Anyone here like the Smashing Pumpkins?
I heard they were good, but I missed the bus, way back in the nineties.

Is there a particualr album I ought get?

Anyone here like the Smashing Pumpkins?

Yes.

I heard they were good

Fuck. Ing. Aye.

Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness are generally considered their finest works. Adore and Gish are worth a listen as well. Nice stuff on Picses Iscariot. Some nice stuff on Machinae, though alot of chaff. The first two are in the best 10 albums of the nineties. If anyone disagrees, I'll fight ya. I'll fight ya, I will.

I used to be a great SP fan.

Too bad I don't have the CD's anymore, I would have gladly send them to you, Roman.

"Siamese Dream", definitely. This is where they were at their most selves, so to speak. Very concise, both lyrically as well as musically.

"Gish" has the allure of being the first album.

"Mellon Collie ..." is ... too big somehow, and the band's inner disputes are showing, the two records are somehow too clean, too done. And then that trend remained until they broke up.

Mellon Collie And Infinite Sadness; features: Bullet with butterfly wings, where he goes like "despite all my rage i am still just a rat in a cage" (damn good song); 1979, where he goes like "shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time, etc". Also, the Machina/Machines of God. The Seamese is also very good. It pays to get the actual albums in the store, they're very prettily done.

AAw, you made me blow the dust off my American collection.... Damn you.

Oh man, I definitely must 'acquire' some Pumpkins!

"Today", off siamese dream is one of my favourites. Thats really the only album I can recommend.

The pumpkins are OK...so/so. Great for their genre, but not 'the best band in the world' anymore than U2 was. If you like them -bless you-- but if you are looking for some eye-opening music, it might be best to look elsewhere.

What kinds of bands do listen to normally?

Pixies, Nirvana, Unicorns, New Order, Pretenders, REM, Garbage, Decemberists, Deftones, Collective Soul, Modest Mouse and Radiohead.
Mostly indie/alt.

I've no longer heard about Smashing Pumpkin for years, wonders if they're still there.... Not that I'm a fan, it's just that they're another band I know playing alt rock music......... plus they've been in music industry for, a decade maybe?

They broke up years ago.

Pixies, Nirvana, Unicorns, New Order, Pretenders, REM, Garbage, Decemberists, Deftones, Collective Soul, Modest Mouse and Radiohead.
Mostly indie/alt.

Get off of that Nur-vahn-nah tripe this instant!

Judging from that list the Pumpkins would be a perfect band for you to check out, as they have common elements with pretty much all of them.

Gish is overlooked given the year it was released, and the fact it wasn't a major label album. Siamese Dream and MCIS rightfully get most of the glory, but Gish is the most too the point album, even if lyricaly it's the weakest/most ambigous. It's biggest Influences are Black Sabbath, followed by the Doors. The solo's are monstorous, Jimmy's drum rolls are thrilling (and the overall feel is dark, but not in the unsettling way.

Siamese Dream is at times euphoric. Think the uplifting harmonious tones of Queen and the Guess Who, mixed with sabbath-like riffs filtered through layer after layer of distortion, in melodious pop songs that occassionally recall the propulsive glory of Gun'n Roses or Janes Addiction (best exepmlified in the tri-partite Geek USA). It's very ambitous, and though sometimes silly, it's richly rewarding.

You'd probably recognize a huge Pumpkins Influence on the Deftones with these first two albums, as well similarities with Collective Soul.

Mellon Collie is the most demanding of the catalogue, and Perhaps a 2 hour, 28 song set is really something only a diehard could sit through. Billy's singing can be pretty grating at times. There is plenty of diversity though. The Pumkins best heavier, darker, angrier songs are on there (an ode to no one, bodies) There are sprawling cinema epics and mini-epics, pop songs, ballads, you name it. It's really an album for the youth, as I've gotten older I feel more and more distanced from it. I still love Twilight to Starlight though.

Adore is too the Pumpkins what Ok Computer is too Radiohead. I can hear definate musical similarites at times, or at least the influence of Ok Computer on Adore (though Adore is definatley not a "rocking" album, there is but one four-second solo in the set). Although it doesn't flow as well as it could, the atmostphere and dark histrionics are pervasive from start to finish. The album centers around themes of Death and Guilt and Love (of the ill-fated variety). Billy's most sincere moments of anguish can be heard on this album. You can also hear New Wave, Goth, and Folk creep into the Pumpkin sound with more substance here, beneath and within the electronic experiments.

Machina too me is a very joyful record, where all of the bombast that was absent on Adore is restored, and many of the songs suture old wounds. That doesn't mean it can't be dense and dark and full of salivating irony. Billy really REALLy indulges in his God complex in this album it probably gets the better of him. As a dark, pre-apocalyptic, fparable-filled concept album it might of worked but when you combine that with the mid-tempo pop melodies and it's dense overproduced sound it's ultimately not palatable. I like it, but its anemic sales are telling.

For a more stripped down, intimite Indie sounding Pumpkins you might want to start of with Pisces Iscariot (a B-sides album) or Singles from MCIS (they were released in limited addition box set form but you can still buy them independantly) especially my favorites Bullet With Butterfly Wings (full of retro-future sounding 80's covers) or Tonight Tonight (gentle cadenced folk ballads)

They were pretty good, from the time when bands could actually be ok.
You must be careful not to become a "pumpkins fan" though. You can like some of the songs just don't start going public with your appreciation.
Not much is lamer than a "pumpkins fan".
Good luck.

They had a song that was pretty good called Rat in a cage about the only one I really liked. if you wanna here some stuff by the Lead singer Billy Corgan has come out with some new stuff lately. One song is called Landslide its not bad

What's the proper verb they're using these days for illegaly downloading music?
Pirating? Sharing?

I, uh, shared some Smashing Pumpkins.

Anyhow...
They're quite good, and I feel [adjective] that I missed out on such a quality band.

What's the proper verb they're using these days for illegaly downloading music?
Pirating? Sharing?

I, uh, shared some Smashing Pumpkins.

Anyhow...
They're quite good, and I feel [adjective] that I missed out on such a quality band.
I agree, they are good,and I've liberated (your missing verb) a few notes of whimsy myself, from time to time lately, but I did actually -> $$ -> SP.

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.
I ripped Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness and Adore.
There's some really great stuff on Melancholy, like Galapagos or 1979. However, I find the majority of the album overbearingly whiny. I like Adore much more.
What little I have from Pisces and Siamese Dreams I very much like.

I also have one called Sad Peter Pan, but I don't know what album that's off. Anyhow, I was wondering what album that was on, and if it was characteristic of the album.

Thanks,
Roman.

Though never a huge SP fan, I enjoyed some of their tracks over the years. I was curious when I heard the Billy was working with New Order on Get Ready. And I was pleasantly surprised at just how good that album was.

Just when I thought I was getting too old to like new music, I discovered Interpol. Maybe I'm not over the hill just yet.

You mean lead of SP teamed up with New Order?
Get out!

The only track from Get Ready where I could hear him singing backup is Turn My Way. A quick Google also revealed that he toured with them the summer of 2001 so Gillian Gilbert could take care of her daughter.

Hey New Order are about to release a new CD (sorry if it's off topic)! Welcome news for 80's refugees such as myself. http://www.neworderonline.com/Default.aspx

I'll be satisfied as long as it is as good as Get Ready. Republic was a big disappointment for me. As good as Substance? Slim chance there, but I can always hope.

I liked Get Ready a whole lot more than Republic, too. So you say Substance is worth picking up?

Yes, I do. But I also liked Technique, and most of their older stuff. Though I'm not a huge Joy Division fan, Love Will Tear Us Apart is a classic. It is interesting to track the changes as they grew as musicians, and the radical change to their music brought on by Ian Curtis' suicide.

Substance is a sort of greatest hits CD, with a couple of classics thrown in that were new at the time.

I also like most of their side projects, such as Monaco, Electronic, and the Other Two.

Rotton Apple's is one of my favorite cd's. I suggest any Smashing Pumpkins fan to pick it up.

-guyute