No Filler Music Podcast - Psychedelic, Shimmering, Heavy: Smashing Pumpkin's Gish

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

Just a few months before grunge took over the 90s, Smashing Pumpkins were carving out their own space in rock music with an album that perfectly bridged the alt-rock and post-punk sounds of the 80s with the heavy shift that was just around the corner. On this episode we talk Pumpkins' debut album Gish, and discuss the album's perfect blend of psychedelic, shoegaze, and hard rock fuzz, with Billy Corgan's sweet and sour vocal delivery tying it all together. Meticulously crafted in the studio by an obsessive Corgan and masterfully produced by Butch Vig just months before Nevermind, this album is a perfect example of rock's transition into the 90s, and a taste of where Corgan would take the band's unique sound throughout the decade. Tracklist Smashing Pumpkins - Rhinoceros Smashing Pumpkins - Bury Me Smashing Pumpkins - Crush Smashing Pumpkins - Daydream Altın Gün - Yolcu Whitest Boy Alive - Serious Smashing Pumpkins - I Am One This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis. Got my brother Quentin with me as always, Q. And today marks the start of our 90s marathon. We could spend forever in this decade. So we're just going to see how long we can take it as far as how many episodes we're going to devote to iconic 90s bands and records. And we decided to start with Smashing Pumpkin's debut record, Gish. came out in 1991.

That was the voice of Billy Corgan talking about the diverse crowd that they would attract to their shows. You know, speaking to just how varied their sound was, you know, obviously we're going to get into this big time today. You know, they were a grunge band. Yeah. They were right there alongside, you know, Nirvana and Stuntabal pilots. and all the rest of him in the early 90s putting out this heavier rock music. But there's so much more to smashing pumpkins, right? It's, man, yeah, it's so different, dude.

And it's not just his voice. I was going to say a lot of it, I think is, dude. Well, yes, of course, there's more to it than just his voice. But his voice had such a soft, like I was listening, I've been listening to a lot of pumpkins just the last couple weeks. His voice goes from like the soft sweetness to this like, oh, like sour, you know, sourness like that, you know. Yeah, dude, that's a good way to put it.

Yeah, I mean, and then compare that to Cobain's voice and, or Lane Staley of the house and chains. You know, that's the funny thing. Lane Staley also had a very beautiful voice, you know. Yeah. Well, and Smashing Pumpkins also had Darcy in the mix. Right. And she would, she actually has a track on Gets.

So we're jumping with the gun here. All right, right. So yeah. Okay. So anyway, it's a great album. It really does showcase like, you know, again, 91 is the beginning of grunge. You know, it really does showcase how rock was transitioning, right?

Like how you go from, you know, the alternative rock and stuff of the late 80s into, you know, including, including shoegaze into grunge, right? And the Smashy Pumpkins were a great, a great example of, of, of the bridge, you know. Yeah, and first time I've heard this album, dude. I listened to it for the first time. It was probably three weeks ago now. I never listened to Gish.

Well, you know, after Gish is Siamese Dream. And of course, that's when they explode, right? So, yeah, probably a lot of people. Their first album for Smashing was probably Siamese Dream. At least that's when people probably started to notice them. Yeah. And another thing, too, you know, we were, four in 91. Right. So we weren't listening to our own music. We heard smashing pumpkins through

our brother, our older brother Spencer. I know I heard the singles from Siamese Dream, you know, like everyone else did. Right. Well, I have a distinct, distinct memory of sneaking in to Spencer's room. And he had that, he had that CD tower, right? Oh, yeah. And I remember putting melancholy in infinite sadness on and listening to Bullet with Butterfly Wings. For some reason, I really like that song. I think we both did back when we were kids.

Yeah. You know, because I mean, think about it starts with him saying, you know, the world is a vampire, you know? Yeah, yeah, I remember listening to that too. But, you know, Siamese dream had today on it. Yes. And disarm was pretty big, too. Right.

But melancholy, you know, that's when they had, tonight, tonight was a big one, zero. was a big one. Was that, did that have 1979 on it? Yes, it did. God,

dude, that, that is my all-time favorite. Like, top, maybe top 20 songs of all-time, like, favorite for me.

I just, ugh, just something about that song, dude. There definitely is something about it. You're right about that. And that album came out in 1995, of course.

So, yeah. So, but even between Gish and Siamese's Dream, their sound kind of changed a little bit, I feel like. What I like about Gish, a lot of times it's got a really good shoegaze sound. Yes. I was reading an interview that, well, actually, and I'll tell the full story later,

but the album Gish, the name Gish, has actually popped up. If you follow like Rolling Stone magazine or you're just a fan of the pumpkins and you follow them on Twitter and stuff. You may have noticed a story that popped up last year that talked about Billy Corgan reuniting with his Gish era guitar. Oh yeah. I watched that a while ago now. Yeah, that was I think earlier last year. I remember watching that. Yeah. So anyway, he described their sound when it shifted when they wrote Gish. He was, you know, they were writing stuff before that as a band. But he said it went from goth, like a goth rock, to more heavy psychedelic sound. And I think there is some psychedelicness in early smashing pumpkins. But what's interesting is he said that one of the

reasons that they were able to make that shift is that he's a left-handed guitar player, but he plays, he plays right-handed guitars, but he's left-handed. He said that the neck of this guitar, which was like a like a 50s era Fender Stratocaster, the neck just has more give to it. And he's able to bend the strings a little bit more. And he does that all over gish. You know, that's one of, you know, part of his iconic sound is really aggressive string bending. Well, and yeah, and that reminds me of, I'll never commit his name to memory, but the, you know, the main guy behind my bloody Valentine, that, yeah, that guitar style that he created was. was through a lot of bending of the strings.

Yeah. So he says here that we started interpolating that style into what James was playing. And suddenly the sound of the band got way more beautiful, psychedelic, and wide. Yeah. So there you go. So all thanks to that guitar. Yeah, that's really cool. And he said it's like he had been like reunited with it or something.

Yeah. So the story is in 1992, they were playing. at some venue and somebody stole the guitar and just walked out the back door. Wow. And so that's 1992. So 27 years later, somebody, some lady had found it in a yard sale and bought it because she thought that it would

look cool hanging up in her den. Like, wasn't even a guitar player. I want to know who, from that point, who found out or who realized, that's fucking Billy Corgan's guitar, by the way.

You know, like, One of her friends was a fan of the pumpkins and saw some image or some like that of it. And she's like, I think, I'm pretty sure that's really, Billy Corgan's 1991 era guitar. That must be a huge fan. Well, the funny thing is he put this, he had this paint job that he put on it to make it look psychedelic. And that was one of the things that gave it away. Yeah.

But anyway, I wasn't planning on telling that story this early on in the episode, but here we are. can't. Sorry. So yeah, let's just, so what do you want to do here? Do you want to give a brief background? Yeah, so I just, I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, Billy as a guitarist early on, you know, and then kind of how they all found each other and formed the band. So his dad was a professional jazz funk guitarist. So, but along with that, his dad, you know, his dad wasn't around very often, you know, because of, you know, because of. of his professional career as a touring guitarist. So he was kind of self-taught. And when he was really young, do you remember those tests that they would give in school? It was like a hearing test and you, like,

you raise your hand, you know, whatever. Yeah, they would play three different tones. Or, no, two, three tones, one of the two was different, you know. And so you raise your hand and you hear the different. tone. And he apparently scored higher than anyone in the history of them administering that at his school so much so that they had him come back and do it again. And then the second time he took it, he scored even higher. So he was told early on, hey, you know, you might, your son might be a musical savant or whatever. So anyways, you know, it's always something that was in his mind.

Well, if your dad's a jazz funk guitar player, you know, that's probably one of those things that crosses your mind. Yeah. So growing up in a musical household gets himself a guitar, starts playing around with, you know, filling with the guitar, laying down these really cool, like, guitar solo tracks and stuff. But here's a clip from Billy talking about this era. And it kind of what led to him wanting to start a band. As a guitar player in my mind, I wanted something to frame what I was doing in. So just being able to say play a good solo seemed to be worthless if they didn't have. have some context. So then I would start making these little songs.

I took these little snippets of things, like, what if I took the lyricism of a Bob Dylan and combined it with the riffs of Black Sabbath and the atmosphere of love and rockets or something? Can I put these things together? And I just kind of built my own world to where I had enough information and enough of a kind of a logic system in there that I at least started

from a perspective of right. I don't want to do anything that anybody else is doing. And it's only going to work for me if I go down this path. So, yeah, I'm glad that he mentioned Black Sabbath in that quote. Because I've got something he said in a Rolling Stones interview here that he did in 1994. They asked him, what groups have you used as building blocks for your band? And he says, eight years old, I put on the Black Sabbath record and my life is forever changed. It sounded so fucking heavy.

It rattled the bones. I wanted that feeling. With Bowhouse and The Cure, it was the ability to create a mood and an atmosphere. The air gets heavier. With Jimmy Hendricks, it was the ability to translate this other level of guitar. Cheap trick, it was a vocal influence. Although Tom Peterson once told me that Rick Nielsen called us tuneless and non-melonic. It's kind of funny.

So, yeah, I mean, that's like early on. That's kind of cool. You know, in his mind, he's thinking like, oh, well, let me just borrow like, you know, the lyricism or like the vocal delivery of like Bob Dylan. Right. Mix it in with Black Sabbath and Jimmy Hendrix. And he's talking about here, cheap trick, you know, the cure. But, yeah, if you, you know, since eight years old, you know, Black Sabbath influenced him from that early of an age. Yeah.

And that's the thing, man. I think everybody remembers, remembers the first time they heard. the self-titled Black Sabbath album, the very first record. At least I do, because I remember listening to it when I was a teenager. And yeah, it's just one of those, there's one of those transformative moments, or at least it can be if you're a fan of metal, where it's like, man, I get it, you know. These guys really were sort of the ones that started it all. But yeah, I've heard that Tony Iommi is a huge, huge influence on the heavier sound

that Corgan tries to get out of his guitar. You know, that's why he has so much fuzz and his amp and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. So, and like, you know, so kind of like what he was saying, you know, I could really only achieve this sound, you know, or these ideas that I have in my head of what I want to do as a musician by going down a certain path. Laying down these guitar solos and writing all this stuff is cool. But without a proper band or a proper vision, you know,

know, there's no context behind it or whatever. It's basically it sounds like he's saying, you know, I can't just be an act of one or whatever, maybe not follow the path that my dad didn't just be a, you know, a guitarist for hire. So, jumped in 1988. He's early 20s. He's back home in Chicago. And he takes a job at a record store. And that's where he meets guitarist James Iha.

And pretty early on, they decided to start a band. early on it was just them to and a drum machine and their sound early on was heavily influenced by the cure and new order you know so like the gloomy kind of art rock stuff and I think like he was saying that's probably the goth stuff that he was talking about yep um and so it's kind of funny story of how they eventually meet uh Darcy who is the bass player uh apparently Corgan was at a concert in Chicago. So he was, you know, in the audience watching a concert. And Darcy was in the crowd and overheard Billy Corgan criticizing the band. And they had kind of an argument and had a discussion about the merits of the band. And then he found out that she

plays bass and recruited her for the band. So it's funny that they were just, you know, side side at a at a rock concert neither of them knew each other but she overheard billy going like i don't like this band because of this and that or oh my god i can't believe they just did that and then she jumps in and they start a discussion over the band that was playing so they they united on on their dislike of a band they're saying together either their dislike or their disagreement on on how they thought about the band apparently i hope it was a disagreement yeah right that would make for a better You know, let's just say that story.

Yeah. So it's the three of them now. They're a trio. They still just have a drum machine. The owner of some club that they wanted to play at basically agreed to book them on one condition they replaced the drum machine with a live drummer. That's a fair request. Yeah.

So here's where Jimmy Chamberlain comes in. He's the eventual drummer for smashing pumpkins. And this is all around the same time. This is all happens pretty quickly. Chamberlain sees them as their, you know, as the trio and drum machine band. He sees them play at a club in Chicago. And he says, man, did they sound horrible? They were atrocious.

But the thing I noticed was that not only were the song structures good, but Billy's voice had a lot of drive to it like he was dying to succeed. And the funny thing is, here's what Corgan has to say about him reflecting back on meeting Jimmy for the first time. He says he was wearing a pink t-shirt, stone-washed jeans. He had a mullet haircut. He was driving a 280 Z, so a sports car, and he had yellow drums. We were all sort of looking at each other thinking, this ain't going to happen, man.

This is not the guy. The irony, because Corgan played a yellow strata catcher. Maybe not at that time, but. Well, but like, when you think of yellow drums, you know, like, you think of, you think like deaf leopard or like, I don't know. I guess, yeah. So, Chamberlain was in a band called JP and the Cats.

And they were kind of like, they were terrible. I looked up a few clips of the band. They're basically, you know, a band that you hire to play at your wedding or something. Which is, this is why Corgan's like,

he takes one look at Jimmy Chamberlain. It's like, there's no fucking way, you know? But don't ever judge a book by its cover. Yeah. Well, and it's funny too because, when you listen to some of the guitar solos, well, and like the drumming too.

And like there are times where it does sound like that kind of 80s, kind of like, I read a quote saying that that Smashing Pumpkins and this album throws down like guns and roses on a my bloody Valentine trip. Okay. I think that's pretty accurate, dude, especially. So actually, this is a good segue into our first clip. the guitar solo in bury me, which is the first song I'm going to play, is very like guns and roses kind of stuff or Van Haler. Yeah, I mean, we touched on this on our very first

episode on Allison Chains that, yeah, I mean, think about it. I mean, this is the, these guys probably listened to some of that hair metal when they were when they were grown up or when they were learning how to play guitar and stuff because that was the quote unquote metal, or at least the popular metal that was happening back then, you know? So especially, you remember, we have talked about how if you look at older images of Pantera, I mean, they look exactly like those hair metal bands. Death Leopard and Twister sister. So yeah.

And this is what we were talking about with the bridge between the 80s sound and the start of the 90s grunts. Like you hear it in these early grunge albums. And it is cool with Smashy. Pumpkins, they are kind of like, they're a great. I mean, they're a bridge between like shoegays and grunge and, and, you know, the kind of rock that, that came before it. So let's play the first track, which is, what is it, track three? Yeah. Nope, track four. Who cares? We played a little bit of rhinoceros in the intro. So for our first clip, we're going to jump down to

track four, the next track on the record. It is called bury me. Great track, man. So yeah, I like, uh, I like that the little thing that he does with his voice during the chorus. He repeats like, hi, hi, hi. Yeah, I think Darcy's doing back. I think that's Darcy. I think that might be Darcy. I don't know, man. That sounds like Corgan to me. I could have been him on the recording, but yeah. That's the thing. Corgan has such a high, high range with his vocals, you know. Yeah. But that guitar still. right? I mean, that's spray it out of the 80s.

I will say, and I can't, I tried to look it up real quick just to verify it, but I would say that Darcy's bass sound sounds a lot like the bass player from Allison Chains. His name is Mike Inez. But, you know, the, you know, Allison Chains were active, you know, and I'd already produced, put out facelift. So maybe, you know, who knows? Maybe she was influenced. by their sound.

Hard to say. But anyway, it had that kind of, that sound. But yeah, it's a great track. And, you know, we were both talking earlier about this song. And like, there's just change that happens at the second half of the song. I love it, dude. One of those reasons that like, here we go, man. Like the sweet, the sweet and the sour or whatever, if you want to call it that.

And the way that it transitions to the next track. Yes. A lot of them have almost like two movements. you know. So yeah, that's why we split up this one into into two clips. Let's fade into the last half of the song. So this is clip two from Barry Me. Now that's a little bit more sweet, man. I'd say he was a little more sour in the first clip. I love it. Yeah, I just like that. I like that transition that they do there. Yeah, because like you said, it's like a whole separate, you could almost be a separate song. I like a, like the start of a new idea. I feel like we talked about

this with My Bloody Valentine. And I'm sure a few other bands, that we've covered on this podcast, Corgan pretty much shunned every major label that offered to record their music. Because to him, you know, he says, what the band does is so specific that we could not dilute it in any way. We couldn't put ourselves in the position where we were powerless. So they eventually signed with an indie record label called Caroline Records. And, you know, that way they were able to maintain control of what they wanted in their sound. And they have Butch Vig to come in to produce the record. Later on that same year, Butch Vig ends up recording Nirvana's Nevermind.

And he's also produced, I mean, he, the list is, is, is insane now, but he was still kind of making a name for himself back then. He goes on to produce a few Sonic Youth records. He's, he's worked with the Food Fighters now. Dude, it's funny that you said Sonic Youth, because I wanted to mention Sonic Youth, because I feel like the sound of that, the second part of that song kind of reminded me of the Sonic Youth sound, which obviously Sonic Youth was well, well into their music at that point. You know, they were very well known. Yeah. You know, the thing about it, like, I like, what I like about that part is like he's doing

these like open, open string chords almost, like these open chords. He's very, but, but, you know, with a lot of, a lot of fuzz still on the, on the guitar. So it sounds, it just sounds really cool. Kind of reminded me of Sonic Youth, like I was saying, sort of that noise rock. You know, and Sonic Youth had a lot of similarities to Shoegays, but they, like, they predated shoe gaze. So anyway, you know, that's funny. I didn't realize that Butch Vig did Sonic U stuff too. Yeah. Yeah. So But Butch was recording and producing records at the time, but he was doing records for for indie labels that had small budgets, you know, that only allowed for about

three to four days of recording time. So he was just knocking him out, you know. Actually, I'm going to let's, I'm going to let's, I'm going to let's, I've got a clip of him kind of talking about, about, about recording Gish. Gish was the first record where I really had a chance to work on the sounds and to really try and make a great sounding statement. We spent about 30 days recording and mixing. Up until then, I think every record I'd done had been about three or four days. You know, track everything in one day, overdub all the vocals in the second day and then mix everything in the third day. And I did hundreds of records that way. It was good learning because you have to do things really quickly, just make decisions really quickly and get things done because there was

no time to even think about things like that if it was good enough or if it could be better. Gish was the first record why I could really spend time getting tones and really work with the band and with Billy Corgan specifically because he was very much a perfectionist like I was and I loved it. We were sort of, we would push each other but we were on the same wavelength and Gish made a lot of noise when it came out. The record kind of... Yeah, man, I like that. Made a lot of noise when it came out.

Yeah, yeah. So like he was saying, but before Gish, he was just cranking out records, you know, for indie labels with small budgets. He thinks of both Gish and obviously, never mind, you know, looking back, those were the two albums that kind of changed everything for him because after those two albums came out,

the phone just wouldn't stop again. He was getting asked to produce everyone. did, especially after, nevermind, obviously. Yeah. So real quick, I just wanted to, you know, I didn't even think about this until just now, but I remember reading. So I had said that Corgan moved back to his hometown of Chicago in the late 80s. Well, he had moved down to Florida before that to join a band called The Marked.

And this was like that goth rock kind of stuff that he was doing even before he met James. but I remember reading somewhere that that was the thing that he experienced too because he recorded some stuff with the marked and it was the same kind of thing. They only had about three or four days to make a record, you know, because there just wasn't any money in the budget for it. So I wonder how they were able to get that with Butch. You know, I'm wondering what it was that changed as far, you know,

because it's an indie record label. I'm wondering how, why they did. decided to, you know, spend a little bit more money and, and give them a little bit more time. Maybe it's just because they heard demos or they heard. You were saying that, like, you know, he was so meticulous about and a sort of perfectionist. Maybe it's part of that. Yeah, I guess Caroline Records is probably the only one that would give him. So, so, butch said that they recorded it over 30 days.

So, I mean, that's, dude, just, that's so much longer to, to what they were both used to in the past. Just, just having to crank it out in three or four days versus 30 days. And both of them were kind of perfectionist. Like Butch was, like he said, like it was cool to find. He called him Comrade in Arms who wanted to push me and who really wanted me to push him back. So do you want to jump to the next song?

Yeah, yeah. And so what I like about this pick here is that it's kind of the softer side of the sound. Dude, the first time I heard Crush, man. It got me. And we're going to play the whole song. And I want to, sometimes we like to play the very end of a track so that you can hear the transition between songs because it's, you know, for us, that's part of the, you know, beauty of listening to a record from start to finish is to enjoy those transitions and to see

what the producer and the band see how they wanted it to flow from song to song. So we're going to play the very end of Barry Me and then we're going to have it go straight into Crush. Yeah, man. It's a beautiful song. And it's a love song. I mean, you look at the lyrics.

It's a love song. There's this great billboard article that goes track by track. And the person who wrote it says, as the bass tiptoes across the bedroom trying not to squeak a floorboard. Corgan whispers sweet nothings to his sleeping lover. Yeah. Yeah, and there's really no drums whatsoever.

No, no, but he's got a little tambourine or something like that. I was going to say, dude, I'm a sucker for a well-placed tambourine, dude. For a good tambourine. Yeah, so like, you know, there's acoustic guitar, and then there's the cleaner sounding electric guitar. So Corgan and James are kind of playing off each other in that regard. And there's definitely, he's got, you know, this probably plays. into the the psychedelic label that that he put on the on their early sound like he's got like a flanger pedal or like a phaser pedal or something like that for that that clean sound that he's getting that

guitar that kind of tremolo almost sound i think that's like a phaser pedal or something like that or flange flange yeah something i feel like this song and this sound is kind of like a preview of what's to come with with with what corgan does with with the pumpkin sound moving forward. Yeah. Well, so like, you know, I feel like it's just so important that this came out in 91, and it came out before Nevermind came out. Because, like, so there's a quote here from that, that 1994 interview that he did with Rolling Stones.

Basically, they, they, the question is just like, it's not really a question. The interviewer says, so things changed drastically in 91, huh? And then Billy says, we can pretty much judge things by pre-Nirvana and post-Nirvana, at least for my generation and for my peers. That was the absolute turning point. Now it's grown up to the point that the carpet's not going to be yanked out and we're not going to go disco anytime soon. This is not born of fashion. This is not born of fads. Basically talking about the staying power of grounds, right?

and that Narvaana helped do that, right? But I think it's interesting that this album came out before, Nevermind, because had it come out after, would it have been as successful? Because, like, nobody had heard Nirvana yet, or at least nobody had heard, Nevermind yet, right? Yeah, and it always makes you wonder. Just a few months later, really.

Right, just a few months. Nevermind comes out in September. When did Gish come out? Was it like June or July, I think? came out in May. Okay, yeah. Dude, so let's name off the top ten, shall we? Maybe not all ten, but here's the top of the charts for rock albums of 91.

Well, not just rock, because Tribe Called Quest is on there with the low-end theory. Never mind. Ten by Pearl Jam. There's a U-2 album on there. Metallica is on there with the black album, Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And then you've got a couple albums. by guns and roses, they released, I guess it was part one and two, use your illusion. So, you know, that's the landscape at the time, dude.

I think it says a lot that Black album came out in 91 too, because, you know, it's kind of the end of the thrash metal era, right? A lot of people would say the Black album is, you know, Metallica changing, you know, irreversibly, basically. The Black album is when Metallica stops being thrash, you know, they put out injustice for all, which is like one of their most, like, complicated records as far as like what they were doing, like song arrangements

and stuff. And then they go on a black album, obviously, and become even more successful, hit the mainstream and all that stuff. Yeah. But it's just funny because 91, thrash metal of the 80s is over, you know? Even Metallica is changing and becoming

more mainstream. And then Grunge hits the same year. Like 91, man. What a huge year for Rock. Oh, yeah, dude. REM shows up on there with out of time. What shows up on out of time? I got to say, I'm not too familiar with their stuff from the 90s. I'm a big fan of REM's 80s.

Losing my religion, dude. Yeah. And that's the thing, man, the REM sound is also very much 90s too, you know, obviously. You know, they were hugely successful still in the 90s, putting on a ton of great stuff. Yeah, dude. Man, it really was an important time, dude, for music. Yeah, I mean, the 90s was the last, the last true, solid decade for rock and roll, you know? It just was.

You know, moving forward, it just branches off into so many different genres from there. It was the last decade for mainstream success in rock music, right? Yeah. If you want to put it that way. Yeah, because really, like, most mainstream rock now really, like, blurs the lines between, like, pop and disco even. But basically from. the 2000s on, you know, it's, it's hip hop dominates, not hip hop, pop music in general. Pop music, right?

Yeah. And we're in, we're including Tame Impala in that now. Kings of Leon is now a huge pop band. Sure, sure. But I'm just saying, like, as far as like the dominant, the dominant music, you know, rock and roll was still, was still the dominant genre, I feel like, in the 90s. Yeah. All right, so if you've got one more song that I want to play,

I want to jump down to the last track on the album. It's called Daydream. The reason I want to play it is because Darcy is the main singer for this one. And I like it because it's got a really awesome, just straight up Shugay's My Bloody Valentine vibe. Big fan of it. I will say I don't want to play it, but there is a secret track on the record

that happens about 10 seconds after Daydream. It's just a weird little, like, two-verse song by Corgan. You're going to tease it and not play it. All right, we'll play it. Let's just play the whole song then. All right. Including the secret track, some people say that the lyrics kind of allude to the splintering of the band from that point on. Hmm.

So here's the last track on the record. It is called Daydream. Droms. Yeah, what the hell, dude? They could have left it on such a high note, you know, with that really pretty... The question is, Q, did he sneak it in? See, no, that's the thing, too. Like, I was just thinking...

Think about how all the other record labels or producers who would have been like, no fucking way, dude, we're not going to put that in at the end. I bet Butch was just like, sure, man, why not? You know? That's what I'm saying, like, did... if he's got beef with his band members, did he sneak that in? Yeah, I don't see. We're probably reading too much into it.

Right. Well, and I purposely didn't want to even go down that road. Because that's like, because now Corgan is, you know, infamously like, it just, you know, big-headed and. Yes. Kind of full himself. And I saw, I saw a quote that said that he hadn't, he hadn't been in the same room as Darcy in like well over a decade. So, yeah. But like the lyrics there are like, I'm going crazy.

I don't want feelings, your feelings. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course we could, we could freaking like nitpick these lyrics. But yeah. Let's talk about the song that we play here, the last track. You're right. Like it makes me want to hear more. I was trying to look to see if she was in any other band.

And really there's not much else out there that she's done. But yeah, her voice definitely, like you said, very, very shoegaze. sounding voice, that kind of soft delivery. I liked it. I liked the way she delivered that song. I like it. Yeah. Well, and shout out to Butch Vig, too, for the way he, you know, mixed it and everything.

Sure, yeah, sure. All right, so that's that. So before we dive into our Watcher Heard's, let's take a quick break. All right, we're back. So anything else, dude, do you want to throw anything else on there about the pumpkins before we dive into our beloved Watcher Heard segment? I'm going to tease what we're going to do we know what we're going to cover next week for our sidetrack. No, we do not.

Yeah, we'll figure it out. So we'll try and find either a side project from one of these members or, you know, maybe a maybe we can play, you know, a huge influence band for them. Something. We'll figure it out. Yeah, I think the only thing I want to add about the Smashy Pumpkins is like how constant. Dave, as far as like, when I think back to to rock bands that have been like there since like the beginning of my starting to like starting to notice and listen to music, you know, they're one of them, dude. They're one of the bands. Because like I said, before I had my own records, record collection by my own CDs, I would go and sneak into our older brother's room and listen to smashing pumpkins, you know?

Yeah. Like this was one of those formative bands. I may not have ever really dive, you know, I haven't really dove deep into them before, but I'm starting to, you know. But yeah, I would just say like you said, man, 1979 is, yeah, I'm with you. It's one of my favorite songs from that era, if not one of my favorite rock songs of all time. Yeah. The stuff on Siamese Dream is just fucking killer, man.

Yeah, dude. Like, some of those songs are just so iconic and, Smashy Publicans really do bring something different to the, to the table, you know, for, for grunge music from that, from that decade. Yeah. But yeah, like, you know, chair, Brock. Get out of here, man. Well, 1979 was on Melancholy.

Oh, I know. I'm just saying that the stuff on Sami's dream is all, it's just as great. Yeah. It's, is 1979, you know. Totally. But yeah. Anyway. So, yeah, so that kicks off our stint into the 90s, dude.

And we're going to try to cover a wide range of genres. But, I mean, it's going to be a lot of rock, you know. It's just how it is for us. What we decided, Q, is Stone Tip of Pilots Purple is going to be the next full-length episode that we do. So that's going to be a good one, man. That's another flavor in the spectrum of grunge music, you know. Yep.

All right, man. So it's time for what you hurts. This is when we, you know, I just want to. to remind people what it's all about. Travis and I are listening to music all the time. And every week I hear at least one new song or find a new band. So we like to share these tunes with you all just a way to get some more music into each episode. Travis, I think I know what you're going to play, unless you change it. Yes, you do. Okay. Well, let me go first. Okay. Because I'm really excited about this band. I just found them, well, they found me. Someone shared them with me.

They found you. Well, this was another post that someone did on the vinyl subreddit, which is great. I found a lot of great music through that, through that music community. This is a band called Alton Goon. They are a Turkish psychedelic rock band. The guy who formed the band has a huge fascination with Turkish sounds from the 70s. So he decided to form a contemporary band and to combine the traditional Turkish sound with Western rock influences. I had a really hard time picking what song to share with you, dude. So I'm just going to play the first track on the record. We're going to play it all the way through.

It's just over two and a half minutes. I think it's pronounced Yulchu. That's a great track. very psychedelic. I love the way that they, like you said, the Turkish. They combine that traditional style, dude. Yeah, I love that. I love that stuff, man. You know, I like it when bands do that, man, because it's like, you know, I've talked about the band, the Sepaltura, the metal band, and how they used to incorporate kind of Brazilian stuff into their metal music. And it just, like, it's just, it adds that, that flavor that

that you haven't heard before or tasted before. what's great about it it's like some it's something that i didn't realize that i was missing in my life you know well yeah it's like because we're not going to hear that it makes you appreciate um that that that music and they're they're able to breathe new life into it anyways uh the album is called geichi came out in 2019 again the band is called alton goon and this entire album is great and there's also a female singer and they kind of it seems like they swap songs i mean like there's no song where they're both singing at the same time. So that's why it was really hard for me to pick a song

because her songs are also really, really awesome. Wow. If you liked what you heard, go check out the rest of the record. Yeah. Yeah. All right, dude, I'm excited to hear your song again because as soon as you heard it, you shared it with me. And, dude, it's like dreams are coming true, bro.

Yes. Dreams are coming true. This is one of those artists that you have to stop everything you're doing and listen, at least for us, because of how important this particular fella is, especially this side project. So I'm talking about Mr. Erland-Oria, and of course he is one half of the folk duo Kings of Convenience, and we did an episode on them. We talked about right on an empty street, or did we talk about Quiet as a new lab? We actually ended up releasing both, remember, because we could.

covered. Oh, that's right. Yeah, we've got both of their earlier albums. Yeah. We covered both of them. Yeah. The Norwegian sweethearts. Yes, that's right. So, Ireland has a ton of side projects. He's always involved with something. Yeah. But he had a side project that he did called The Whites Boy Alive. And it's just this, there's these two albums that they put out both in the, you know, over a decade ago. So, like, I just wasn't expecting it. And I was listening. to my Spotify's release radar playlist, which comes out once a week every time there's new music that comes out from a band that you follow. And I just, I heard it. And I was like, this has got to be, is this who I think it is? You know? And then sure enough, man. Oh, man. So good. I thought for sure that

all we were ever going to have were those two albums from the early odds, dude. Yeah. Well, here you go, Q. According to, uh, Wikipedia. On March 5th, 2020, the band released a brand new single, Serious, officially beginning their comeback. And that's what I want, man. I want a full comeback. I want a full record. And I'm sure they will. This can't be the only thing that they recorded when they were in the studio. But anyway, there's, man, there's the perfect 70s disco rock. Yes. Exactly. It's so good. It is so good. And his voice is just amazing. So anyway, without further ado, do you. Should we play the whole song? I I don't care if this is a long episode.

Let's play it. Let's play the whole song because there's so many cool parts in this song, especially like that keyboard kind of solo at the end. So yeah, let's just play the whole song. So this song, again, it's super fresh. Came out March 5th. And the song is called Serious by The Whitesest Boy Alive. Do you want me or should I leave now?

Does it have to? Does it have to be? See real. Does it have to? No, should I leave? It's had to be seen. Does it have to? It's like they picked up right where they left off, man.

Yeah, really. Yeah, exactly, man. Man, I just love the keyboard player, man. I think he plays like a Rhodes or something like that. Like, I know, one of those older synthesizer things. But, yeah. So I would encourage you, if you like that, obviously, go back and listen to their first two records.

But, and we'll put this in the show notes on the website. no feelip podcast.com. There's this live concert video that I always remember of them playing in the storefront. Yes, I've seen that.

Yeah, and I always remember the bass players, like, green, he was wearing a green shirt and green pants of the same color. I don't know why I always remember that, but anyway, man, these guys put it on a fucking show and of course they're playing 1517,

which is like one of their freaking bangers. That's such a good song. Anyway, Yeah, we'll put that on the show notes for you. But yeah, man, like you said, disco. There's a little bit of disco in it, but like it's dance music, a lot of it. Maybe not necessarily that song, but there's just something about, and the funny thing is like the songs are simple too.

They're kind of simple. They're very simple. At least with dreams, their first album. Yeah. You can tell from the recording and what they left. They leave in count ends and stuff. It was recorded live. I wonder if they're sticking with that because it sounds almost like no time has passed at all.

between their first two albums in this new release. And I'm not knocking him for that. And you know what, dude, that's the same with Kings of Convenience. Yes. You know, as far as like, it doesn't matter how long between albums, you know, when they come back together and do something, it's just the sparks start to fly again. Right. So when you look at the, their Wikipedia page, you can kind of follow along here of like

how people like you and me, huge fans, kind of lost all hope. It says here in June 2014, the band announced via their Facebook page that they are no longer composing or playing together as the YS Boy Live. I remember reading that, dude. Yeah, yeah. And then in August of 2017, they said they're going to perform a 45-minute one-off reunion show in Syracusa, Italy. And then in 2019, they announced via their Facebook page.

You got to follow them on Facebook if you want to stay in touch, it sounds like, that they would play the Fauna Festival in Chile and expressed an interest in booking further shows. That was September of 2019. So, you know, basically, you know, they said they were no longer composing together. Obviously, you know, when these guys get together, they can't help it. Yeah, they must have just been like, why did we ever stop? Right. So obviously, I bet you when they did that reunion show, a few years later, and then they're

like, hey, you know, we could book a few more shows, maybe. And then there you go. They're back in the studio, making new music. So anyway, I'm sure. as they put out more singles or if they put out a full length record, we'll be talking about it. And we've talked about covering one of their records at some point, talking about doing an episode of them. It's kind of, you kind of have to. So it's one of those required albums for you and me, you know, to talk about it. Oh, yeah. So, all right, man, let's wrap this up. Yes. So Q, where can,

where can they find us, man? Aside from our website, no filler podcast.com, where you can find show notes in all of our previous episodes and track listing for each episode. Where else could they find us? Well, we're, yeah. Yeah. Well, we're part of the Pantheon podcast network. It is an awesome group of like-minded music lovers. And we all just kind of geek out about music.

Yes. It's probably like 20, 30 different shows now in the network, man. it's kind of crazy how varied it is too. There's a bunch of great content. Dude, we just brought on a new show called the Dad Bod Rap Pod. Dude, I love that name.

What a great name. I love that name. So yeah. Yeah, dude. More than just rock and roll. We try to talk about everything on this network. Obviously, you and I, we lean toward rock on the spectrum of music that we love. But, you know, if there's a

if there's a band that you like or a type musically like surely there is something on the podcast network the pantheon podcast network for you there's podcasts that that focus on one artist and that's the entirety of every single episode like is it rolling bob talking dylan the shout out loud podcast it's a kiss podcast nothing but kiss yeah dude um just just hop on to the pantheon podcast network that's pantheon podcast dot com or you can just find it on any way that you get your podcasts. If you subscribe to that network, then you'll get our weekly show in the feed as well as every show. You'll get the newest episode. And if you like pods in particular, you can follow them individually. But you can listen to everything

by following the Pantheon podcast networks feed. Yeah. I think that's the coolest thing about the network, dude. You know, you can either listen to the podcast. as if it's a, you know, like a TV station. And you can press play and you listen. It's just going to give you each new episode, you know, from one podcast to the next. Or you can actually, you can find each one of our podcasts as its own separate thing. I think that's a really cool way to do it. Yeah, definitely.

All right, anyways, man. So kicking off our 90s stint here, I thought it was appropriate for us. to cover Smashing Pumpkins because like you said, this is one of those bands that kind of defined what kind of music. This may have been, honestly, cute, pumpkins may have been the first grunge music that we heard. Yeah, I think you're right. It's possible. It's very possible.

Yeah, absolutely. So, again, we're going to cover Stone Temple Pilots next. We'll be our next full-length episode. But before that, next week we'll shout at you with a little sidetrack. Something Pumpkins related. We'll figure that out. in the next week. Until then, thank you, as always, so much for listening. My name is Quentin. My name is Travis. You'll take care.