Songs 1-4: the love songs Songs 5-8: the grief songs Songs 9-12: the co-dependent/sadomasochistic songs Songs 13-16: the resigned “moving on” songs

At 8:19 a.m. ET, as interstitial music between segments, NPR played the instrumental part of Soma that follows the song's intro. Just thought some of you might appreciate that. Did anyone else hear this? It was a nice surprise.

It finally happened today after months of being unemployed, submitting hundreds of applications, and having multiple interviews. YES!

Just caught this trailer premiere:

https://youtu.be/-XsMAaLnZnY

Looks like it will be an interesting program!

The first song (To Sheila) sounds like the middle of another album. The last song (17) is abruptly cut in the middle. Some of the lyrics also get cut up in the middle in the booklet. This is all done to signify the brevity of life: we are always born into a middle, into an already existing world, and we always die before we’re able to experience everything the world has to offer.

Hi, I'm an amateur musician and a suburban dad with very limited free time, so this been my big evening project for a while. I've loved this tune since my early teens. I'd love for people to take it for a spin and hear what you think :) https://on.soundcloud.com/UpUmvatLn2GWUnv4A

First, you think it’s one of Billy’s most beautiful and earnest love songs. Then, you think it’s about stalking. Then, you find out it’s about Billy’s cat. Brilliant!

I've always just assumed this was a Smashing Pumpkins reference in Gone Til November by Wyclef. It came out in 1997 when the Pumpkins were basically the most popular rock band in America.

I can't be wrong about this, right?

I wander what mix is this, original or the same reissue remaster or new mix?

BBC: Singer Marianne Faithfull dies at 78. Here's a good bio.

Billy collaborated on a few songs for her 2002 album Kissin Time:

• the hymnal and synth-layered "I'm On Fire"
• the reflective acoustic pop of "Wherever I Go", about which Faithfull declared "that's Billy trying to sit down and write Marianne a hit."
• the reworking of the 1960s Gerry Goffin/Carole King hit "Something Good"

Source of the track details and their flowery language: Wikipedia: Marianne Faithfull.

Her most popular album seems to be Broken English (1979).

I’m 42 years old and have been an ambient Smashing Pumpkins ‘fan’ since 1993 (when I was 11 and first saw the “Today” video on MTV), and a ‘super-fan’ in that ‘this band changed my life and this is the band that will be playing for me at the gates of, hopefully, heaven’ way since late 1995, when I first heard “Mellon Collie” all the way through on a double-cassette from a small boombox in my friend’s bedroom—when I heard “Muzzle”, I knew that this was it. This was religious music; this was the music I’d been looking for. Nirvana had opened a gate, but Kurt, for me, hadn’t gone all the way—B.C. (ironically, A.D. of Kurt) did, into the realm of Shakespeare, Mozart, the Beatles, all the greats.

We know the rest of the story, and we all have our interpretations. I won’t rehash them here. What I want to do is highlight what I think are BC’s best songs (at least, that are available on, grimace, Apple Music) since “Adore,” when it was obvious that he’d reached a spiritual/personal/artistic breaking point, avoiding suicide (although the tendencies would apparently resurface), processing true personal grief through divorce, the death of his mother, and the dissolution of his band and life’s dream, starting to find some sort of ‘way’ or ‘peace’ through ‘God’ (reaffirming and reinterpreting, in some way, the forced and abandoned Catholicism of his youth), and obviously giving up on Faust’s bargain, letting Kurt have the mantle, and instead becoming, apparently, a human.

These post-“Adore” songs are often weird, but not in the same way his pre-“Adore” songs were; in fact, no early BC songs are ‘weird’, because they just work, they just are. There is nothing forced about them, nothing clumsy, because they are full expressions of a relatively full human, in process, giving us everything he can. BC stopped giving us everything after “Adore”, and never would (or, perhaps, even could) again. He had to save something for himself, so he wouldn’t “blow away”: something, eventually, he could give to his wife, and, later, kids. He had to pull his soul back into himself, to save himself, and out of his music. If you understand the Smashing Pumpkins you know what I’m talking about.

That being said, although his post-“Adore” songs are often weird and awkward and sometimes cringy and sometimes disastrous, he’s still trying something, and sometimes they work to communicate a beautiful, albeit fractured, half-person (whereas, ironically, his earlier work communicated a full person, even though he himself was a half-person!). In other words, there is only 1 BC soul, and whatever he puts into his personal life and existence he can’t give to us. That’s okay, I have immense respect for that. I accept the trade-off; he’s given us enough.

All that aside, here are the songs that move me (again, from only the ones available on Apple Music), in roughly chronological order, post-“Adore”, and which trace an interesting journey of BC becoming a human artist, instead of an artist God.

I won’t comment on each song, but I hope they’ll communicate something to you of what BC has gone through, and also inspire you, like they do me, to find a ‘balance’ between trying to be a genius and just writing some songs, hoping some of them turn out well.

The playlist:

B.C., A.D.

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/b-c-a-d/pl.u-jV890pjsjqB06k

* I know, these first three violate my principle of being ‘post-“Adore”,' but I think these indicate the transition after “Mellon Collie” and are needed to understand the crude leap into the aftermath of “Machina” and beyond. Also, why is “The End is the Beginning is the End” (obviously BC understood what was happening to him; look at these titles) not on streaming? This song is necessary to understand the transition from “Mellon Collie” to “Adore”, and is a fitting coda for the original band’s ‘heavy’ side (with Matt Walker helping them capture the transitional experience). Find it on YouTube!

1. “Eye” (1997)
2. “The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning” (1997)
3. “Once Upon a Time” (1998)
4. “The Everlasting Gaze” (2000)
5. “Wound” (2000)
6. “Age of Innocence” (2000)
7. “Real Love” (2000)
8. “Untitled” (2000)
9. “Lyric” (a video! It was all I could find - 2003)
10. “Honestly” (also a video. But you can just listen to it - 2003)
11. “Quasar” (2012)
12. “Panopticon” (2012)
13. “My Love Is Winter” (2012)
14. “The Chimera” (2012)
15. “Tiberius” (2014)
16. “Being Beige” (2014)
17. “Half-Life of an Autodidact” (2017)
18. “Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)” (2018)
19. “Faithless Darlin’” (2019)
20. “Dulcet in E” (2020)
21. “Haunted”  (2020)
22. “The Hidden Sun” (2020)
23. “Steps in Time” (2022)
24. “The Gold Mask” (2022)
25. “Edin” (2024)
26. “Pentagrams” (2024)
27. “Sighommi” (2024)
28. “War Dreams Of Itself” (2024)
29. “Sicarus” (2024)

What else should be on here? What would you remove? I hope you enjoy this playlist as much as I do, and I’m looking forward to your thoughts!

In the past, the most glaring omission was Adore, but this had since been thankfully rectified. Still, some albums are missing, such as Machina II, Zeitgeist, and Teagarden By Kaleidoscope.

Here’s the press release that came with my vinyl copy of Lull. Thought it may be of interest to some here :)

Personally I prefer:

- Thru The Eyes of Ruby (Take 7)
- Frail and Bedazzled (Soundworks Demo)
- Tear (Sao Paulo session)

Over their final versions. I've been listening through all the reissued deluxes and have been enjoying nearly everything, those three have just stood out to me over everything else.

Hey everyone. This is something I've been working on recently and thought I'd share it here. I've always loved this show from SP but the sound quality was pretty terrible. I decided to try and remaster it to the best of my ability so here it is complete with what I believe is the highest quality video this show is available in. Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m0iGc6oZ8Cve45QbnkDoX78VUso4w3vu/view?usp=sharing

I preordered mine on December 2nd but I still haven't gotten the second email saying it's been shipped yet. I've checked the Shopify app to track the order but it says they're still preparing the shipment, were there more orders than they were expecting or something?

i know who goes there and jellybelly have them but i can’t seem to find any other ones. any help?

Can’t seem to find the answer online and surely there’s a story behind it

My impression is that people don't like this album, but I think it's pretty decent. I wouldn't say it's great by any stretch, but it's fun, I appreciate what Corgan is trying to do with it, and dig on anything with the 2X Jim sqad. Anyway, thought I'd buy a record. However, reading up on Discogs, the pressing quality seems lax. Can't tell though because the comments are inconsistent so I thought I'd ask the community. Curious what you think about the version you have. In particular, does the record play clean and is it flat.

Is this real, a joke, or something inbetween?

I’ve denied it for 30 years and Mayo and Soma are my favorite songs but Bullet with Butterfly Wings is the best goddamned song on MCIS. If it wasn’t the lead single and video and you had just heard it for the first time you would lose your mind.

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