I realized that beyond my whole-souled embrace of 1979, I know virtually nothing about the music of Smashing Pumpkins, or Billy Corgan.

If they had been producing music for the public a couple of years earlier than they actually did, I would have been all over them. By the time their first album came out, I was listening almost exclusively to news and talk radio, struggling unsuccessfully to get a real job in that field. My anthemic heroes looked more like Scott Carrier.

When the Mellon Collie album came out, catapulting the band toward a kind of indie superstardom, I had given up on radio and was out over the road myself, driving big trucks.

“Cool kids never have the time”.

***

Pumpkins, the core.

Gish (1991)
Siamese Dream (1993)
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995)

More here and here and here too.

***

Scott C.

Old school, two and three and four decades ago as represented by the end of ‘Season Four‘

New school, from a year ago and up until a month ago as currently configured: Season Five (link will change someday)

***

Now that is some world-class distraction, right there.