This will be a quick Friday night post, hopefully. My favorite band is the Smashing Pumpkins. Big margin there. Billy Corgan is a world class badass that has the stones to sneer at Oasis, and to sing about love and to crash the guitar, and to force every male emotion out through a nasal whine that sounds about as much like bagpipes as it does like a rock singer. I love the music, the overblown bloated narcissism, the dreams, the ideas that everything matters. The first three records, and the Aeroplane boxed set had so much passion and nerve and fire. It was the music I went to school to, the music playing when I kissed girls, and the music that was scratched into my soul. I hear the Pumpkins and I’m back in DC, back in Pittsburgh, back scheming to get a girl to come over and make me her happy victim.
I’ll never stop liking the Pumpkins. Even today’s stuff has the desperate whine, the plea to make things better that’s always there, always audible and the hope for a better world and a better place. Kurt Cobain was anointed the spokesperson of Generation X, but it was really Billy that made the difference, Billy Corgan that was the most like Generation X. Maybe he wanted to die, but he didn’t quite have the guts to burn himself up. Who knows. But in every song, then and now, there’s passion.
It feels amazing, to listen to that music, every time. My angel wings….
Another band–the Killers–looked to take a real shot with their first record. I heard it and thought “who the hell is that,” a when they first came out. Mister Brightside had it. The way I felt when I was 24, and I was sweating every girl. I wanted to hoard all of the affection around me, it was never ever, ever enough. I wanted every kiss from anyone, and that song, painted that picture perfectly. Here it is:
It feels like 24. That was a good start. But then, something went awry with the newest (terrible) record. You take your passion, and get all entitled making shitty quotes about how it was time for U2 to hang it up. Not focusing on channeling the passion, and they come out with forgettable mediocre & passionless drivel like this:
Boring. Tedious. Rich placated rockstar that can’t find something to care about. Talented, sure, but he’s just diddling around with it. He’s gone all adult contemporary on us, and because he’s the “it” band right now, nobody’s gonna tell him. The Anfernee Hardaway to Michael Jordan. He doesn’t even give a crap about what he’s singing, only whimpering about his place on the rock charts and who’s giving him his props. Maybe some critics were impressed, but this was skillful and soulles music.
What I want to know: What are you passionate about? What will you STAY passionate about so you don’t turn in an “Are We Human,” trite performance. What burns so bright in you you can’t wait to change it? That’s what you should be doing, if you got the skill. That’s where you need to be.
