Smashing Pumpkins

I don't consider myself a Smashing Pumpkins fan, but I don't think they're bad. I picked up Mellon Collie because I loved a handful of songs from it and because it was used.

see James Iha, The Last Hard Men

Information: The Smashing Pumpkins Fan Collaborative
Suggested first purchase: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Suggested best of: Greatest Hits

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995) -- If this would have been a single album of just the good songs, it would have been excellent. As it is, it's not too bad if you're able to skip through what you don't like. Of course, I'm sure different folks like different things, so just go ahead and program your own good version. My album would be a shorter version of "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" (it only needed to be about a minute long to give an intro before the punch of the next song), "Tonight, Tonight" (very pretty), "Zero," "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," "Love," "Cupid de Locke," "Take Me Down" (a song which hints at James Iha's superior solo career), "Bodies," "Thirty-Three" (another perfect song), "1979" (one of my most favorite songs ever written by anyone, and what I would consider the theme of my generation, even though I was only four in 1979), "Stumbleine," and "Farewell and Goodnight." That's twelve songs, and I also admit that the other ones aren't even bad, meaning that this is a good album. But there's something about The Smashing Pumpkins that I never liked that much; maybe it's the production or Billy Corgan or something that just doesn't connect with me, but it's something, and I don't consider myself a fan even though I like many of their songs. A good attempt at The White Album. B