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.
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