What else, what else... there is nothing else. 17.5 hours of OT notwithstanding, I'm flat broke until the 15th.
The soundtrack to this morning's commute was Smashing Pumpkins, "MACHINA/The Machines of God", which I bought against my will. For some reason, however, it caught my eye this morning as I was preparing to leave my apartment, and I decided to give it one last shot. It still sucks, and hard. Which is a shame, because everything pre-Mellon Collie, for my money, still kicks ass. I'll even say that "Starla" is in my top 5 songs of all time. I'll also say that the reason why everything pre-MC is so much better than MC and beyond is because pre-MC, Billy Corgan just wrote abstractly and buried his vocals in the mix - the emphasis was on the sonic textures of the guitars and the ass-kicking drums. Once "Siamese Dream" sold however many millions of records, Billy decided that he could rightfully claim the "Generation Spokesperson" title and suddenly all Pumpkins records became about his lyrics, which are pretty terrible. The best example I can think of, even though I'd prefer not to, is: "If I were dead, would my records sell?" on "MACHINA", which goes waaaaaaaay beyond any acceptable level of lyrical narcissism (assuming that there is an acceptable level in the first place).
One of my all-time favorite concerts should have been the Beastie Boys/Smashing Pumpkins Lollapalooza (I think that must've been the summer of '93). The Beasties pretty much destroyed us, encoring with "Sabotage" and causing all 20,000 of us to go completely insane. We were still buzzing when the Pumpkins came on, and they totally ruined the vibe. By the end of their set, half the audience was gone. Corgan took what had been such an amazing day of music and totally fucked it up at the end with his nasal preaching and his random "I am the one" speeches. They encored with "Starla", which blew my mind, but I couldn't really forgive him for the rest of the set. I held out hope for Mellon Collie, though, but it left such an awful taste in my mouth that I haven't even opened the CD case in 5 years.
The good part about all this, though, is that when I was listening to "Machina" this morning, the one thought that kept popping up in my brain was "I can do better than this." I'm hoping that tonight I can stay motivated long enough to write some new music.
