The Smashing Pumpkins - Rage against the Machina

I got Gish when it was the only album they’d done and was absolutely blown away by it, it sounded like nothing else I had ever heard. Siamese Dream I loved including all the b-sides to both albums but Mellon Collie was when I fell out of love with them, so it was always kind of strange to me that that was when they got more attention and for a lot of people their entry point was the point at which I was losing interest. There’s good stuff on it but it’s TOO LONG. It’s diluted by too many songs that sound the same and others that should have been no more than b-sides.

I think it would not have been as good as the first two as a single album but it still would have been better than it was, and the b-sides of that album were dreadful, as Corgan started to value quantity over quality. I like about half of Machina, the good stuff on that album is very good and I’ve forgotten the rest. There’s about two songs on Adore that I like. Their post-‘reformation’ (Billy Corgan and some sessions musicians) output is unlistenable for me.

I’ve seen a lot of bands of that period on recent reunion tours and enjoyed most of them but don’t really have any interest in seeing Smashing Pumpkins live now, even with the original line-up and definitely not without it. Whatever magic they had for me is long gone. It’s a shame because they were my favourite band for a long time.

To the Pumpkins apologists, please there is NO NEED to reply to this and persuade me that I’m wrong because I have already expressed this opinion and you’ve already argued against it, you’ll just be repeating yourselves.

2 Likes

This is the worst thing my eyes have ever, ever seen. And I was in 'nam. (I was not in nam).

The level of hero worship and holding a musician up as a deity in here is fucking bizarre. I’ve never been an obsessive about any one band or musician.

I fucking love music and I love loads of bands but I’ll never hesitate to admit they’ve released a stinker or go off someone who starts going right wing or does something wanky.

Musicians are flawed and singers particularly are often ridiculously full of themselves, not a quality I often find admirable. So I dunno, I don’t get the hero worship.

Also there’s no fucking way that anyone can seriously claim that malkmus’ lyrics aren’t a whole lot more than interesting than corgan’s. This is not a hot take - you may not like their detached nature or they may not make you feel emotional but they’re pretty interesting.

that’s the only song of theirs I bother to listen to. Mostly just for that solo

This is why I’ve taken more of an anti-Corgan slant in this thread, just to give a bit of balance. They were my favourite band, but as you say nobody deserves to be held up as superior to all humans because nobody is perfect nor ever will be, no artist has ever only produced perfect work, it’s not possible and it doesn’t matter that it’s not all perfect. To claim it is, or that one person is somehow superhuman or without flaw, is just not healthy. All bands have iffy albums, or phone it in now and again, or lose their initial appeal. It’s fine. To claim that is not true of any one person is not to be friends with reality.

1 Like

I’m guessing most people in this thread don’t write much music of their own, it’s not really that hard.

1 Like

The earth is round (ish-i have anticipated possible pedantry from the people of this board.)

This is a different conversation but it IS hard and I think it should get the credit it deserves. If it comes easily to you then you should recognise that you have an ability that 99% of people don’t have. Be proud of that!

I don’t play an instrument, but even if I did, I cannot imagine a tune or sequence of notes that isn’t just from a song I already know. I’d only be re-writing stuff that already existed, I couldn’t put all existing music out of my head to come up with something new. I genuinely don’t know how anyone does it.

it’s just messing around sometimes with an idea in mind sometimes not, a lot of it is just practice and your body doing the work for you. I’ve heard stuff from multiple people on DiS that’s easily as good as anything the Smashing Pumpkins ever did with none of the budget.

like of course if you learn bricklaying you can build a decent wall, if you work in an office you can type 80+ word per minute, if you play an instrument and practice writing songs, you will write some good ones.

I dunno, the worst Pumpkins song is pretty bad :wink:

2 Likes

Art and craft aren’t the same thing. You could play an instrument but that doesn’t mean you can write something good with it, the same as you could know every word in the English language, doesn’t mean you can write a novel (or at least, a readable one - even some published authors are terrible at it!)

I am now thinking about what I think their worst song is, of the ones I know. One of those Mellon Collie b-sides I suspect or even ‘We Only Come Out At Night’. That’s pretty bad.

‘Bye June’ is pretty crap. He literally rhymes moon-june-spoon-balloon.

hmmm well I guess I believe there’s a formula even for the feel of something. Just have to learn how and when to put in the pauses, song structures etc often aren’t that novel. I don’t even mean to say it’s easy or takes no skill but grown ups worshipping musicians is weird to me.

As I said above I don’t elevate musicians above everyone else as humans as some fans do but I still accept that they have a skill that the vast majority of us don’t. It’s not magic, but it is a skill and it can’t all be learned or we’d all be the Beatles. That you have it, and other people you know do too, doesn’t devalue that.

1 Like

I personally don’t, most of em are dicks who occasionally sing nice songs :yum:

1 Like

to the tune of Seven Nation Army:

OOOOOOOH WILL-IAM CORGYN!
OOOOOOOH WILL-IAM CORGYN!
etc.

5 Likes

think you love it to an unreasonable extent :wink:

1 Like

I mean I’d agree with you that literally anyone can write a song better than this once they’ve physically mastered a few chords:

But on the other hand I listen to something like ‘Three Days’ by Jane’s Addiction and it’s beyond me that an actual human was able to come up with that.

Surely what separates the wheat from the chaff is being able to come up with something genuinely distinctive though? I remember my flatmate at uni being really annoyed by the hype around the White Stripes, arguing that it was just really simple stuff that any half-decent guitarist could come up with. But the White Stripes came up with an angle and a way of presenting that back to basics style that really stood out, which the vast majority of musicians, however technically adept they may be, don’t manage to do.

some people believe in talent like it’s a religion or something. Once you believe someone is talented you’ve put something into their character that you can’t know about.