60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Smashing Pumpkins—“Mayonaise”

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Rob explores the Smashing Pumpkins’ shoegazing power ballad “Mayonaise” by discussing how the eccentricities of frontman Billy Corgan directed the band’s trajectory, the band’s ability to tap into the universal feeling of isolation, and where the band was situated within the '90s rock landscape. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Bill Simmons Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments play together only on Spotify. Best of all, you can create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm-fm-f-M-C-H-O-R-M-S-U-S-I-S-M-U-S-I-S-I-C-A-L-L-K. A lot of spelling there, but just do it. I want to talk about joy. I want to talk about William Patrick Corgan Jr. lead singer, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, possibly all other guitarist, maybe bassist as well. Frontman, primary songwriter, mastermind, dictator for Chicago rock band The Smashing Pumpkins. I want to talk about Billy Corgan as a fount of, as a conduit for, as a man radiant with joy. This is quite challenging. He is notoriously a great.

grouchy person. His lyrics reflect this. Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage. God is empty, just like me. Living makes me sick. So sick I wish I die. Love is suicide. He is, notoriously, even grouchier in interviews. You're not buying the joy thing. I get it. It's a valid argument. Here is my counter argument. This is joy to me. It was joy to me in high school. It's joy to me now. It feels like he's flying. It feels like you're flying him. This is the guitar solo to a song called Here Is No Why, which appears, along with 27 other songs,

some including those lyrics about rage and death and love as suicide, on the 1995's Smashing Pumpkin's double album, Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness. Another activity that brings Billy Corgan Joy is naming things. Ornate, ridiculous. names for songs, albums, box sets, tours. I seem to recall the name Tear Garden by Collidescope. I don't remember what that one was for. There's a why, obviously. In Collidescope, of all the 90s rock stars, guitar gods, and voice of a generation types, nobody took themselves more seriously or more warmly embraced the silliness inherent to taking yourself that seriously. He schemed,

he whined, he overthought everything. He was enraged. He was enraged. He was a enraging. He talked a lot of shit. People talked a lot of shit about him. But he also did shit like this. I loved Billy Corgan in high school because I felt like I understood him. Or maybe it's just that I felt like he understood me. He whined a lot like me, but unlike me, he whined articulately, extravagantly, honorably. He whined joyfully. He whined the words, intoxicated with the madness. I'm in love with my sadness. I was a lot. in love with Billy Corgan's sadness too. And that love affair started here.

My name is Rob Harvilla. I'm a staff writer and music critic at The Ringer, and this is 60 songs that explain the 90s, a podcast that isn't always about overwrought emo teenage feelings, but it sure as hell is right now. Today we're talking about mayonnaise, a deepish cut on the Smashing Pumpkin's previous album, 1993's Siamese Dream. That's mayonnaise with just one N. The name might be a play on words for like my own eyes.

My guest today, we'll be talking to him later, is Bill Simmons. And this is the Smashing Pumpkin song Bill wanted to talk about. Siamy's Dream was the band's second album and made them, and especially made Billy Corgan famous, cue the shit talking. The record's hits, including Today and Cherab Rock and Disarm, were ubiquitous on MTV and alt-rock radio. But mayonnaise was the moment when my own Smashing Pumpkin's obsession began. My high school buddy Gene raved to me about this song. Gene played a Fender Stratocaster and new karate

and had a Sega CD and also loved Kious and Monster Magnet. I miss Gene. Manez is a great song to Miss Gene by. Billy Corgan as distinct from his fellow 90s rock stars, guitar gods, and voice of a generation types, was an airbrushed van 70s Prague rock guy,

a high concept and high production value guy, a pastel black Sabbath guy. He was a 70s guy overall, and not the punk parts of the 70s. Think yes. Think Alice Cooper. Think cheap trick. No time to play it cool.

No time to be cool. The first Smashing Pumpkins album, Gish, came out in 1991, but more importantly, to Billy, that's the year Nirvana's Nevermind exploded. In interviews, it's clear that Nevermind's explosion was quite a traumatic moment for Billy. Any band that sounded remotely like Nirvana could now be famous, but that band would also be, rightly or wrongly, accused of ripping off Nirvana.

Nevermind's success validated Billy and the whiny rock band he'd already started, but it also made Billy's own success immediately uncool. He looked needy by comparison. He wanted it too much. It meaning anything, really. The spotlight, the hero worship, the direct emotional connection with 13-year-old dopes such as myself. Kirk Cobain, Eddie Vedder, Trent Rezner, Tom York, these are guys powered by self-loathing, and to varying degrees paralyzed by a reluctance, possibly even an embarrassment at how much attention

were suddenly paying to them. Embarrassment was not necessarily Billy Corgan's problem. Today was Siamese Dream's breakout hit and the band's most joyful hit. overall. Billy once described it as a happy song about suicide. The today video, which is whimsical and color saturated in a way that still screams the 90s to me, ends with Billy getting kicked out of the ice cream truck he and his bandmates have been driving around in. Forgive me for not mentioning Billy's bandmates earlier. Guitarist James Iha, bassist Darcy Retsky, drummer Jimmy Chamberlain. Here's the thing about the album, Siamese Dream. Here's a few things.

First off, it was produced by Butch Vig, who of course also produced Nevermind. There's a maximalism to these records. Every electric guitar sounds like 50,000 electric guitars. Kirk Cobain came to regret this approach immediately. Just a year or two later, he said, quote, looking back on the production of Nevermind, I'm embarrassed by it now. It's closer to a Motley Crew record than it is a punk rock record. Billy Corgan definitely wanted to sound more like Motley Crew than Punk.

rock. But Billy Corgan also had such specific and intense and unyielding ideas about how he wanted to sound that notoriously, on Siamese dream, he insisted on playing most of the guitar and bass parts himself. Nobody's going to play drums like Jimmy Chamberlain, so he was irreplaceable, although at one point Jimmy disappeared from their studio in Atlanta for several days, leading as bandmates to do an on-air interview at a local radio station, asking if anyone had seen him. But Darcy and James Iha, were largely sidelined. Billy would argue that they failed to rise to the occasion. They'd probably argue that Billy was full of it. But the result, on Siamese dream, is a rock band that sounds 200 feet tall, but also doesn't quite sound like a functioning rock band. It sounds

like a morbid, tyrannical, outrageously talented person imagining a rock band in his head. There's an unembarrassed enormity, but also a crushing loneliness, radiating from the guy want you to know that he's almost single-handedly responsible for that enormity. That's from a song called Soma. The title is a reference to the teenage summer reading list classic Brave New World, and the chorus, I'm All By Myself, as I've always felt, was quite an attractive notion to a 13-year-old. I'm invincible. I'm alone. No one can touch me, but why won't anybody try? This record made me feel much better about myself when it wasn't making me feel terrible. I have a vivid memory of standing in a Camelot records in a mall in Ohio,

paging through the Siamese Dream Guitar Tabletcher book and feeling just disgusted with myself at how hard it all looked to play. I can never play that shit. The only guitar tablager book that was gnarlier and scarier actually was Steely Dan's greatest hits. Draw your own conclusions. Siamese Dream was a monolith, an isolation tank, a dunk tank. It did have intermittent and almost overwhelming moments of joy, like the song Rocket, for instance. But the most joyous moments for me tended to be much softer and quieter and isolating. I also vividly remember an endless summer afternoon in my bedroom full of sulking and whining and whatnot, where I tried to play just by ear the guitar solo to a Siamese dream song called

Hummer, and I made it through the whole thing, and I suddenly felt like a rat in a slightly bigger cage. Listen, it didn't sound good when I played it. I'm not bragging here. I'm still empty, just like God. But Siamese dream, as distinct from nevermind or vitology or the downward spiral or any other tortured voice of a generation classic you'd care to name, could wallow in an empowering way.

It was so uncool. It was impossibly cool. It was so vulnerable. It was indestructible. And all those contradictions peak on mayonnaise. which is gentle as power ballots go, and humble as one-man wall-of-sound histrionics go, and attainable as unattainable guitar god theatrics go. Try to understand, when I can, I will.

When I finally leave this bedroom, you're all in for it. The little feedback squeal in the chorus there is from a malfunctioning $65 guitar. Billy says he liked that squeal so much he built the whole song around it. mayonnaise is one of two songs on Siamese Dream co-written by James Iha. The other one is Soma. And there's a lightness, a delicacy, a shoegazing tenderness to it that marks it as not quite another blunt force Billy Corgan production. But Billy tends to be a dominant spice vocally and spiritually. The lyrics, he says, were a bunch of weird one-liners he threw together in desperation.

Fool enough to almost be it, cool enough to not quite see it. We'll try and ease the pain, but somehow we'll feel the same. Mother weep the years I'm missing. All our time can't be given back. Billy wrote a live journal for a little while in 2005. It's still online. The posts are tagged Confessions. He talks a lot about how his bandmates failed him, of course.

But he talks a lot more about his troubled childhood. He writes about abuse and abandonment and the freedom that comes only with total isolation. So mayonnaise for him represents the childhood trauma that resurfaces whenever he's in stream of consciousness mode. He wrote track-by-track liner notes for Siamese dream in 2011, and here's the mayonnaise entry in full. In Japan, I hear the scratchy sound. I hum along. The words come easy at first, and then a blank is drawn. I can go no further.

Endless drum takes. Thousands are played. None satisfy. The tape is spliced so many. times it begins to disintegrate. My mother appears at the refrain. What is she doing here? Weeping, missing years. Who are these people that populate this nothing world? Hope abounds in what had gone missing. But why? Billy Corgan talks like this. You get used to it. You come to appreciate it. But fortunately, that's not the only language Billy Corgan speaks.

That's not his scariest or gnarliest solo on record or on paper, not the most joyful, not the most emotionally wrenching. But there's just such a warmth to it, even if it's the warmth of his constant searing, uncontrollable anger. Only a whiny 13-year-old might find this sort of thing comforting, but for quite a while it was the only comforting thing. I never even tried to play that solo, but it's enough to know I maybe could have. When I can, I will. Here now is a counter-arguments to this entire argument. Kids, they don't have no function. I don't understand what they mean.

That's 1994's Range Life from the Stockton, California rock band Pavement, who played it cool for a living. That song came out of nowhere. It was a cheap shot. It was a whole thing. Billy Corgan in Rolling Stone, so not mad he's laughing. Quote, it's like high school all over again. You have the football team, except the football team is the guys. in pavement and mud honey.

And they're all patting themselves on the back for how cool they are instead of healthily challenging themselves to greater heights. A lot of these bands have spent a lot more time worrying about what they look like in public, what their stature is than doing what they're supposed to be doing, what their fans would want them to do, which is be the best band they can be. Billy Corgan talks like that also. As an angry teenager and beyond, I loved pavements also. Probably at some point we'll get into it.

I saw no contradiction, no need to take sides. Range life was beautiful, frankly, but it also felt a little uncouth, a little unnecessary. But it felt right. It felt true to their respective selves for pavement to be so intolerably smug. And Billy Corgan to be so intolerably aggrieved by that smugness. We need bands that care as little as pavement. But we desperately need bands like smashing pumpkins that care too much. I have no interest in dwelling on Billy Corgan's antics for the last, say, 25 years.

After Siamese Dream, the classic lineup, scare quote, unquote, of Smashing Pumpkins made two more albums together, those being melancholy and 1998's Adore, which was a little electronic, a little gothy, people didn't like it as much, and Billy didn't take that well at all. Darcy split somewhere in the midst of recording 2000s Machina, the Machines of God, which is a rancel. name for an album, actually. And then things really went to shit. Various quote-unquote reunion records with different lineups, Dela Tequila, Alex Jones, pro wrestling, I'm dwelling a little bit. I'm sorry. The Siamese Dream lineup reunited,

minus Darcy, for a 2018 arena tour and accompanying album. The full title of that album is shiny and oh so bright, comma, volume one, slash LP, colon, no past, period, no future, period, no sun, period. I saw that tour in Ohio, splurged for floor seats. I'd seen Radiohead in that same arena earlier, that same year, and smashing pumpkins were better. They covered space oddity and stairway to heaven, like the whole fucking saws.

It was amazing. You'll never guess what else was amazing. Truly bizarre to joyfully scream those words along with like 15,000 other people. Where were all those people when I needed them? back in 1993, probably locked in their own bedrooms. It was almost a betrayal of mayonnaise to no longer be alone.

But what a huge relief it was to no longer feel alone. My guest today is Bill Simmons, who also has a podcast. Congratulations. Thanks so much for being here, Bill. We really appreciate it. My pleasure.

Bill, are smashing pumpkins better than Nirvana? I don't know if they're better, but I think it's an argument that nobody has. I think Nirvana just won that decade, and there's a lot of different reasons for that. But, you know, Kirk Kobe dying really helped. The impact of Nevermind really helped, and Billy Corrigan being probably the most annoying person

who's front of the band in the last 30 years really helped too. He did more damage to his own case than probably any musician I can remember. But if you just look at the actual music, I think nevermind just when it came and how important it was, that's always going to give Nirvana the advantage. But Siamese Dream is right there, song for song, and just as an album, it just came after Nevermind. So it's never going to win that one. Right. Because I think a lot about Nirvana as a band Frozen in Time at its peak versus Smashing Pumpkins. Like for 25 years, you've had to deal with Billy Corgan.

There's been all these different lineups and struggles and like brand maintenance. Can an established band, like Smashing Pumpkins, put out a new record so bad that it makes their previous records worse just by association? Yeah, you see this happens sometimes with music where sometimes the best career move would have been either for the band to break up or for almost like a tragic death. So, Billy Corrigan just dies in 1996, as morbid as that sounds. I think he's considered to be a genius, you know? And everything that happens, the next 25 years, all it did was erode this incredible run that they had from 91 all the way through 97. I mean, part of the problem was they were always a couple years behind Nirvana because Nirvana started earlier. So like when they did Gish in 91, Nirvana was already on the map, especially I was in college at the time with all like the really cool indie music followers.

Nirvana was always like one of the ones. So they weren't surprised when Nevermind came out because they had already put the DNA out. But Gish came out in 91 before Nevermind. And Corrigan, I remember he gave, it might have been Rolling Stone or some magazine, gave some interview after they put out Siamese Dream talking about the Nevermind thing really threw me for a loop because we just put out Gish. We felt like we were on the way to become in the signature band and then Nevermind happened. And, you know, I went into a depression.

He was so competitive with Nirvana. And meanwhile, I think Kirk Kobe gave a shit about him. But that led to Siamese dream, though. Nevermind made Corgan want to match Nevermind with his own great album, which I think is one of the reasons it's so great. Yeah, that's a Rolling Stone interview, and it's striking because it also made him, like, uncool. He looked, suddenly smashing pumpkins looked like they were ripping off Nirvana,

and they're always going to be comparing now to Nirvana, and they're never going to be as cool. Like, that's the thing that really threw. Billy at the time was like now he's going to be seen differently and he's going to be compared to Kirk Cobain and found wanting compared to Kirk Cobain, both in terms of music and in terms of image, you know, for the rest of Billy's life. But, I don't feel like they were very similar as bands. No, no, not really at all.

I actually think they complimented each other really well because Smashing Pumpkins was more of an old school band with the four people. Nirvana was basically like they could do it with three. Colbane was a genius. and I think there was a raw power to Nirvana that was the thing that really resonated when Nevermind came out especially when people were like, holy shit, what is this?

And Smashing Pumpkins could get there, but I always thought the advantage they had over Nirvana was a song like mayonnaise. That was the song that Nevermind was kind of missing. A lot of the great rock albums had that more kind of meandering, thoughtful, the song in a concert where you're kind of,

waiting for it and then it happens. They're like, oh, yeah. And Nirvana just, you know, they're just putting out banger songs left and right, but they never had like that awesome longer song like that. And ironically, the pumpkins had Drown too. Right. And Drown should have been on Siamese Dream, which we should talk about. I think that would have been the hammer for that album. And they really blew it on that. Because yeah, mayonnaise is a fan favorite for sure, but it's not one of the hits. Like even in real time as you're listening to Siamese Dream, do you know, like this is the song right here. Well, and it was the way it was marketed to

and the video for today, which that was the last time I think MTV really mattered, 93, 94, where it mattered with music. And Beavis and Budhead were on at that point. They were still like, real world was taken off. MTV was still like incredibly relevant and incredibly influential,

especially for people of my generation. And 92, 93, 94 range, The videos are really good. At that point, you had amazing directors doing some of them. I mean, that's how people like Fincher. Fincher, right. And they're getting movies. But you think, like, I remember the November rain video that Guns and Roses

Day being like, oh, my God, videos are so good now. What happened? Absolutely. Absolutely. But I think the pumpkins, a couple of the videos from that album, I really helped make the album feel bigger. And it was also a movement. By 93, you know, people are calling it grunge.

But I always felt like it was just the music was fucking awesome and it had been building since really 88 in the Pixies and a bunch of that kind of leading to paving the way for what was happening. But the pumpkins just got lost because of Corrigan, in my opinion, because he was so weird, he was so uncool-cool the whole time. Corbin was cool.

Yeah. You know, he was this self-loathing, torture genius guy, but he was cool. Like if you were in, when they did unplugged, he was just mesmerizing. I remember watching that when they put it out and just being like, this guy is, you almost wanted to save him.

You want to give him a hug. Of course, yeah. Corgan was not cool. Corgan was really weird in concert. I think him and Adam Duritz probably damaged their own bands the most with live performances. Yeah, yeah, there's,

I can see that. Adam Durrance would just, every concert would just sing his own version of whatever the song was and the fans wouldn't even know how to, yeah, they wouldn't know how to like sing with it. And Corgan was so in annoying. My wife and I went to see him, I think Hollywood Bowl, maybe 2012 range. We left with

like five songs left. We were like, this guy is a maniac. I've never left a concert early before. Right, right. So anyway, I think all that stuff really hurts Siamese dream. Sure. Is there a 90s band or album that you loved at the time that you absolutely can't stand now? Like which of these bands like definitively aged the worst for you? Is that the Smashing Pumpkins or? No, because I still love them. When my son really started getting a music two years ago, they were one of the bands that he just kind of immediately grasped. Nirvana was another one. I mean, it's no surprise, like some of the bands that end up Van Halen,

like they were great for a reason. But smashing pumpkins, they have probably 13 or 14, just fantastic songs. You know, when you're talking about like a greatest hits, they're going to put out about as good of a greatest hits album of any band from that. It's, you know, Pearl Jam, I think is another one that had just a bunch of good ones. But, you know, the Melancholy album, which came after, that was the height of excess. Yes.

There's like a great, there's a great 14 song album in that album. Right. Or a great 12 song album whenever you want. There's so many fucking songs on there. And this was like, this wasn't the iPhone era. This wasn't the Spotify playlist era. This was like you had to put the disc in or you had the cassette. Heavy.

Yeah. And it was heavy. and you had to fast forward to the songs you liked. And everyone was kind of mad about it at the time. Like, what the fuck? Can you just pick your best 12 songs? Right. So that was one of the reasons that I'm just a huge fan of 10 song, 11 song, 12 song max albums that it's just like, here are the best songs.

Here we go. Right. And this was still an era when side A, side B mattered a little bit. Sure. People were still listening to cassettes. And one of the one of the things I liked about this album, if you go through it, like, it starts with cherub rock, which is just an awesome opening. Great opener.

And I think opener is a really important. I know a lot of people feel that way. But it goes, Cherabrock, quiet today, Hummer, Rock it, and then disarm. That's a killer side A. No complaints. And Side B has mayonnaise and Space Boy. And, you know, a lot of these albums, they would stack the best songs on the first side. Right.

The The Thus album from that year is like that. you listen to the first like six songs, like, oh my God, this is amazing. And then it just dies because they stacked it. This one, it's really good. It's on a good pace. And then you get to the mayonnaise spaceboy combo. And it's like, oh, my God.

Spaceboy you're into as well, huh? That's an even deeper cut. Well, I like Space Boy after mayonnaise. I like the combo of it. And it's just the way listening to it as an album, which is the way we did it back then. where it loses me a little over the last two songs. Right, right, right.

That's sweet, sweet. I forget about that. It's like 90 seconds. It's like whatever. Like, yeah, it's, I never really cared that much about Silverfuck, honestly. Like, it's nine minutes and it's loud. And it's like, yeah, great.

But I, yeah, mayonnaise is for sure the peak of the whole record for me. I wish it ended with Space Boy or, because anyone, honestly, anyone who's listening to it in the 93 to 95 range, we just, you stopped after Space Boy. Turn the tape. It was a 10th song or you fast forward it to the end if you had a cassette, whatever. Right. I think the move that would have been the hammers if they'd put drown on it.

You're really into drown. Yeah. And I see that. I can totally see that. Because that could have ended the album. Yeah. And there was a little DNA with it because it was in singles and it had like singles was a weirdly important movie for people in their 20s back then.

And it had a big scene in singles. So it would have been a cool way to end it. Right. How many albums like 90s or whatever do you think are perfect? Like you'd cut no songs, you'd add no songs, you'd move no songs. Like how many of those albums are out there for you? I don't think any albums, you're never going to be totally happy with an album. Sure. Okay, yeah.

I think there's some that got pretty close. I think the first Count of Crow's album is really incredible. And it really feels like an album and the way it starts and the way it finishes and the kind of vibe it is, it just, it feels very 1994 to me or 93 whenever it came out. I think Siamese dream came close. Never mind is probably the closest. Probably, yeah. Also, because of how influential it was.

I mean, it was really like, at the time, it was like, holy shit. Being in college when that album came out, it did feel like a transformative moment, which I think is why it gets the edge. Yeah. But, yeah, I would say that's it. Some of the ones, the one that aged, the worst for me is probably the cranberries, who I thought I really loved at the time. The first one.

Yeah. Linger and, yeah, dreams, right. And the second one I like, too. But I think that might have just been the age I was at because a lot of those songs were about, like, terrible breakups and having your heartbroken or somebody's letting you down. And they are just, like, really intense. I don't think they've aged very well.

You know, someone like the Toriamos, that kind of genre, I think made more sense pre-internet than maybe it does now. It was a lot of angst. And now people get their angst through the internet. They don't need Toramos. Yeah, we've got enough problems. For me, it's the offspring. Like, I feel like the offspring were designed to appeal to a 12-year-old and to be disgusting

to a 42-year-old. Like, that's the way it's supposed to work. You're supposed to grow out of the offspring. You know, it's funny, though? I never liked them to begin with. Okay. Well, you were ahead of the curve, that. Well, no, it just for our, for my generation, it was like, who these guys were like,

it was like in wrestling when a wrestler leaves and they give somebody else the wrestling gimmick and it's not the same wrestler like when they were placed the ultimate warrior you're like who the fuck are these guys they're not nirvana yeah they certainly weren't yeah one being that was like that that i actually think was probably a little better than we thought at the time was live because they kind of fell into that i mean the one that took it the worst was stone temple pilots who had good music but people are like this is too close to pearl jam fuck you guys and they took a lot of shit. The image was, yeah, they did. They sure did. But you go back and you listen to them, whatever, their greatest hits thing on Spotify or something, and they had good songs. The first

album's really good. It just felt so close to Pearl Jam. It was like, yeah. Yeah, it was just kind of violating. Are you a pavement guy? Not really. I respected it. I liked that they took a shot at Corrigan and then he got upset about it. I remember that whole thing. He's still upset. He's mad about that right now. He was so annoying. Like, how could you not? Yeah. The best Corrigan story is he redid all, basically all the guitar and the bass and kind of

muscled out the dudes in his band after they had recorded it. And they were like, what the fuck? And he's like, well, I just, I wanted it to be perfect and caused all this dissension. And then they gave some, I remember it was being litigated into different magazines. And he was like, Rolling Stone. Yeah, and he was like, I can see why that might have bothered them. It's like, oh, really? You can see that?

It's very kind of you, Billy. Yeah, he was kind of like the Kobe Bryant of the 90s. Oh, gosh, yeah, yeah, that tracks. You sent me a list of possible songs you wanted to talk about it. Number one was a Counting Crows. It was a B-side, I think. I think it was called Another Horse Dreamers Blues, Marjorie's Dreaming of Horses. Marjorie.

It was Marjorie, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I know that song, and I really, really, really love that record, that second record. Like, what was the deal with that song? Well, first of all, it should have been on their first album. Okay.

You're really into that. You're really into songs moving between albums. I like that. I'm really into bad B-side choices where, I mean, the ultimate whatever is Soverspring, which they just left off rumors, and it's just this unconscionable decision. I can't believe it's not on there.

But the reason I picked Marjorie to talk about, which I didn't know we were going to talk about, but I'm happy to talk about it, is so I didn't know about that song and I really like the Count and Crows and they were really pop those first two albums were really really big at the time. Yes they were. And also at the time was this whole bootleg CD thing that was going on. Right. Right. And there is a place in Boston near the Boston University campus right near the Kenmore MbTA station. If you're going to Red Sox games, you get off at the Kenmore stop and then you'd walk like five minutes to Fenway.

For some reason there was this CD store there. Adam Durrit. just hawking his tapes on a corner. No, no, no, it was in the store. Right, wow. And it would have all these awesome bootlegs. So it would be like, and it was all legal. It was stuff. Of course.

And this is what eventually led to Pearl Jam saying, fuck all you guys. We're just releasing our concerts as CDs and whatever. And like now you guys can't have this. Yeah. But at the time, we didn't have YouTube. Unless these guys were in your town, you couldn't hear them. And it was this awesome way to hear these concerts.

And it was like Russian roulette. You'd buy the CD. Right. The sound could be terrible. It could be, you know, like somebody... Just muffled in it. Yeah, muffled or too loud or the person next to the person's cheering the whole time. Talking.

Yeah. But then occasionally there would be these awesome bootlegs. And one of the awesome bootlegs was this Counting Crow's bootleg I had that had Marjorie on it. And it was the best song on it. The crowd was really into it. And for some reason, Durrett's was actually cooperating and singing the music correctly. And it was this amazing concert. And so I probably had, I don't know, I had like 15 or 16 great bootleg CDs, including that one.

And in like 96 or 97, they were all my car because I was working for the Boston Herald. I'm driving around going to all these different towns. So I would have the CDs. We didn't have serious back then and that stuff. And somebody broke into my car and took all. my CDs. Oh, God. And it's like 20 bucks a piece, man. Oh, they were more than that. Some of them were like

50 bucks. And I certainly didn't have a lot of money at the time. I was devastated. And one of the things I was devastated about was this kind of gross thing. Yeah. And I had this marjorie song. I was like, that's probably my favorite kind of crow song. And it was just gone. And it was like, all right. And then as we hit the digital streaming era,

all of a sudden, all this stuff. So now you can find it on on their playlist. But there was this 15-year window where it was like not anywhere. I hope that the thief at least listened to the Counting Crow's bootleg and like appreciated, you know, what he had taken from you. I think the thief was confused because I was listening to a lot of rap and a lot of like the alternative and Counting Crow. So he was probably like, what the fuck is going on?

This guy has an NWA bootleg concert along with Pearl Jam and Counting Crows. Like who is this person? Ecclectic. Yeah. So you got your son into Siamese Dream. That's really cool to hear. That makes me feel good for some reason. My favorite pumpkin song is Siva.

Yes. Which when I think I was a junior in college when that album came out, I don't think it's even close to Siamese Dream. No, me neither. But that song, I think, is the best start to finish. That's the song if you're like, here, what is the potential of this band? I would probably point to that song. And I remember hearing that, and that was before, Nevermind.

Yes. But hearing that junior year, and we were all like, oh, my God, did you hear this? It was the voice of a generation. It was 1991. It was, you know, and there was things leading to it. There were certain bands. I think that were kind of nudging it that way. But that was the first one where we were like, wow, this is the first awesome modern alternative song.

And then Nirvana came out a few months later and just like, Forget it. Yeah. And then we weren't having conversations anymore. Well, Billy will get over it eventually, I'm sure. He'll be fine in the end. Thank you so much for talking, Bill. I appreciate it.

And Billy Corrigan, if you're out there, just don't be so annoying. Just let your legacy live. They'll take that to heart, I'm sure. Thanks very much to Bill Simmons for a great many things, really, but in particular for sharing his expertise with us today. Thanks to our producers, Isaac Lee, and Smashing Pumpkin superfan Justin Sails. And thanks to you for listening. We'll see you next week.

And now it's Smashing Pumpkins with mayonnaise.