Thread for posting in every time you're listening to The Smashing Pumpkins

I went to see the Smashing Pumpkins in a theme park last Friday and they were flipping great.

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Was pleasantly surprised to hear 1979 at the supermarket earlier this evening.

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a few underrated gems

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Was really baked last night and couldn’t decide what to put on so went for my gish record.

Such a great album. I am One can get to fuck but otherwise it’s got such a nice feel. Was always my least favourite album when i was a big fan (up to 2000ish) but over the years i’ve grown to love it. Good one for early evening.

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Just got back from seeing them for the first time. It was very good! Here’s a photo of Jimmy Chamberlain receiving his birthday cake:

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Wembley arena October 2018 was probably the best I’ve heard them since I saw them on the Mellon Collie tour.

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I’d never heard this song before, it’s nice.

Powering through an early morning flight/commute by listening to Mellon Collie in its entirety. Quite exciting.

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The whole ignoffo tape is excellent

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Always thought this one was underrated.

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Listening to this psychedelic sonic assault at the minute.

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Iha absolutely shreds on this tune.

EDIT: Think I’m coming to the conclusion, I love the long drowned out droney guitar laden tracks that are over 10+ minutes.

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what album is this song on?

EDIT: Fuck me sorry, just realized it was short for mellon collie, what a dope.

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The Goodish song with the night car video was on the radio the other day. Just remembered.

Jamming this at the moment.

It’s all Corgan! From what I understand at least.

That solo is one of my favorite things ever. There’s really nothing like it.

Fuck off. If that’s corgan HGATR going to a 5, sounds like pure James to me.

Just did some digging, it’s officially Billy! I got nervous for a second because it’s one of my prime goto points for why he’s my favorite guitarist. But apparently there is a James version too that we haven’t heard.

Starla

In the recent reissue of Pisces Iscariot, Billy wrote about Starla: “This is the stuff legends are made of, recorded in one all-night-go to make a hard deadline. Much has been made of this song, but it’s the right kind of nothing; where you see that once in a while I am capable of getting out of the way of a good idea that needs space. A cataclysmic solo follows the nursery rhyme into the cosmos, crashing out whatever is left of your purple heart.”

Billy told us the exact same story about Starla that he told at the Denver VIP show: how the band had 24 hours to pump out two songs due to record label pressure, telling us that the record labels, even today, are still reactive rather than proactive when it comes to scheduling releases.

Billy went on with the story, saying that around 7am, after being up all night with the deadline looming and the need to mix the song right away in order to make it in time for FedEx shipment, he told us “I went out and setup a bunch of pedals and kneeled in front of the amp and did the solo in just one take and I figured, ‘Well fuck it. It is what it is.’ I went back in to listen to it with Kerry…Kerry said, ‘This is incredible,’ and I went back and was, ‘mmm, it’s pretty good.’ Then James who was still up with me goes, ‘I’d like to try it as well’… James insisted that he wanted to do it, so he went out there with the same setup and laid down his own solo, which by the way, we did find. We actually have a mixed copy of it. We have talked about releasing it just for historical sake. If anyone wants to hear the James Iha solo, I think Kerry mixed it when we were doing the reissues, so we do have that sitting there somewhere.”

Billy told us that for the solo, he used a micro synth pedal that had an envelope feature that would react according to how he would play. “So as I was playing, in essence things were happening that I didn’t have control over, but I was in essence reacting to… It’s like I basically setup a hurricane of a guitar sound and then I’m trying to kind of ride the storm as I’m playing. So you hear these beautiful moments where I’m able to kind of master the storm and ride it for 10-15 seconds and it spirals out of control. It’s like I created an uncontrollable set of parameters and you hear me struggling trying to control them. What’s beautiful about the solo is that there are all these incredible synchronicities that happen, and even melody lines that rise to the form, which is not bad, considering I never played the song before [laughs]. I never once even soloed over those changes. So it was sort of an intellectual thing, ‘Oh, I’ll solo over these changes’… It’s a beautiful moment of innocence really, because I really don’t know what I am doing, other than what I think I’m doing, and that’s what really stands out about that. If you think about what I am saying about Aeroplane verses Starla, they’re the same thing, but on two different ends of the spectrum. One is complete innocence, and one is the beneficiary of the kind of confidence that can only come from being on tour a lot.”

When Billy told us about playing the guitar solo for Starla, he said it was a hit or miss: “The other day I played it at practice and I played this incredible, beautiful solo, then the next time I played it, I was like, ‘Eh- it’s okay.’

Wow fucking cool.

Pisces Iscariot is just pure gold.

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