Ten Albums: Number 5 - Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

A friend tagged me in a Facebook challenges to post 10 albums that have influenced my musical taste. One record a day for ten days. No explanation, no review, just the cover.

Yeah, I can't do that without an explanation. Plus, it gives me something to write about. So, here, over the next ten posts will be my ten albums followed by a bunch of words.

Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

Siamese Dream came out in July of 1993, the summer before I started college. I had not listened to the Smashing Pumpkins much after Gish came out in 1991. But, when I moved into the Seton Hall dorm at DePaul when school started, this really cool kid who lived on our floor was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan and played this album all the time. Since he was cool and I wanted to be cool, I listened it all the time, then went Tower Records to buy it for myself and my roommates were just happy to hear something that wasn't Cracker's Kerosene Hat album (more on that later).

This was alternative rock prime time, although to me, Siamese Dream still sounded like a prog rock album, which was a lot of what I had been listening to (I was happy to find a bootleg with Billy Corgan playing an acoustic version of Rush's Limelight). This album was everywhere my freshman year, and since we were in Chicago, they seemed even bigger. 

Cherub Rock, the great opener, the happy sound of Today, with lyrics that are not at all happy, the almost nine minute blistering epic Silverfuck, the sweet come down of Luna to end the album. The album had dynamics, loud songs, slow songs, quiet songs. My favorite by far is Mayonaise (it drove me nuts that many of Billy's song titles seemed to not be easily related to the lyrical content). Starting with a multiple clean guitars playing a simple before a blazing into a wall of distorted guitars ablaze. And the lyrics. Wow.

Fool enough to almost be it

Cool enough to not quite see it

Doomed

Pick your pocket, full of sorrow

and run away with me tomorrow

June

Great lyrics, a great solo, quiet, loud, quiet, loud, quiet loud.

No more promise no more sorrow

No longer will I follow

Can anybody hear me?

I just want to be me.

Billy sure had some angst when he wrote the lyrics for this album. And then rerecorded the other guitar and bass parts. I became a huge Pumpkins fan, burned through the backlog and saw them live for the first time at Redbird Arena on ISU's campus, a great show at the height of Siamese Dream's popularity, stood in line at Tower Records in Chicago at midnight when Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness came out with several hundred others. I've seen them play many times, but I've seen as many bad live Smashing Pumpkins shows as I've seen good ones. And Billy Corgan is kind of a dick, which I guess we all kind of knew anyway.

Besides Siamese Dream. I don't listen to the Smashing Pumpkins much anymore. Nothing after Mellon Collie (which probably could have been condensed to a single disc) stuck with me much, and I listened to everything before I wrote this. I do still really love the song Drown, which appeared on the Singles Soundtrack (and not the crappy 4 minute version with the solo edited out. 

Ten Albums: Number 4 - Dada - Puzzle

Ten Albums: Number 4 - Dada - Puzzle

A friend tagged me in one of those annoying, yet fun, Facebook challenges to post 10 albums that have influenced my musical taste. One record a day for ten days. No explanation, no review, just the cover.

Yeah, I can't do that without an explanation. Plus, it gives me something to write about. So, here, over the next ten days will be my ten albums followed by a bunch of words.

Dada - Puzzle

I've never been to Disneyland. In all the times I've been to Southern California, mostly for work, I've only ever been to Anaheim once, and that was to see the Ducks play. Not the kid Ducks. The professional ones. 

The song Dizz Knee Land (see how they did that so WDC wouldn't sue them) I've heard thousands of times, played the riff on guitar a thousand times, been in someone's living room with Mike Gurley, the singer and guitar player from Dada, accompanied by my brother on guitar, and sang along to Dizz Knee Land with the forty others squeezed into the house party. I've made every band I've been in learn Dada songs. I've sat at Gamekeepers with my brother and the three guys from Dada after they played across the street at the Park West. I learned how to play Surround in college because the girl I liked loved the song and wanted me to play it for her. I still have the first Dada concert t-shirt I bought, the green one with the dirty song lyric on the back. I've seen Dada live more than any band except for one. And I can't for the live of me figure out why this band wasn't more successful.

My brother had this CD (are you getting tired yet of hearing how my brother shaped my musical tastes? Don't worry, it's my sister's turn soon). Back then my car only had a tape deck, so I put pretty much every CD we had on tape. I didn't listen to this much until one day, when I was mowing the lawn, I wanted something new to listen to. So I popped the Puzzle tape I'd made into my Magnavox Tape player (sorry, the Sony Walkman was too expensive) and listened as I cut the grass.

Power. Pop. Perfection. A three piece band, highly melodic, vocal harmonies throughout, face melting guitar solos. Radio ready singles. No songs to skip. My favorites are the opener, Dorina, Dizz Knee Land, Dim, and Moon, the angsty track that builds up to a blazing solo that ends the album.

Why don't more people know about dada? Why have their five studio albums not sold better? 

Dada fans are pretty nuts and very loyal. Going to a Dada show is like a fan reunion where everyone knows and recognizes each other. My brother knows most of them. They know my brother. He did some photography work for them, including for the Live: Official Bootleg (vol 1) CD. One of his shots also ended up on a t-shirt.

Photo by Dave Smolarek, signatures by Joie Calio, Phil Leavitt, and Michael Gurley

Dada isn't touring right now. They started recording new material in 2011 but stopped. Mike Gurley has been battling carpal tunnel syndrome for 25 years and he's had to adjust how he plays and during shows and dunking his hands and arms in buckets of ice kept near the stage.  We're all hopeful something new happens. Until then I keep Puzzle on regular rotation.