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

^^^ OTM.

Again, thanks for taking over and doing this post for me. Very excited to see this rollout.

https://i.imgur.com/VEwrjsa.jpg
8. The Aeroplane Flies High
12 Points, 3 Votes

I'm listening to Siamese Dream in anticipation. My least favourite of their classic era for some reason (bit stuck in a grunge-rock gear for me) but still great

I thought The Aeroplane Flies High might do a little better than that but this is about where I'd put it. There's a few gems throughout it but most of the tracks feel like they were B-Sides for a reason

I wanted TAFH so much when I was a teenager but also it was way more expensive than i could afford

Post should have read Poll above,stupid auto correct.

tbh my suggestion did not deserve to win out over "ballot with butterfly wings"

― Simon H., Wednesday, 4 April 2018 13:50 (thirty-two minutes ago) Permalink

yours is better because it's sincerely a great moment imo. stoked for this.

OTM. "Silverfuck" missed my ballot but it deserves to be memorialized.

sames. i'd completely forgotten about it tbh

how much did TAFH cost? I want to guess $70. Was it more than buying the singles on their own?

It was something like that iirc. I remember already having bought BWBW and 1979 ep's. It was only after that they announced the box, damnit.

I voted for the 1979 EP rather than Aeroplane as a whole because it's such a great collection of songs that fit together well - that said I've never actually owned a copy of either (and also looking at Discogs the original UK CD single only had four tracks - 1979/Ugly/Believe/Cherry)

yeah, were there more on the US one then? In the UK Zero had something like 8 or 9 tracks plus a medley IIRC

https://i.imgur.com/hN36d17.jpg
7. Machina II/The Friends & Enemies Of Modern Music
16 points, 7 votes

The US 'maxi-single' looks to be the one with all six songs (xpost).

MII still among the very weirdest "final" acts for a major band

It doesn't really work as an album at all but there's a lot of stuff I really like on it, especially Real Love, Home, and In My Body.

The production is very weird but I like it much more than Machina I's, especially the softer tracks which have a beautiful dream-goth-noise feeling.

I've only listened to Machina II in full twice, via crappy YouTube rip... I can do without the stuff on the EPs (apart from 'Vanity') but the album itself is OK.

https://i.imgur.com/9jxeIF8.jpg
6. Machina/The Machines of God
38 points, 9 votes

i voted for machina real high so i'm glad it got this far and beat machina ii

also i love that the 1979 ep technically placed twice

it's got "cherry" and "jerry" on it so it deserves it

Machina made my ballot at the last minute, it's definitely flawed but so much of it is great.

definitely grew to appreciate Machina I more with this poll. there's easily a great album between the best of the two Machinas though it could really use a redone mix

https://i.imgur.com/shNXrn1.jpg
5. Gish
126 points, 24 votes, 2 #1 votes

I should listen more to Gish. I never completely clicked with it as such, although I never disliked it and like a couple of songs a lot. It sometimes feels like Jane's Addiction worship to me. This version of "Bury Me" is pretty great, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW3f2k6zb7Y

That was minutes after D'arcy and James broke up.

cumulative effect of gish is so great and captures them in a really interesting protean state (between their post-punky beginnings and the less psychedelic more candied sound of sd) where they were extremely focused on floral patterns and guitar solos and which they basically never revisited again except in brief flashes like "hummer" and "rocket"

it confused me a lot when i first heard it when i was 13. billy with long hair almost felt like a different band to me (and kinda still does)

I forgot that Wretzky and Iha ever dated.

My favourite songs on it are Rhinoceros and Snail which are the closest to where they went on Siamese Dream. The rest feels very different in sensibility to anything else they did pretty much.

lmao the intro to that video sund4r posted

Long haired Jimmy is the weirdest

i like james' taste in dresses

If Adore is above Gish then it's too high.

it is not

Billy making do with a broken low E string like a minute into the song

it....clearly is! xps

this isn't the first time i'll say this itt but jimmy's a fucking monster

since i started learning drums a year ago i've begun to understand exactly what he's doing on each track and it's incomprehensible and humbling

he's also an extremely busy player but few of his parts ever feel busy which is remarkable

so breezy and musical yet so dense

Jimmy is probably my favourite rock drummer ever

Bury Me is so good. That wound up placing high on my ballot, even beating a certain other great Jimmy track. I never owned this on CD so I was less familiar with it before now. Bury Me, Snail, Rhinoceros, and Crush are the ones I love most.

it was so frustrating seeing them in 94 & watching Billy keep getting ahead of Jimmy, trying to speed up the songs midway through. of course Jimmy was up to it but it felt like a dick move & it didn't make the songs better because they kept changing awkwardly.

https://i.imgur.com/RLZ4J0N.jpg
4. Pisces Iscariot
140 points, 25 votes, 3 #1 votes

well i wasn't expecting adore to beat pisces with this crowd so i concede that my first favorite album of all time is prob too high for most

I rarely pull PI out but it really is the most cohesive outtakes record ever

because i'm insane and have more time now i picked a show from every year of the original lineup's run:

1988/10/05 - Metro - Chicago, IL (first show with Jimmy / full original lineup / opening for Jane's Addiction)
1989/03/16 - WZRD-FM Studios - Chicago, IL (all pre-Gish songs except Rhinoceros, opens with an awesome cover of Venus in Furs)
1990/06/16 - Club de Wash - Madison, WI (embryonic Gish songs & some rarities)
1991/02/12 - CBGB's - New York, NY (first NYC show, band is on fire)
1992/07/23 - Metro - Chicago, IL (semi-acoustic, gradually becomes electric encore is first ever performance of Starla)
1993/08/23 - Melody - Stockholm, SE (great quality SBD, not as aggressive as most SD era shows, Billy's singing is closer to the album)
1994/08/28 - Shoreline Ampitheater - Mountain View, CA (band starts playing rarities halfway thru bc of bored crowd)
1995/10/19 - Madison Theater - Peoria, IL (another MCIS warmup show, second to last Hummer ever w/ original lineup)
1996/02/29 - Thai-Japan Metropolitan Youth Center - Bangkok, TH (really dark show, so fast, Jimmy OD'd after the show)
1997/06/28 - Roskilde Festival - Roskilde, DK (this or Glastonbury are the best summer 1997 festival shows)
1998/07/10 - Will Rodgers Auditorium - Fort Worth, TX (great quality, features every song on Adore)
1999/04/10 - St. Andrew's Hall - Detroit, MI (first Arising! show, first show with Jimmy back)
2000/12/02 - Metro - Chicago, IL (the final show. doesn't get any heavier than this...)

BONUS: D'arcy's last show, last time the original lineup played together on stage 1999/04/24 - Roxy - Los Angeles, CA

1998/07/10 - Will Rodgers Auditorium - Fort Worth, TX (great quality, features every song on Adore)

:O

the Silverfuck that ends the final show is such a harrowing listen. it's a shame that it's incomplete, though at 25 minutes you get the idea.

yeah brad that show is awesome

every time the live version of "to sheila" starts i expect it to turn into "czarina"

i'm a joker. i'm a smoker. i'm al roker. super soaker. frog's a croaker...*54 minutes later*...i'm a midddniiiight toker.

― Tapes 'n Tapes of Osho (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, April 10, 2018 1:48 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

loooooool

i feel bad for not participating itt or the poll at all, sp just aren't where my head is at right now so i couldn't pull it together but they were for sure my favorite band for a few years as a teenager

that reckless records performance is great

Three songs in, this is pretty hot, yeah.

1998/07/10 - Will Rodgers Auditorium - Fort Worth, TX (great quality, features every song on Adore)

:O

This was the last SP show I went to, and the only time I met Billy.

Or maybe the Grand Ol Opry show on the same tour was later?

I almost posted that one because it’s all acoustic

I can almost enjoy these. I just wish the sound quality was better.

still fun to skip through, though, so thanks

Is there a SBD filter on archive? There a few in that list, but here's a nice show from 1993, all acoustic, v good quality

1993/07/04 - Raymond Revuebar - London, UK

01. *Intro*
02. Rocket
03. Cherub Rock
04. Rhinoceros
05. Today
06. Spaceboy
07. Siva
08. Dancin' in the Moonlight (Thin Lizzy)
09. Disarm
10. Starla
11. Outshined (Soundgarden) (tease)
12. Suffer
13. Hummer
14. Drown
15. *banter*
16. Kooks (Bowie)
17. Smiley
18. Bye June
19. *banter*
20. Crush

there's also this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE2tQ1Fjg24

Is there a SBD filter on archive?

I don't think you can filter on it, because its part of the free text, but the search function's at the top left (on the desktop site anyway). SBD, soundboard, and matrix each bring up results.

Just out there trying to find SP fun facts and found this interesting:

http://loudwire.com/billy-corgan-singles-soundtrack-slight-smashing-pumpkins-drown/

I very much remember hearing Drown once or twice on the radio and then mysteriously disappearing.

Has anyone other than Corgan backed up that version of events?

Ha ha, good point. Dicey territory there.

my favorite ever live X.Y.U.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Sqglz1BaU

very close to the phrasing and delivery on the album, also Billy's voice is uncharacteristically warm and gentle and not screechy, more so than on the take that's on the album

I uh lost ttack at the end here. Prayers answered etc. Well done, folks. Great top 10. Thx ufo

Frail & Bedazzled
Mayonaise
Thru the Eyes of Ruby
Rhinoceros
Hello Kitty Kat
Starla
Drown
Shame
Thirty-Three
Hummer
Obscured
Bodies
Quiet
Plume
Rocket
Crush
Cherry
Muzzle
Set the Ray to Jerry
Blank Page
Glynis
Galapogos
Rotten Apples
Medellia of the Gray Skies
Siva

Is it just me or are the lyrics particularly execrable on BWBW?

― startled macropod (MatthewK), Friday, April 6, 2018 5:44 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk i love them. they're fuckin dumb and great

as i said on the other thread when i first saw the video for this on mtv i thought it was the coolest thing i'd heard/saw. i also think it was the first song i ever heard where the title didn't appear at all in the lyrics

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, April 6, 2018 8:47 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This song was sort of the breaking point for me with SP back in the 1990s. I remember a friend pointing out that the local alt rock station kept playing it right when her clock radio went off, so she kept waking up to "the world is a vampire..." for a week or something. We all scoffed at how dumb the lyric was. But now I like how Brad puts it: "fuckin dumb and great".

Ha, I think that's three or four of us who m/l went off the band when this single came out the first time around. (I partly came around on it too.)

My breaking point was Everlasting Gaze which was such a complete DNW that I dont even think I realized for a while that I had gone off them completely

cool, haven't seen this in a while, just uploaded by Apathy Video.

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

not much live footage of Billy playing piano on the Adore tour (or at all really, until his solo record & tour last year)

My breaking point was Everlasting Gaze which was such a complete DNW that I dont even think I realized for a while that I had gone off them completely

― bedraggled vorticist (Drugs A. Money), Friday, April 13, 2018 1:27 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And so many in here saying BWBW was the immediate buzzkill, and maybe not itt but certainly elsewhere that goes for Ava Adore, too. I wonder what would've happened if Billy got his way and actually released Jellybelly as the lead single from MCIS. No doubt it would've been less successful - I mean what was he thinking? BWBW second single??

the flow of the singles from MCIS is really cool, must've been weird to live through them. BWBW into 1979 into Zero into Tonight, Tonight into Thirty-three. Like what if Jonathan survived and the original lineup stuck together and put out Muzzle as planned for the fifth single? and Zero wasn't really a hit right? The video rules but that one is definitely less known than the videos for the rest of the record, including Thirty-three. But it's still one of their iconic songs.

I didn’t vote for “Silverfuck” but I should have. It’s like an Underworld track only played on rock instruments.

What is a good Underworld epic with OTT dynamics?

"moaner"

not much live footage of Billy playing piano on the Adore tour (or at all really, until his solo record & tour last year)

― flappy bird, Friday, April 13, 2018 9:07 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i saw that fashion awards performance on tv when it happened! it's probably why "crestfallen" is one of my favorite songs

I can't believe only DAM & I voted for Rotten Apples

btw don't think i ever posted this summer 1993 performance of Hummer from Fruit Bat Salad... it's sooo much slower than almost all of the SD-era shows, really it's one of the few existing recordings (and only video afaik) of them playing it at the same speed as it is on SD. anyway it's a sweet video, they're playing at the Unicorn a year later, July 1993, band has already way outgrown the club they're in, it's bizarre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E_C6L2D_pY

like for context this was the same club only a year before. they all sing jimmy happy birthday at the beginning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wEEkb4zBwU

https://www.reddit.com/r/smashingpumpkins/comments/8eefpl

Whaddaya think? I think we did this.

definitely ILM, and also SP doing a tour to promote this thread

that is only about 20k plays per poster, and I certainly did my part

I didn't use Spotify at all but I will take partial credit for this bump

Really regret not voting for Drown. Essential. The road is long...

bought tickets to see them play live for my first time. setlists from last year are pretty good, so I'm cautiously optimistic for a good show. probably should listen to Cyr to prepare.