Mellon Collie, the Infinite Sadness, and the state of rock and roll 30 years later.

LegendOfKage

LegendOfKage

Member
Please use this thread to recommend quality modern rock and roll made in the last 10 years or so.

You can also discuss the 30th anniversary of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, The Smashing Pumpkins' epic double album released 30 years ago as of last month. A special anniversary edition was released today, which also includes live performances from their 1996 supporting tour.





So what is this album to you? What was it then, and what is it now? Did you like it then? Do you like it now? For those who have children, have you introduced this album or other music from the time to your kids? How did that go?
 
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I think American rock is in a sad state. Rap and country swept a lot of it away. The heavy metal scene got infested with emo punks, damn near every song is about personal trauma and sorrow. Almost every band sounds the same with whiney soft singers or cookie monster incomphrehensibility.

Europe fared much better, preserving the full range of singing and music. They still sing about dragons, space battles, or getting laid, rather than depression, drug use, and contemplating suicide.

But the tide may be turning. The 80s guys are now almost all gone but still crush it with massive arena shows. Asia has their new wave of baby metal, we got bands like Parkland Drive, and I see new garage bands on Instagram, so there is a way to get paid again without being trapped by the stranglehold of clear channel.

We just need jay-z to lose the superbowl half time music rights so we can get some variety back.
 
A hell of an album that released when I was in 8th grade, 13 years old.

I went to this ritzy titzy upper middle class school. If you hadn't listened to, or weren't familiar with Siamese Dream and fell in love with "Zero" or "Bullet With Butterfly Wings", you were immediately considered a poser and "not a true fan."

It took awhile for me to get my own copy because my mom was ignorantly strict on some of the music I listened to. It finally took a few rounds of "Tonight, Tonight" to convince her they were a "safe" rock n roll band. Believe me, it was tough to convince this woman when Billy is singing -

"Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness
And cleanliness is godliness, and God is empty
Just like me"

...on the way to school in the morning :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 
I thought it was good, although not as special to me as Siamese Dream, Gish, and Pisces Iscariot. I usually end up skipping through a lot of the album to get to the stuff I like.

I'm way more into their heavier up-tempo stuff. Jellybelly is my favorite song on the album (maybe my top Pumpkins song). Ode to No One, X.Y.U., and Muzzle are the other real stand-outs for me.

All the singles (Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 1979, Tonight Tonight, Zero) are great but they were sooooo overplayed. I can do with hearing those songs once per year and I'm good.




Also whenever Bullet with Butterfly Wings plays on satellite radio, it shows up on the display as "Bullet with Butt" and my kids get a big kick out of it.
 
That's one of many albums that my older brother had. He's 5 years older than me and had an amazing catalog of alt rock CDs in the mid-90s that shaped my taste in music. I was too young to buy any of them myself--didn't have money at that age--but I was able to listen to them at my leisure until he started driving, at which point they stayed in his car in a huge CD binder (remember those?).

As for new rock made in the last decade: my wife is a big fan of Badflower. I don't love their vibe/lyrics, but they do put out some decent stuff that sounds like it's straight from 2002. It's refreshing to hear new stuff that sounds like that these days.

I've also recently gotten into Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, his post-Oasis band. I like some of their songs more than anything in the Oasis catalog, and I'm a big Oasis fan.

The Dying of the Light:



Riverman:

 
I'm a Pumpkins fan to this day. MCaTIS blew up when it came out and was played everywhere from school dances, to radio, to movies. Looking back, it seems like the industry pushed it heavily more than it organically catching on. No other Pumpkins album caught on like it, either. They sort of got lost in the push of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, but have hung on all these years, or at least Billy Corgan has. 😅
 
I was 10 years late to The Smashing Pumpkins. I found them through that Simpsons Lollapalooza episode and the local alt rock radio station in the mid-2000s.

I collected a bunch of SP CDs and got Mellon Collie as a Christmas gift. I remember listening to it on a portable CD player while at the extended family Xmas get-together.

There are some great tracks on MCATIS. My favorites are:
Jellybelly (probably my top favorite)
Zero
Cupid de Locke
Porcelina of the Vast Oceans (the Zwan analogue of this Mary Star of the Sea is great, too)
Bodies
Tales of a Scorched Earth
XYU

The rest are okay/good but I felt like they covered similar ground as each other (from what I remember).
 
LegendOfKage said:
Please use this thread to recommend quality modern rock and roll made in the last 10 years or so.

You can also discuss the 30th anniversary of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, The Smashing Pumpkins' epic double album released 30 years ago as of last month. A special anniversary edition was released today, which also includes live performances from their 1996 supporting tour.





So what is this album to you? What was it then, and what is it now? Did you like it then? Do you like it now? For those who have children, have you introduced this album or other music from the time to your kids? How did that go?
Click to expand...


The Smashing Pumpkins are still in My Top Five
 
For newer stuff, I glommed on to Dynasty from James Gunn on Peacemaker.

I challenge anyone to listen to this and NOT wanna go hit the gym or go build a bridge or something.



Another one off Peacemaker is Diemonds. I dig a chick singer that isnt trying to out croak the guys.

 
Smashing Pumpkins is here nor there for me. The songs of theirs I like are few and far between. My brother bought me Siamese Dream. I do kind of dislike that double album because 1979 (terrible song) was our senior class song, even though we graduated in 96 which means most were born in '78 which irritates me to no end. To a much lesser extent, it reminds me of Pearl Jam and Jeremy which couldn't be escaped in my middle school days. I think that's the singular reason why I never really got into Pearl Jam (and, to be clear, they are infinitely more talented than Smashing Pumpkins). I haven't listened to Ava Adore in a while, but I do remember appreciating how much of a departure it was for me.

I'm not sure I could tell a band of the last ten years. I don't listen to the radio or streaming services, so my exposure to new music is mostly via what is played in stores which is easy to tune out.
 
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FWIW I think Amazon music has a really good algorithm and catalog. If I start with a fairly indie band it will feed me lots of good songs from bands I've never heard of.

 
LegendOfKage said:
Please use this thread to recommend quality modern rock and roll made in the last 10 years or so.

You can also discuss the 30th anniversary of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, The Smashing Pumpkins' epic double album released 30 years ago as of last month. A special anniversary edition was released today, which also includes live performances from their 1996 supporting tour.





So what is this album to you? What was it then, and what is it now? Did you like it then? Do you like it now? For those who have children, have you introduced this album or other music from the time to your kids? How did that go?
Click to expand...

This set us my favorite by SP. I was huge into them and their music defined this period of my life. I was shifting over toward the end of my military enlistment, readying myself for civilian life, and college. Went through love and heartbreak, uncertainty, successes, and the music of the SP saw me through it all.

It's funny in a way. When I was FINALLY able to get tickets to their farewell tour (Machina) I took my wife, who I recently married at that time. Now I had already taken her to see U2, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Tori Amos, and a bunch of others. But I told her, *This* is what I had been waiting for.

Then Darcy bailed midtour. Other stuff was going down with the band, and I was a bit concerned. We go to the show, and it was not good...at all. They sped through songs, didn't appear to want to be there. I don't even think they came out for an encore. I remember telling my wife how disappointed I was. She also said that she didn't think that it was that good.

I was on the official message boards at the time and people were talking about the show. I wasn't the only one disappointed. I had tried to get tickets to them for every show before Machina and was never able to. I remember waiting in lines, doing the lottery thing, with no success. If I remember right, I went to a music store in BFE and manged to get 2 tickets because there were only 5 of us waiting in line.

I still listen to them but my kids are not really into them. Lol my son is into some of my skate music, my daughter is into kpop. Neither of them care for SP. :(
 
I remember when I got my hands on the Singles soundtrack, and SP had that long-ass song "Drown" at the end, I think it must have been my first exposure to them. Not long after, Siamese Dream just appeared and was all over the radio and I was goddamn hooked, I was a freshman in college. I grabbed whatever else of theirs I could find (the 1st album Gish, there was also an EP or 2) and of course every single they put out I gobbled up; they were usually generous with B-sides, and I couldn't get enough. Went to see them at SUNY Albany (one of the first concerts I attended, crowdsurfing and slam-dancing and all the 90s trappings).

And then I dunno what happened. Maybe I felt like they oversaturated me? Mellon Collie came out, they were playing a bunch of the new tracks on the radio, and for whatever reason I just felt turned off. Still loved all the other SP stuff I had, but something that I couldn't put my finger on was turning me off and I never bought this album or any of their others following. 1979 was a pretty strong track, I felt. Great memories though!
 
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Durien said:
This set us my favorite by SP. I was huge into them and their music defined this period of my life. I was shifting over toward the end of my military enlistment, readying myself for civilian life, and college. Went through love and heartbreak, uncertainty, successes, and the music of the SP saw me through it all.

It's funny in a way. When I was FINALLY able to get tickets to their farewell tour (Machina) I took my wife, who I recently married at that time. Now I had already taken her to see U2, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Tori Amos, and a bunch of others. But I told her, *This* is what I had been waiting for.

Then Darcy bailed midtour. Other stuff was going down with the band, and I was a bit concerned. We go to the show, and it was not good...at all. They sped through songs, didn't appear to want to be there. I don't even think they came out for an encore. I remember telling my wife how disappointed I was. She also said that she didn't think that it was that good.

I was on the official message boards at the time and people were talking about the show. I wasn't the only one disappointed. I had tried to get tickets to them for every show before Machina and was never able to. I remember waiting in lines, doing the lottery thing, with no success. If I remember right, I went to a music store in BFE and manged to get 2 tickets because there were only 5 of us waiting in line.

I still listen to them but my kids are not really into them. Lol my son is into some of my skate music, my daughter is into kpop. Neither of them care for SP. :(
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I'm sorry to hear it. If you're a band, there is almost nothing more important than avoiding this situation, although I understand why it would happen. I always liked this song, which seemed to come from a band who realized this and wanted to acknowledge their mistake. I'm glad you can still enjoy their albums, though, and didn't let a bad experience ruin the music for you.

 
I borrowed a cassette copy with hand written track listings from a friend in high school it must have been a second generation copy as the quality was terrible! But the heavy songs started to click with me, 'Tales of a scorched earth' I think convinced me i needed to buy it legit (I don't care if most fans write that one off, I love it!).
That summer It was the first album I bought with money I earned myself and it was incredible. It was my first experience of a 'concept' album; I loved the happy/sad faces of both CDs and the lyric booklet. I used to skip the slower songs but those began to resonate with me to I could listen to it all without skipping. It thought me how it pays to put the work in to listening to an album as some songs need more time to sink in before you appreciate them.
Years ago I found a (legit!) double tape in a charity shop for next to nothing and thankfully bought it on a whim even with no way to play it.
A friend of mine has the 3 disc vinyl album and I'm not one bit jealous..
 
I loved this back in the day, but it seems a bit pretentious now. Billy Corgan took himself so seriously. The album title is embarrassing, and there are some awful tracks on it - could easily have been edited down to a single CD.

That said, some great tracks too. I was really into the band then, I even bought the singles box with the swirly black and white pattern and dozens of tracks that didn't make the cut on Mellon Collie. (Even as a fan there are some I only played once.)

These days I think Gish is by far their best album. It's actually the only one I can stand to hear all the way through any more. They're just one of the groups I left behind. Better lyrics than Nirvana though. Maybe Soundgarden is the band of that era that aged the best.
 
jason10mm said:
I think American rock is in a sad state. Rap and country swept a lot of it away. The heavy metal scene got infested with emo punks, damn near every song is about personal trauma and sorrow. Almost every band sounds the same with whiney soft singers or cookie monster incomphrehensibility.

Europe fared much better, preserving the full range of singing and music. They still sing about dragons, space battles, or getting laid, rather than depression, drug use, and contemplating suicide.

But the tide may be turning. The 80s guys are now almost all gone but still crush it with massive arena shows. Asia has their new wave of baby metal, we got bands like Parkland Drive, and I see new garage bands on Instagram, so there is a way to get paid again without being trapped by the stranglehold of clear channel.

We just need jay-z to lose the superbowl half time music rights so we can get some variety back.
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I disagree so much with this, but then again I'm a huge metal head and I think the genre isn't in a bad state right now at all.

I'd say check out Necrogoblikon, but it sounds like you'd hate their vocals even though they do have cleans, but I assume you're one of those people who hate all rough vocals based on the cookie cutter anecdote that everyone who doesn't know shit about metal goes with that you utilized, but hey, try em out if you're feeling open minded at some point. I'm also trying to find these emo punks that you say have infested the "heavy metal scene", (I mean, what even is that honestly? That can encompass so many different scenes with little to no overlap, it's remarkable), but I can't seem to spot em.

As far as power metal goes, which it sounds like you'd potentially appreciate, but I'm unsure if you just hate all metal or just any genre with "cookie monster incomprehensibility", (rough vocals ), so you may not dig this one either as they do also have some rough vocals here and there, but I'm of the mildly controversial opinion that Unleash the Archers is the current best power metal band on the planet, so if you dig Queensryche, Maiden, Helloween, any number of great(?) bands like that, then perhaps have a peak, I don't know.

After the Burial, Seas on the Moon, Fuzzripper, and Arch spire are all incredible bands that are very active today as well, but they all contain at least some rough vocals.....

On topic: I used to like Smashing Pumpkins when I was pretty young but I just can't stomach Corgan's voice anymore. Just too screechy, whiny, and annoying. I do still kinda like Bullet though, admittedly.
 
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Can someone please ask Billy Corgan to share the details of his experience seeing a shapeshifter and pass them along to me? He's mentioned it in different podcast interviews but only tells details off-air. Thanks in advance.
 
I didn't have access to a cd player in late middle school when this came out, but I kept my radio cassette player ready with a blank tape and recorded every track I could off the local stations. Loved it. Something in particular about this band fasciated me back then, even with my very limited access.
 
LegendOfKage said:
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Maybe he genuinely couldn't spell 'melancholy' and nobody dared correct him.

He seems like a major control freak. I remember stories of his band mates listening to the finished songs and realising he'd gone back into the studio alone and overdubbed all of their parts. Outside of live shows, their job was mainly to stand in the background at photo shoots.

Getting Pavement kicked off Lollapalooza too. Now there's a band of that era I still listen to. Malkmus has a far better body of work than Corgan.
 
Got to be honest, never got into this album or the band as a whole. There are a few excellent songs, but the rest just somewhat blend into one.
 
$40 + tax was no joke for a kid with no job back then but still was able to pick it up on CD. Enjoyed it well enough but felt like they should've edited it down to a 15 song single disc. Loathed the bullet/butterfly song for too much air play. 😄
 
LegendOfKage said:
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I saw Local H at a small club in DC around this time of year (right before Thanksgiving) in 2001.

My girlfriend and I, at the time had both just gotten laid off that day from the same tech start-up. Literally, we got laid off at the end of the day, went back to our apartment to change clothes (we were living together) and then met friends at the show. We weren't even upset about getting laid off becauase the exit package was huge and we both planned to just take a two month vaction and start looking for jobs again after the holidays. I spent those two months relaxing and playing Dark Age of Camelot, which had just been released.

Don't remember much of the show, other than he fact that there weren't that many people there and Local H was way too loud for the small venue, to the point where it actually started to hurt to listen to them.
 
calistan said:
I loved this back in the day, but it seems a bit pretentious now. Billy Corgan took himself so seriously. The album title is embarrassing, and there are some awful tracks on it - could easily have been edited down to a single CD.
Click to expand...

A while back he announced he was doing an 8 hour musical interpretation of Siddhartha at his tea house in Highland Park, Illinois. I remember some local journalist made fun of the idea so Billy banned them from the show lol

I found this article about the show, it sounds like a real banger:
www.vice.com

We Watched Billy Corgan Play an Eight-Hour Freeform Synth Interpretation of "Siddhartha"

Well, Wouldn't You?
www.vice.com www.vice.com
 
DonkeyPunchJr said:
A while back he announced he was doing an 8 hour musical interpretation of Siddhartha at his tea house in Highland Park, Illinois. I remember some local journalist made fun of the idea so Billy banned them from the show lol

I found this article about the show, it sounds like a real banger:
www.vice.com

We Watched Billy Corgan Play an Eight-Hour Freeform Synth Interpretation of "Siddhartha"

Well, Wouldn't You?
www.vice.com www.vice.com
Click to expand...
That is outstanding!

After David Bowie died, the Facebook page of the Pixies posted a photo of a bunch of US alt-rock royalty at Bowie's birthday party. Frank Black and many others, but half the comments on that thread were like "ewww, Billy Corgan!"
 
ville valo wise words GIF
 
Bullet with Butterfly Wings basically got into alternative rock in the 90s. In Cleveland it was the number one song on the Buzzard for an ungodly amount of time. Some real bangers on that album. I had forgotten about XYU, Jellybelly and Tales of a Scorched Earth. I really need to revisit Gish and Pisces Iscariot.

I ended up like Siamese Dream more but Meloncoly was truly an epic and influential album in the mid 90s. I miss the music of that era.
 
is 7 year old, so still within the 10 year timeframe.
this album is among my favourite more recent rock albums:
AeKm9HkNUcIBCrKH.jpg





same band, slightly more recent album (only 5 years old), and imo even better than the one above;
WDJjCMYobk0jjTxV.jpeg


 
calistan said:
I loved this back in the day, but it seems a bit pretentious now. Billy Corgan took himself so seriously. The album title is embarrassing, and there are some awful tracks on it - could easily have been edited down to a single CD.

That said, some great tracks too. I was really into the band then, I even bought the singles box with the swirly black and white pattern and dozens of tracks that didn't make the cut on Mellon Collie. (Even as a fan there are some I only played once.)

These days I think Gish is by far their best album. It's actually the only one I can stand to hear all the way through any more. They're just one of the groups I left behind. Better lyrics than Nirvana though. Maybe Soundgarden is the band of that era that aged the best.
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I really dig Landslide on Gish. That song is probably in my top 5 SP songs. I realize it is a Fleetwood Mac remake but I heard that version before the FM version. Machina reminded me of Fleetwood Mac's Rumors (which I think is FM's best album, hands down).

Edited for clarity.
 
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I really only just remember a teenage me fantasising about D'Arcy all the time and dreaming of having a girlfriend like her lol. That picture of her holding the carrot in the CD booklet blew my mind for some reason.
 
Durien said:
I really dig Landslide on Gish. That song is probably in my top 5 SP songs. I realize it is a Fleetwood Mac remake but I heard that version before the FM version. Machina reminded me of Fleetwood Mac's Rumors (which I think is FM's best album, hands down).

Edited for clarity.
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That's on Pisces Iscariot. Didn't realise it was by Fleetwood Mac.

Gish has the songs Rhinoceros and Window Paine (jeez, Billy's spelling) which was the kind of Pumpkins vibe I liked the most.

By Siamese Dream he was already ruining songs like Spaceboy by putting strings on them, so you could see the direction he was going to take pretty early.
 
Been listening to Mellon Collie again because of this thread.

Forgot how much I like "Here is No Why"; the riff, the soft/loud dynamic, and that solo. To indulge in my autism for a minute, the opening riff starts off on a Maj7 chord: Maj7s to me always sounded so calm but unresolved, and it caught my imagination. And it created a weird fixation with me putting Maj7 chords in as many "songs" as I could write as I learned to play guitar along with this album.
 
DonkeyPunchJr said:
A while back he announced he was doing an 8 hour musical interpretation of Siddhartha at his tea house in Highland Park, Illinois. I remember some local journalist made fun of the idea so Billy banned them from the show lol

I found this article about the show, it sounds like a real banger:
www.vice.com

We Watched Billy Corgan Play an Eight-Hour Freeform Synth Interpretation of "Siddhartha"

Well, Wouldn't You?
www.vice.com www.vice.com
Click to expand...
Christ what an absolute tool.

I hate that this idiot is getting a resurgence now too. Why is it that we pay the most attention to the most pretentious and pathetic of celebrities?
 
poodaddy said:
Christ what an absolute tool.

I hate that this idiot is getting a resurgence now too. Why is it that we pay the most attention to the most pretentious and pathetic of celebrities?
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I am one of dozens who bought one of Corgan's poetry books twenty years ago. I'm an enabler 😭
 
LegendOfKage said:
Please use this thread to recommend quality modern rock and roll made in the last 10 years or so.

You can also discuss the 30th anniversary of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, The Smashing Pumpkins' epic double album released 30 years ago as of last month. A special anniversary edition was released today, which also includes live performances from their 1996 supporting tour.





So what is this album to you? What was it then, and what is it now? Did you like it then? Do you like it now? For those who have children, have you introduced this album or other music from the time to your kids? How did that go?
Click to expand...

This album showed me what a concept album could be, and how grandiose it was, and showed me that Billy Corgan was a muscial genius (how far did he fall when you see him now :messenger_grinning_sweat: ). It is also hours of trying to play some of the songs on guitar, and especially the piano intro which is not that hard to do actually for how good it sounds. So it enabled me to upgrade my guitar palying as well as my ear in general and made me grow from boy to teenager who thinks he is all grown up now.

I don't know what rock music is now, only heard some stuff from MK.gee that i liked even tho he seems to have recorded all guitar parts inside his boyfriend asshole using only the neck pickup and never adjusting the Toan™ button
Still i bet my balls most of today's "rock" is just derivative performing without an ounce of ingenuity, a genre where posers are king, as is everywhere else in the mainstream entertainment industry.
 
Porcile said:
I really only just remember a teenage me fantasising about D'Arcy all the time and dreaming of having a girlfriend like her lol. That picture of her holding the carrot in the CD booklet blew my mind for some reason.
Click to expand...

Yeah she was super cute back in the day. Shame what happened to her as she's the the only one missing. James and Jimmy still play with Corgan when they tour. Sucks they can't get back Melissa Auf der Mar or shit dude, hire Paz Lenchantin. She left The Pixies last year.
 
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Arjen Lucassen released a new solo album a few weeks back.
for anyone who's into old school prog rock.
it's a concept album that is a semi-sequel of sorts to his previous solo album (which is older than 10 years tho)

AVKxN88ytmxae4N1.jpg


 
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This was a fun watch. I hope Corgan is right that rock is coming back. It's certainly due for another wave of popularity and commercial interest.
 
Great album, but I remember being pissed with the band/Corgan, because he put a lot of discourse out there about how "rock is dead" and that after Mellon Collie they would probably abandon guitars/drums for electronica in future albums. And while "Adore" did go in a little different direction, it wasn't quite THAT stark to be "no guitar no drums, etc".

In ways he was right and wrong. Rock didn't go anywhere, but it is to the point where it's almost a niche genre today, and not at all what's lumped in as "pop" now (where in the 90s, alternative/metal WAS pop- as much as that would piss off rock people to hear). And he ultimately didn't abandon Rock for long- but the band certainly has never been remotely the same/as good since the Siamese Dream/Mellon Collie days. I heard a recent soundbite where he said when he makes new music and determines it sounds like one of those records, he pretty much purposely scraps it, which is a shame, as those albums (especially Siamese Dream) are two the best, ever, in my book.
 
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