What’s your all-time favorite album?
Oomph, making us choose? But there’s so many. In the history of every genre there are countless gems of perfection.
If I had to pick, however, as a rock woman who is just the right age, I’m going to say Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins. Ya just had to be there at the time. This album belongs to the rock fans who, like myself, were between the ages of 12 and 17 when Mellon Collie was released.
I did a whole post on this band and album, some of which I may recopy here… because back when I was a “real writer”, I did a much better job of describing the magic than I could possibly do right now.
From a 2016 post, somewhere on this blog:
“”Blast (Fuzz Version)” is a previously unreleased song from 2013’s deluxe reissue of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. This song illustrates a few basic ingredients that make The Pumpkins legendary.
This is the theme song for a graduation ceremony honoring the high rulers of a new galaxy. You are on the way to this ceremony, and you are one of the honorees. Your transport is a rocket ship with “Victory!” painted on the side in blue letters. The rocket launches into the atmosphere, diving up and down, doing barrel rolls above the earth.
The rocket is fueled by pure electric ecstasy, shaking and unsteady in its course. You’re ready to come apart at any moment. You’re burning up inside a screeching metallic inferno as the rocket nearly drops into chaos, but suddenly it pulls up and ascends from danger just in time. Meteorites fly at you from all directions, missing by mere inches. Streaks of blue, white and silver form a kaleidoscope above your head.
The sound defies gravity with every movement, every wild and meandering note. Clouds fly past at an impossible speed while the moon and the stars spin around.
Now we are back on Earth. We are children at that perfect moment on a swing set – the moment when it’s time to jump. The swing lurches forward. Now or never. We feel the force of gravity. This is it. Now!
All of the early songs are this good. Whether soft and dreamy or sonic metal assault, each song weaves a layered tapestry of emotion, and there’s a song for every mood and phase of your life. This is why the original Smashing Pumpkins are widely considered to be the last Great Rock Band.
From the hard driving rock of Gish, to the jaw dropping power of Siamese Dream, to the existential Mellon Collie, all the way through the mournful beauty of Adore, this is a band that consistently delivered a trove of flawless gems.
Like clockwork, every album was better than the last. Every album was a powerful, unspeakable experience. Billy Corgan’s songwriting intertwined gothic rage with swirling, expansive dreamscapes. The songs were loaded with vivid widescreen imagery.
Mellon Collie delivered rivers of disillusionment; bending mirrors of perception. It delivered a circus of lost dreams, moments of breathless optimism, and an intense longing for love. It delivered park benches under the stars, first loves, battlefields full of wounded soldiers, church steeples, and antique shops. It delivered black storm clouds rolling away to reveal an evening sun rippling on water. Mellon Collie delivered sounds and images I could never describe.
Even more remarkably, Billy Corgan could sit down at a piano and convey quaint moments of Vaudeville theater inspired by the 1920’s. The same guy who wrote the metal thrasher “Tales of a Scorched Earth” could sit down at a piano and cover the 1928 song “My Blue Heaven” with flawless charm. He could throw in a touch of electronica here and there. He could bathe you in soothing whimsy and then turn around and rock your face off.”
To read the entire article, visit here:
Yes, so that’s it. I pretty much described why in that original post. 🙂 Nowadays I’m often frazzled/anxious and don’t listen to rock as much as I’d like. I generally need soothing shit, a lot of the time. You’re likely to catch me rotating ambient electronic songs on Pandora. Some recent favorites are: Ryan Farish, Carbon Based Lifeforms, and I really like the “Antique Beats” station. I should explore Spotify one of these days, but the 2 times I visited it seemed like a helluva lot of work compared to Pandora. I need to check it out one more time though because it consistently rates higher than Pandora, so. Yeah, soft electronica. Psychedelic electronica. Love it all.
Thanks for reading.
ZeroSpace
ZeroSpace 