 14

-- latebloomer, Friday, March 7, 2008 3:59 AM (15 hours ago)

YES. well, 13 for me, but it's hard to explain how deeply invested i was in this album. not much of it holds up anymore for me, apart from a few tracks, but there isn't any other album that's more of a nostalgia trip for me back to '95-96 than this one.

1979 vs. muzzle, for the vote. i'll probably go with 1979

voted "muzzle". go figure, it might actually win...tho now i have a twinge of regret for not voting "bodies"...that "love is suicide" lyric perfectly sums up the overwrought adolescent romantic fatalism that drips from this album...

btw, my favorite song off adore is definitely "shame." "blank page" gets 2nd, but it's not really all that close.

btw, my favorite song off adore is definitely "shame."

Cosign, to eternity.

actually, weirdly enough, in response to the "it-would've-made-an-awesome-single album" comments, i actually think this would have made an awesome double-album if billy would have put some of the b-sides on it ("cherry," "rotten apples," "medellia," i know some folks out there like "set the ray to jerry") and ditched some of that stylistically-adventurous filler. if "cherry" was on this album, i would voted for that instead.

'have voted' i mean. sry bout that.

Oh, yeah, "Set the Ray to Jerry" is my favorite SP song, period - I would have voted that in any poll it was on.

It's top five for me. First time I heard it I was all "And this is buried away as a B-side!"

obscured

fave track on adore has always been 'to sheila', love the mandolin solo in the middle. i'd totally be down w/ a MCIS that had both 'set the ray to jerry' and 'cherry' on it

i never got into STRTJ but i just soulseek'd it and it does sound pretty stupendous...terrific drumming it's got there.

i read somewhere that someone thought that maybe it was written for d'arcy.

also, that it was flood who put the nix on it being on MCIS.

unsafe levels of muzzle love thread so far

sane people: vote for 1979

*in this

i'm kind of obsessed with the concept of billy releasing "the aeroplane flies high" as the follow up to mcis in a total "fuck you, eat some rawness" move. it would work pretty well split up into 6 sides.

the 12 year old in me wants either "Bodies" or "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" and I'm going with the latter...and I still have my copy of aeroplane, loved it back then...

"Bodies" > "Bullet"

Relistening to Zeitgeist (yeah, I know) reminds me how much credit Flood should get for nailing such a diverse set of songs, both on this and "Adore," when producers nowadays will drown a fucking simple rock record in endless overdubs and hyper-compression.

jergins OTM

Anybody else get the Aeroplane Flies High box set? It has some really cool stuff...I remember one super mellow James Iha song especially being great.

I'm gonna go up to the attic and get it.

It has like seven great mellow Iha songs on it. Makes me think he should've just saved them up and released another solo record...then again I suppose Iha makes more off of Pumpkins obscurities than from his actual solo records.

Iha's SP b-sides are alright, but his solo album...who was it that called it "the gayest album ever recorded"? Pretty OTM

My memory was OTM. "Bodies" FTW, "33" close 2nd.

Is any of the stuff on that Machina II album any good? There was never any proper release of that, right? I seem to remember the story was that Billy pressed 25 vinyl copies, and someone made heinous low bit rate rips of the vinyl, and that circulated... am I way off there? Surprised they haven't put that out "properly."

The rips don't sound that bad. "Slow Dawn" is on Judas O and doesn't sound any different from the mp3s of Machina II.

"White Spyder" is good

Machina 2 has some nice things on it, depending what flavor of Pumpkins you go for. It's all less polished than MCIS, but thankfully less overcookeed than Machina itself. For the rawk I would go for "Glass' Theme," "Car Star," "White Spider"... then there are some nice lush midtempo things, mainly "If There Is A God," "Here's To The Atom Bomb," and James Iha's lovely "Go." "Lucky 13" has sweet drumming and a cool weirdo riff, kinda feels like a turned-down "The End Is The Beginning Is The End."

It's all DEFINITELY worth hearing if you're a fan.

It also seems to be where some of the Adore-era rock material ended up, if I understand the chronology correctly. I remember a Spin interview around the time of Adore where the interviewer was like "I visited you in the studio and heard all these awesome rock songs and none of them are on the album" and Billy was like, well, they didn't fit in well, or something like that. I'm almost certain "Dross" is one of those songs, for example - but Ned would be able to clarify...

tonight I heard a dance remix of "Zero"? Anybody know where I can find this?

omg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfTYbqUTZG0

wow, what a find

Hahah, what a cute widdle goth boy he was. "Dude I saw that one Cure Lovecats video, I have an idea!"

but Ned would be able to clarify...

Really, the whole slew of songs recorded from 96-97 onward all become this bizarre mass of material. I'd say just go here and check out individual song histories as best as they are known. (For instance, that indicates "Dross" was done no earlier than late 98, where, say, "For Martha" first hit tape in 1994.)

bumping 1 day early

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Where's the Aeroplane Flies poll?

This is a nigh on impossible choice. I went with "To Forgive" in the end. If I could pick one "loud" one and one "quiet" one it might be a little easier. I might go with "X.Y.U." for my choice for the former.

I hope enough people vote in this to make the results interesting.

Single disc version:

Zero
Thirty-Three
Here Is No Why
Fuck You
Love
Cupid De Locke
Galapagos
Muzzle
Porcelina of the Vast Oceans
Bodies
In The Arms of Sleep
1979
Thru The Eyes of Ruby
By Starlight

Mellon Collie needs the line "the world is a vampire" in it somewhere.

Where's the Aeroplane Flies poll?

-- billstevejim, Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

^^^^

Do it by disc not song though pls.