Posts Tagged smashing pumpkins

I’m moving some stuff around and I found these files I used for one of my old podcasts, which might be the only coherent thing to come out of them. I don’t think I even played the solos in the podcast itself I just put a link to the file directory that is now deleted because why use up valuable podcast on music when you can fill it with hating on ridiculous things Billy Corgan has said?

Here’s a recent article that I’m not going to tear apart line-by-line of what I agree with and what I don’t. (At least, I’m not going to share that with you; I’ve just deleted several paragraphs.) As far as lead guitarist/frontmen who fire their entire bands go, Corgan is no Dave Mustaine. By which I mean, I agree with him on some things. His ego is pretty astounding, but he’s not a total dick about it. I think people who get genuinely mad at him miss his repeated references to a deep love of professional wrestling banter. Buncha jabronies if you ask me.

Anyway, I feel like Corgan is not taken seriously enough just as a guitar player. Doesn’t Kurt Cobain beat him in every top guitarist list? It’s absurd. To metalheads, his band is not metal enough to really matter. To non-metalheads, guitar solos don’t really matter. Not to go down the road Corgan himself travels of trying to paint one the most successful bands of the last 20 years as some kind of victim of unfairly not be even more loved, but I think some people jumped on the anti-Pumpkins bandwagon without even checking where it was headed: Beardsville. Except it’s not really called “Beardsville”, there’s just a sign there with a strikingly crafted cartoon of a beard on it and you either know it or you don’t. And uh, I dunno I like it if you like it, I guess. Nobody can really tell you what’s in there but there’s one thing there isn’t. Guitar solos. Fucking guitar solos. Don’t you fucking hate fucking guitar solos?

Maybe you don’t. That’s all I’m saying.

[The editing could have been a little tighter, but I’m not redoing these things. BONUS: this new media player I just installed allows multiple tracks at once, so let em all go and see how that treats you.]

1. Soma

   Corgan is an emotional player not a technician and this gets counted as a strike against him. The guitar is really his voice more than his singing, or at least it’s his most effective. A lot of people can’t get past his vocals but I think they’re missing out. (Ironically, the same dealbreaker most people have for metal bands.)

2. Quiet

   This one beats Churub Rock by a mile. Everything before this on the album is basically just the intro to this solo. When he goes up the octave on the last riff it kills me the most.

3. Zero

   This is clearly two guitars so I like to think of it as a duet with James Iha. Corgan is a notorious perpetrator of unnecessary multi-tracking and re-recording his own bandmates parts—or so he would have us believe. I personally feel the decline in quality after the lineup changed is not a coincidence.

4. Tales of a Scorched Earth

   Pushing the limits in the definition; at their heaviest, further out than most metal bands at this point. I think Iha deserves some credit on this one as well but who knows.

5. X.Y.U.

   More sheer insanity. However crazy it gets Corgan never really leaves the tonal center of the song. I would have a hard time making a top 10 solos list for Slayer or Sonic Youth. I like the role the solo plays here; at the end of the song, it’s not the emotional peak but a breakdown. There’s no where to go but sideways.

6. Geek USA

   The most metal of SP solos.

7. Hummer

   Maybe it’s the harmonizer that gets me.

8. Plume

   A bit noodly, but awesome use of phaser fx make it a classic.

9. The Aeroplane Flies High

   I like how this solo rises out of the riff like a lava man. It goes on straight through a whole chorus that I didn’t want to include. You get the idea. This drop-C riff is godlike, maybe their best heavy riff.

10. Starla

    Almost it’s own song. He can go one for quite a while. I could have included the feedback/drone thing from the long version of Drown which is pretty great in my book but most serious guitar players hate that kind of thing and it ruins my thesis that the Pumpkins had some serious guitar stuff going on, at least in the mid-90s. They can be taken at least as seriously as…Dokken. Right?
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