In my opinion, the Smashing Pumkins are anything but crap. They are one of the only bands that I feel have successfully mass-marketed what I think is good music. Even if they hadn't blown up and had just stayed in Chicago, I think their performance and their music was almost set up to be on a major label. This fact alone might qualify them as "crap" for some, but I think that just because something is popular, it is not always wrong. Just remember, Husker Du always said "getting popular is not the same as selling out".

"our band is breaking up"

"we're back together"

"we're breaking up again"

"we're back together again"

"we're breaking up again"

"we're back together again, but calling ourselves something different and hoping to dupe people into thinking we have a new sound"

who are we?

THE SMASHING PUMPKINS!!!!!

music = not too bad, but billy corgan's incessant yearning for attention makes me sick. CRAP.

I must say Willy's delivery bugs the crap out of me. It's so whiny and melodramatic...ON EVERY DAMN SONG! I just could never get past that.

Always seemed like a 'video band' to me, mostly for little girls to like. Although they may be nice folks, I keep coming up with 'crap'.

So 'crap' I will leave it.

First of all: Crap.

However, I feel I need to give some sort of props for their drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, because he was really good. Yeah, so he came off like a jerk in interviews, and he was in a crappy band, but the guy could play. Some of the single-stroke rolls on "gish" are the only reason I've kept my copy of that cassette all these years. Really, really nice.

But oh well. Crap notheleless.

CRAP all the way around. I'm told the drummer is really good, but I can't listen to the band without hearing the crap elements shining through. I wish I could.

At one point in time, Gish was an album that could not be beat. The preceeding singles, and the 4 song thingy that came after never escaped the fact that BC was (is) a whiny nasal singer. This made a very nice square with Skunk's Laid, Walt Mink's Miss Happiness and Monster Magnet's Spine of God.

The balance and excecution was much better on Gish than on subsequent recordings. In fact, Gish was the reason that if you had heard/liked Nirvana pre-1991, you were excited - "No shit, Nirvana's recording with Vig? That shit's gonna be huge!" Ahem. Of course we are all older and wiser now, and on Vig's second record with the SP, and forward on all that followed, you could actually hear all the digital processing and compression.

But nothing changes the fact that Chamberlin is a monster, and Corgan is a good guitar player. Can't help the fact that he uses his powers for evil. And even though I liked that Disarm song once in the context of the record, it remains a top example of an overblown egocentric piece of shit.

Gosh, I guess I really do dislike them now. One CD comp of early stuff still plays nicely on a loud stereo, but aside from that,

Smashing Pumpkins = A GIANT FROZEN OVERPROCESSED ICEBERG OF CRAP

Monster Magnet's Spine of God!

Man...that one takes me back. I never thought I could laugh so hard whilst being rocked just as hard (the "jazz cigarettes" certainly helped this, I'm sure). Every classic metal cliche executed with such love and tenderness - pure gold!

Back to the SP's though - Pure smooth brown, stinking, corn-speckled CRAP!

CRAP 2

I did like that second record.

very bad band

crap

Yeah, B.C.'s whine just annoys me. I am instantly angry when I hear it. I hate the way he slowly blinks his eyes in videos. I talked to James ages ago, a couple of times way back before the band was big; he seemed pretty cool. Still, it's Billy's crap band.

"The killer in me is the killer in you." Fuck off.
"Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage." Again, fuck off.