POLLcelina of the Vast Oceans - ILM artist poll #87 - SMASHING PUMPKINS (voting open until 2 April 2018)

The last Pumpkins album I own is Machina 1. I don't know whether to go digging in the reunion albums or stick to the stuff I used to love.

I'm not sure if this band still really does much for me, but I'll do a ballot anyway.

for the most part i don't really recommend getting into the reunion albums. people rep for oceania but it's overstated; it gets the mood right but the songs are just fine for the most part

er, delete one of those "for the most part"s

Machina 2 is better than 1 and has a few gems on it if you haven't heard it, but the 'reunion' albums haven't produced much that can even come close to their 90s material. which mk2 track are you considering Brad?

my only task remaining is to relisten to Machina II in its entirety to see if I want to include anything but "Real Love"

"home" and "vanity" made the initial draft of my ballot. "in my body" and "white spyder" were realllll close

Machina 2 is better than 1 and has a few gems on it if you haven't heard it, but the 'reunion' albums haven't produced much that can even come close to their 90s material. which mk2 track are you considering Brad?

― ufo, Monday, March 19, 2018 8:04 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"ma belle"! a track i think only i am obsessed with

man Machina has some great songs I am voting for but I find it such a drag to try to listen to front to back

lol

Billy Corgan's chart showing the loose story of Machina and Machina II

https://spfreaks.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/pic061.jpg?w=549

personal edit of machina is get rid of "heavy metal machine" and "blue skies" and it's probably my favorite pumpkins album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UkFFUWO_8g

way underrated song imo

I'm still mad Billy didn't get to give it the remaster/deluxe treatment. It could uh really use another shot at the mix

machina production being indecipherable mud vs. machina guitar tones being some of my favorite ever recorded

"Imploding Voice" was just cut from my ballot :(

"wound" also on a good day is my favorite pumpkins song

i also would've put the machina recording of "speed kills" on the actual album, maybe in place of "blue skies" but that part of the album is already so moody and decayed lol

May put in a vote for just the first half of "Glass and the Ghost Children".

I was listening to a 2000-era bootleg and "Heavy Metal Machine" actually sounded really good. It's just a really bad fit for that aqueous production style.

eh i think it's a ponderous song down to its bones

it was absolutely one of my favorite pumpkins songs when i was 12 but i think it was just responding to the brightness of the chorus compared to the slog of the verses

I'm still disappointed we never got that combined Machina reissue he was planning, but then again he was considering re-recording parts to 'complete the vision' so that might have been even more of a disaster

incidentally i just found a weird youtube bootleg where someone fused machina 1/2 into a double album. it's very curious. i don't think i've ever heard the version of "if there is a god" that opens it (or it's the old arising!-era recording that i'm actually super familiar with and i just haven't heard in 15 years; there's also one of these for "dross" but the machina 2 recording is so much more fun) (waiting for flappy bird to correct me in 3, 2, 1)

sorry ahead of time for posting 1000000 times in this thread, i guess you never stop thinking about the band you decided was your favorite of all time in middle school

Vanity! I knew I'd forgotten some. Many, probably... I remembered Beautiful this morning.

yeah the trick with SP is, how "clever" do I want to get with this ballot. Of course the only correct answer is not to be clever - go with the core, the heart music

― Simon H., Monday, March 19, 2018 10:17 AM (fifty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao. it's true! I'm going strictly by the album versions, which leaves a lot of Gish & SD out- to me those records are blueprints for the far superior live versions: so caustic, aggressive, passionate, and fast. Though some remain...

There are a handful of post-reunion songs I rate (The Celestials, Sunkissed, Owata), but none of them would make my top 50, maybe even top 100. Processional, Aeronaut, and Half-Life of an Autodidact from Ogilala would make my top 100. MCIS & TAFH alone is 56 songs, and that's not even counting all the extant demos like Methusela and Speed that were left unfinished. Brad OTM re: Oceania - it has riffs, some OK songs, but feels so rote, so dispassionate. And Mike Byrne...

Didn't make my initial list but leaning toward including the Pastichio Medley. Not only evidence of a band at the peak of their powers with C-sides, jams, and castoff riffs that tower over most other artists' best work, but more importantly a thoroughly enjoyable and insane listen in its own right.

w/r/t the promised Machina reissue, for once it's not Billy's fault. The company that owns the rights to all mk 1 SP songs changed hands shortly after the Adore reissue, and the Machina reissue languishes in the vaults due to lack of interest. That's the holy grail for me now (besides a studio version of "Chrysanthemum" and the 'final' Metro show, though I suspect Billy isn't eager to release that).

I agree with Brad re: The Imploding Voice, a song served so well by the production on Machina. the barebones Arising version pales in comparison imo.

sometimes when I listen to "Stand Inside Your Love" I get angry that it wasn't massive

same, it's perfect

Wound is a tough one for me. I'm considering including the waltz demo, If You Wait. the version on Machina is gorgeous but ohhhh boy are his vocals mixed wayyy too high and dry for me.

here's the fan-fused machina for anyone curious. i wouldn't have made all of these choices, and the machina 2 production really, really doesn't sit well next to machine 1's, but.... idk i'm having fun listening to it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJWD2GS-GPc

hi

man I forgot about "White Spyder" what a jam

last night i turned around
and thought i saw myself turning
inside the strangest dream
of life unloved and cities burning

his writing got realllll pretentious for machina, like mellon collie to the thousandth power, but all of my favorite pumpkins lyrics are on machina

fuck this is hard

a good chunk of the lyrics on mellon collie make absolutely no sense to me lol

they're nonsense

"Quiet" is a fucking killer song, I'm thinking this should definitely be top 25 for pretty much any band, but then they have at least 25 songs that are better than that

I'm always surprised when I learn individual songs on MCIS are supposed to be autobiographical xp

xp like Tales of a Scorched Earth, too often derided for pushing the extreme. they're both thrilling songs.

on Adore and Machina, his vocabulary expanded, some of my favorite lyrics are on those records. a few of my favorite verses ever written by BC:

I catch the rainfall
Through the leaking roof
That you had left behind
You remind me of that leak in my soul

The rain falls
My friends call
Leaking rain on the phone

and possibly my favorite SP verse ever:

I blow the dust off my guitar
In the attic with the star
I read your letter to feel better
My tears upon the faded ink

as a kid i was enraptured by whatever's going on lyrically in "porcelina" though, "the realm of soft delusions / floating on the leaves," it means absolutely nothing but i still get weird chills reading it rn

lotta embarrassing confessions to come out of this poll imo

the lyrics on Mellon Collie are really only of two modes: brutal nihilism and lovelorn romanticism. in the context of the record they work, though few stand out as exemplary, unlike the next two records.

lotta embarrassing confessions to come out of this poll imo

^^

the core, the heart music

that "Blank Page" verse really stands out for suggesting Billy has friends

https://i.imgur.com/nvlpEgY.png

At 15/16, I was definitely more taken with the Machina artwork than the music. I was taking a few hours of art classes every day in high school, and that album art definitely crept into some of what I was doing.

Seems kind of brown now that I look at it again.

he apparently wrote the lyrics to Porcelina in one sitting on a tour bus during Lollapalooza 1994. the words are beautiful, and without spoiling, I think that song more than any other captures nearly every side of the pre-Adore band: it's equal parts spacey, heavy, romantic, experimental, plus you get Billy's SD-era wisp of a voice along with the nasal bleat that runs thru most of that record. it's a towering achievement of a song.

someone pls scrounge up those old Pumpkins msg board posts from where Billy asked people to guess as to the "plot" of Machina and pointed out who got closest

At 15/16, I was definitely more taken with the Machina artwork than the music. I was taking a few hours of art classes every day in high school, and that album art definitely crept into some of what I was doing.

Seems kind of brown now that I look at it again.

― jmm, Monday, March 19, 2018 8:37 AM (twenty-six seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

i looooooved the machina art. the "imploding voice" art with the androgynous figure seizing a single wave was my shit

someone pls scrounge up those old Pumpkins msg board posts from where Billy asked people to guess as to the "plot" of Machina and pointed out who got closest

― Simon H., Monday, March 19, 2018 8:38 AM (fifty-one seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc i actually submitted to this at the time. i was very wrong iirc but who could've guessed the story was that dumb (j/k my idea of it at age 13 probably wasn't any more sophisticated)

tbh whenever I see the Machina cover art I think of Bobby Sands' cell walls in Hunger

Oh yeah, I can't believe I forgot this, but I even made a costume of this guy.

https://i.imgur.com/nvlpEgY.png

lmao that's awesome

album breakdown, that is

There's a real range between these album totals! Feel like this is gonna be an unpredictable rollout the whole way through.

― explosion from DOOM courtesy of id software (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, April 3, 2018 7:39 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this is going to be a strange one. there are some songs that will benefit greatly from appearing on almost everyone's list (like 1979 and... Hummer?), other than that I have no idea. So many people picked 5+ songs from MCIS, some close to 10, and they could be completely different.

Cast the POLLs Aside

Graceful Zwans of never toPOLL to the earth

sd: 3
mcis: 8
adore: 7
machina I: 5
machina II: 2

I'm sending my (late) ballot within the hour. If it's already too late, don't wait up for me!

Sent! Suprised myself with just one song off of Gish, and just two from SD tbh. But this has been an absolute bloodbath any way.

Gish: 1
SD: 2
Pisces: 5
MCIS: 9
Adore: 4
Non-album: 4

ooo, I feel like that's the highest pisces count posted so far.

i had 7 from pisces iscariot.

I see. I am glad that Adore and pisces got some big numbers on a few of these. It looks like Gish tracks may not do very well.

Blessig u crut.

xp

Yeah, Gish doesn't seem to do so well. It's weird because as an album I'd probably rate it higher - for coherence etc - than others. I just didn't pick a lot of songs from it.

yeah, it did well in my albums list, and that might be true for others

POLL me POLL me what you're after, I just wanna get there faster

lol

with Gish (and SD) I prefer the live versions of all the songs, but there's one that needed to be in my top 10

flappy, I must confess that I don't understand your reasoning in holding amazing live versions against already good album tracks.

it was only a means of narrowing down my ballot, otherwise it would be impossible. it was still difficult even with that handicap. I mean, I didn't vote for Ruby, which would've been my #1 if the studio version included that outro jam.

and with Gish & SD, it's not that the live versions are different arrangements, I just prefer the intensity and tbh a lot of Billy's singing

I can understand not factoring in live versions, since there can be a few too many iterations. But it sounds like a good live version hurts your estimation of the studio version.

it does in practice. I rarely listen to SD or Gish - it goes without saying that they are great, but to me they sound staid in comparison, like blueprints or jumping off points for their live shows circa 1991 - 1994. I did revisit both of them for this poll, though it didn't change any of the picks I had already made. and again, that's not a diss or criticism of those records, it really was a way to make compiling a ballot of only 25 songs possible.

So save your POLLS for when you’re really gonna need ‘em

My POLL has been extraordinary, blessed and cursed and won

voting is now CLOSED, 40 ballots in all. results roll out should begin in the next day or two

40 is a very nice number of ballots, i really thought it was going to be around 50 though.

excited!

This is gonna be awesome

ufo, how many tracks are you gonna roll out?

Can't wait for tomorrow

ufo, how many tracks are you gonna roll out?

― The Harsh Tutelage of Michael McDonald (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, April 3, 2018 5:52 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

33, 66, or 99 imo

I was thinking 66

Surprised myself by getting organised and voting - Gish 2, Siamese 7, Pisces 1, Mellon 8, Adore 5, other 2.

Well, I wish I saw this earlier.

mine went

Gish - 1
SD - 5
PI - 1
MCIS - 6
Adore - 5
MI - 3
MII - 2
other - 2

Bang Bang You're Dead... POLL In Your Head - ILM Artist Poll #87 - SMASHING PUMPKINS - Results

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