Revisiting The Smashing Pumpkins' Origins

One of the biggest myths about The Smashing Pumpkins, and it's perpetuated throughout the liner notes of the deluxe box set reissues of their first two albums Gish and Siamese Dream, is that all the cool kids hated them in their early days when they were up and coming.

This is easily discounted both by the band and this writer. An anecdote: this writer came up in the music scene roughly parallel to main Pumpkin Billy Corgan and his gang, so much so that I took them for granted and blew off an invite to the album release show for Gish to go dancing at the all ages club Medusa's at the time. My friends and i didn't blow them off because we thought The Smashing Pumpkins sucked; we blew them off because we were already huge fans and figured there would be many shows to see from the band in the future.

We were fans. Some of our crew had hand lettered demos sent via mail — THE MAIL — from Corgan himself. And all of us bought Gish and Siamese Dream the days they each came out. And there were lots of us.

People (at least in Chicago, honest to God) have loved the Smashing Pumpkins from the get-go. Even the cool kids. We weren't idiots: We knew when we were hearing something truly groundbreaking, even if the old fogey rock critics kept comparing the band to Supertramp and Styx.

Keep in mind that, as Siamese Dream was coming out, The Smashing Pumpkins were touring as the opening band for The Red Hot Chili Peppers with a little band from Seattle named Pearl jam acting as their opening act. So obviously Corgan and company were under appreciated. And even in their earliest of early days they were packing The Avalon and selling out The Metro. Under-appreciated? No.

Photo by Kristin Burns

So, while Corgan's revisionist history, outlined in the liner notes of both reissues, might not be wholly accurate, the music contained within the four discs between both sets cannot lie. Gish remains a revolutionary early '90s take on a suburban acid trip — all of the comfort and angst and none of the danger — while Siamese Dream still stands as one of the finest albums of the last thirty or forty years.

So that's history. A reissue does not make a classic album any more classic. And if I'm writing this review for someone who is newly coming to the table of The Smashing Pumpkins then you are either four years old or beyond salvation. So what's in a reissue? In The Pumpkins' case it's the release of a bunch of demos and epic remixed version of "Starla" and the pounding "Siamese Dream," then the price of admission is fully warranted. Unlike most reissues, most of the additional material here is well worth a listen.

So now we hit a point of indulgence: You need to own these albums. You probably already do own them, but these reissues are truly a delight. Gish thunders and roars like it never did through its original mixing and mastering. Siamese Dream now sounds even larger than it did the first time we shoved it in our CD player. Usually when we hear the phrase "remaster" we cringe and assume that it merely means that a recording has been bastardized to win the volume wars, but in this case both albums sound richer with the re-treatment. We are all reminded that two decades ago pretension wasn't a dirty word and world domination through six strings was a worthwhile cause.

And maybe that's the larger lesson of these remasters. It's a reminder. A reminder that at one time we lauded bands like The Smashing Pumpkins because they were grandiose, because they reached into the beyond and because they were unafraid to let their naked ambition to be something larger shine though. Since then, we have (and this writer is included in this set of the population) crucified billy Corgan for having the gall to be so full of himself. But Gish and Siamese Dream (and even their outtakes and supposed half-baked toss-offs) offer stark proof that his tendencies, at least in the earlier days of his career, led to undeniable greatness. And, honestly, were not sure any band nowadays, or even in the years to come, will have half the balls to accomplish what Corgan's vision set out for future generations.

The Smashing Pumpkins were never underdogs. They were always royalty. And these reissues only serve to remind us of that.

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By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on November 30, 2011 2:20 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Robert Blum

I do remember when they would play the Rock room at Medusa's. I saw my 1st Pumpkins video at Medusa's.

Matthew Sams

ALL of my friends thought that I was uncool for liking The Smashing Pumpkins. Radiohead was the only band worth listening to in the 90's according to my friends. Liking Smashing Pumpkins had always made me something of an outsider, even to this day. As an independent musician I play their songs at gigs and open mics, I always get this response: "Good job, but I can't stand the Smashing Pumpkins." or "Wow, that was a good song, you're making me like the Smashing Pumpkins!"... I think they are and have always been under-appreciated.

Navin_Johnson

An "outsider"? They were basically on MTV 24/7 for most of their heyday, they were one of the biggest most mainstream popular bands there was.

I still think I remember MTV doing a countdown(!) type of thing in advance of the first showing of the "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" video. Like they were the Beatles or something...

Tankboy

Yeah, but I can see if you were someone that came to the band as Radiohead grew in popularity in the really late '90s the pumpkins were in their decline at that point so I could see kids finding them uncool.

But that didn't stop them from still dominating rock radio and MTV.

slickpoetry

Interesting take on it all, tankboy. As someone who was just too young to be in the clubs during the Gish era (I was born in 1979, haha, and so would've been 12 in 1991) I always thought Billy's comments about the era reflected nothing but his own insecurities. When I started following them in 1993 (post-Siamese Dream) they were already blowing up. I think Billy looked around at his newfound success and wondered, "Why didn't this happen for me two years ago?"

JohnnyMachine

"In Chicago in the late 1980s, there began to
develop a kind of budding professionalism that struck us in the
punk/underground scene as distasteful: Bands with managers, publicists
and other agents were encroaching on a self-made scene that had
previously been by, for and about the bands themselves. The
Smashing Pumpkins personified this creeping professionalism, having a
management relationship with a creepy local music business player who
was also responsible for booking the biggest venue in town. As a result,
any decent touring band that came through town would have the Smashing
Pumpkins added to the bill as a support act. This was rightfully seen as
an imposition, and patrons learned to arrive at the Metro an hour later
than usual in order to miss them. It isn't overstating things to say
they were something of a joke in Chicago -- a band imposed on an
existing audience by the music business rather than a band building its
natural audience through accretion.Additionally, early on they
were associated with the exceptional band the Poster Children, through
some shows and a shared label. The Poster Children (and other bands from
the same downstate scene, like Hum) were an obvious and direct
influence on the Smashing Pumpkins' sound. For anyone familiar with
both, it is hard to see how the a lesser derivation of the Poster
Children's sound could be hailed as some kind of revolutionary genius,
except by rock critics and music business people unaware of anything at
the street level.In some of those public statements I mentioned
earlier, Billy Corgan has derided the underground scene of the day,
saying it was clique-ish and insular, and that he wanted to rebel
against it by going through conventional rock star channels to become a
conventional rock star. Well, bully for that kind of thinking, I guess,
if you think being a retrograde reactionary and joining the suffocating
mainstream culture and business is some kind of rebellion, and if you
think the penthouse of the managers and lawyers is somehow more open and
inviting than the open field of the DIY scene. For those of us involved daily in bucking that system, it was gross."-Steve Albini

Michael V

I appreciate the Pumpkins, but I do still think they lifted a lot from Poster Children, uncredited.

Tankboy

Yeah, Steve's never really liked Joe, huh?

localj

The pumpkins were always on the outside with my group of friends because of nirvana. But myself and a couple good friends thought they were genius! Billy's guitar work is friken outerbody and jimmy's drums forget about it. Siamese dream is my allttime favorite album. From mood to mood its amazing

scotty

I don't know about the premise here. I was 21 years old when Gish came out. the crowd I hung around with had lived through the 80s hardcore movement and countless alternative bands. I originally viewed Gish as a "hippie music" . I found it annoying. And while I bought Siamese Dream when it was released the amount of hype over the band at that point really turned me off.

A big factor was really the guitar work. which is awesome. but it really put off a lot of people who viewed it as the type of shit that was ruining music in the 80s.

In a lot of ways the Pumpkins were always the odd band out. even when they were on top selling tens of millions of albums they never really fit the alternative mold.

Mark Karbarz

Its one of the great things about the Chicagoland area, we love and idolize anyone from there. Pumpkins were Gods growing up. Urge Overkill, Poi Dog Pondering, Material Issue, all of these bands could be put in that category. Even the BoDeans, although they are from Milwaukee. Only Pumpkins really made it beyond our borders. Urge and the BoDeans, ironically, made it big because of a certain movie song and a certain tv song.

Tankboy

The very first piece of hate mail I got, writing about music in college (and this was stamped and mailed to the newspaper i wrote for hate mail) was when I ripped apart a BoDeans show in, um, 1991?

Nicholas

Of all those bands, the only songs I still listen to are by Material Issue. I do like Power Pop.

Navin_Johnson

My experience coming up at around the same time:

Gish came out: "This is pretty decent, some good ragin' guitar stuff here and there"
Siamese Dream: "Uh, not really feeling this at all, and this video....oh boy..."
And so on with the rest of their work: "Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage?".....*shudders*..."He really just sung that?" ...

That aside, I still love 1979, a little gem among the otherwise inexplicably popular stuff.

They took Red Red Meat out with them on tour, gotta like that at least.

Tankboy

Corgan is good about trying to expose people to the music he likes and thinks is under appreciated.

Nicholas

I saw them at Mabel's in Champaign very early on. They were the opening act for another band, possibly Eleventh Dream Day. Cover charge was a dollar as it was middle of the week instead of a weekend. Corgan stopped at one point because the sound guy touched the board, and he said he'd kick his ass if he touched it again. But, everyone in the crowd agreed they were a band that was going somewhere.