Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream 1993, Virgin Records
I'm the youngest-by-far of four kids in my family, and as such was always able to get away with just about anything through virtue of my siblings mistakes and accomplishments always being of greater magnitude. Even at times when I did have my parents on my ass, one of them would jump in to take the heat off. All of that ended in August of 1993, when my sister Emily moved to Dallas for college, just as I'm starting seventh grade. If you're keeping score at home, that's about the worst possible time in someone's life to have all parental scrutiny suddenly upon them. You're already going through what's likely the worst of the puberty pains, paired with just about the meanest grade that American schooling has to offer, so to throw in hawk-eyed moms and pops who can't remember how much Junior High sucked is just cruelty. It's amazing any of us survive.
I'd comment more on what my life was like that year, but to be honest I don't really remember any of it. I have knowledge of some things - there were drugs, and a lot of anger, and a lot of fighting with my parents and hating myself and what-have-you - but no experiential recall, save for one thing.
On Easter morning that spring - the spring of '94, I got Siamese Dream in my Easter basket. And somehow everything got better.
Start with the cover artwork, which is simply serene, complete with the back cover, the purpose of which seems to be to prove to the consumer that the girls aren't actually siamese twins, and thus weren't being exploited, if that makes sense. It's mystical and yet familiar, and is still my favorite album artwork to this day.
Winter is a bad time of year to get into music. It's gray and cold and lends itself too easily to widespread, low-key depression and listlessness. The societal attitude is just to duck your head and plow on through 'til thew warmer months, which doesn'tleave much room for appreciation. I have to wonder how many great songs fell by the way-side because the were unfortunate enough to be released in January. Ayway, the thaw had come, as it so often does in late March/early April, and it was sure-as-hell time for something new. The opening drumrolls of "Cherub Rock" and into the screeches of "Quiet"were alright - definitely good stuff, but not until "Today," came on did I stop dribbling the basketball in my driveway and just think to myself - Holy Shit. I had heard it before, of course, but never on my own terms. I think I restarted the song six or seven times just to hear how the intro went into the opening chords, and felt kiddy like a child with a new toy. This was mine. This was my own copy of this. I could do whatever I wanted to with this! Never before or since have I felt that kind of unbridled joy at just owning an album.
I hung out there on the driveway just floored. "Rocket" came and went with it's good intro and better coda. "Disarm" - which admittedly seemed a lot better then than it does now. "Soma," which passed straight through my brain the first time but is now arguably my favorite from the record. Then came "Geek U.S.A." Immediately, in my thirteen-year-old eyes, the crowning acchievement of all that was rock, and maybe all that was art as well. Four good songs smashed together to form one five-minute masterpiece of bombast... let me just say that I wish I could hear it again for the first time and not know what's coming around the corner.
But around the three minute mark, Corgan get's the closest to punk that the Pumpkins ever managed, and screams out "words can't define/ what I feel inside/ who needs them?" It's absolutely meaniongless, but I got it. I finally got it. It nailed what I had been feeling for the past eight or nine months and said "fuck it." And it gave me the permission to do so to. With that one stupid-ass, overwrought, pretentious line, I dropped all the weight off my shoulders at once, and smiled, for real, for the first time in a long time. That's the purpose of rock anyway - sometimes to anesthetize the growing pains, sometimes to get the kids to stop taking themselves so seriously, and sometimes just to remind us all that youth should be spent partying, getting laid, and otherwise expirimenting and experiencing while we can. And the older we get, the more we might be able to appreciate the music, but the less we'll appreciate the tunes. Because they're not meant for us.
The album isn't perfect, but it's close enough that I don't care. "Spaceboy" I could do without, and "Silverfuck" is just eight minutes of aural masturbation, but on the other hand, you have "Mayonnaise," with it's lushly sullen vocal melodies and the chord(screech)chord climax. It's just good. I still have my twelve-year-old copy from that Easter, beaten and scratched to hell and all-but-unplayable. I know Billy Corgan's a well-documented asshole, but I still have to thank him for this one.
...the smell of your paramour in your vomit-and-urine soaked babydoll dresses.
