A Service Announcement – The Smashing Pumpkins

You may not know this, but my love is for the Smashing Pumpkins.

So there is movement to the nth degree in the Pumpkins world so heck, before I start getting into other blog entries that I was planning, let me just throw out some randomness for you. For those of you who don’t really care for my stream of consciousness posts, hit the skip button on the remote and fly to another chapter.

– So I threw on a little The End is the Beginning is the End – Remixes today and it brought forth a memory of visiting Carol in Oshawa when she just moved there and I just moved to Ottawa and both of us were unsure of the future in these gigantic cities but all went fine and I still remember the time I visited and Carol’s roommate was out of town but Carol made me sleep on the floor instead of letting me sleep on the bed. What the heck? Ha ha, this was not what I had in mind for this memory, but this other one just popped up. I find it hilarious how at teenagers, there’s this taboo against sharing a bed together whereas nowadays, we’re older, wiser and realize that it sucks sleeping on the floor. Better to chance it with the morning breath and some drool hitting your face than to wake up underneath some desk. I would like to throw a shout out to Chantelle that weekend for allowing me to crash in her (on top of the covers of course) the next night that weekend after seeing the floor I had to sleep on. No worries Carol, I hold nothing against you. In fact, I am laughing right now at the memory.

ANYHOW, Carol ended up picking me up The End is the Beginning is the End – Remixes album which was amazing considering I hadn’t even known this existed! I was very impressed by Carol’s thoughtfulness. So that’s what I was thinking about today in the car.

– Let’s talk world tour for a second here folks. It’s been confirmed that the Pumpkins are going to be playing in Germany this summer, as well as hints of festival dates all around the summer. What’s a boy to do? Well, considering Vero has two months off this summer in between classes and work, and I don’t have any classes either, methinks I’m going to try and convince Vero to hoof it over to Europe for the sole purpose of travelling the Pumpkins Express. We’ll see how that idea flies. 😉

– When I got into the Pumpkins, it was the Mellon Collie era. I absorbed everything they had. Hey, this comes back to Carol now also now that I think about it – she introduced me to Siamese Dream which was a killer album that I had only heard about after listening to Mellon Collie. Anyhow, you know my love of live music started from a little thing called ‘MP3’s which were pretty well unheard of back in 1996 when the Internet started. But slowly live concerts became available.

Let’s just say I have a crazy collection of Pumpkins concerts…let’s go to the point where I am obsessive and have pretty well every concert that has ever been recorded. We’re talking well over 1000 concerts here. Yes, I am obsessed.

Anyhow, I never really gave the Siamese Dream era a chance but I am listening to 1994-07-16 Tinley Park, Illinois which I’m pretty sure was during the Lollapalooza ’94 stint where they took the headlining spot after Nirvana clearly had to back out (due to Kurt Cobain leaving this realm). This concert is crazy amazing and I cannot believe that I never really gave the Siamese Dream live era a chance. I can see now that this was where the passion was. The raw energy of Billy howling into the microphone that you see once in awhile during the Mellon Collie era, but not really in his later years of the Adore/Machina era. This is THE moment of the Pumpkins.

– I had another random memory of the Pumpkins today. Backtrack in 1999 (or was it 2000?) when I was in Waterloo visiting Larisa and I went out to pick up the new Stand Inside Your Love single at HMV. I was a little scared I must admit. Coming off of the Adore album, I can’t say that I cared for the new road the Pumpkins had took. Where was the guitar heavy, emo rock I grew to love? It was like…they were growing up. The angst was leaving swifter than the Thought Police stealing you away. So I holed myself up in a room and put in the 2 song single in the stereo.

WELL. I was blown away. Stand Inside Your Love to this day is one of my fave tunes of the Pumpkins. It was classic Pumpkins. Let’s not forget the B-Side of Speed Kills. Why this never made the album is beyond me. Actually, it made it onto the vinyl release, but come on. This was beauty incarnate. I remember listening to that single about 40 times that evening. Now I know how the gents of old felt like when they crowded around the record player to listen to one song over and over and over again. Does anyone ever do that anymore? Sure, you may be into a song, but with a press of a button, it can leave fast.