Smashing Pumpkins- 1979

I know that I have said this before, but 1979 is probably my favorite song and the Pumpkins are one of my favorite bands.  The music video for 1979 is also one of the best music videos of all time. I don't think many other forms of art have captured the essence of youth and it's carefree attitude as well as this song and it's video.  The song was not even supposed to be on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. On the last day before they chose from the 56 Corgan penned songs for the double album, 1979 was a little more than a few chord changes and Corgan singing a melody without any words.  The producer wanted to drop it from the record which fueled Billy to finish the song in 4 hours. (((Genius)))  I also just found out the other day that the video for Perfect follows the same characters from the 1979 video in the their lives a few years later.  I was just browsing around on the suggested videos on the side of YouTube (which I highly recommend) while watching this video the other day and found some other great interpretations of this song.  Have some patience with the remixe










and the original

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrivjzw0RlI
embedding was disabled by request.

D'arcy's Mugshot

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2011/02/smashing_darcy_mug_shot.php

Pitchfork Staff Lists

Pitchfork has an excellent section on their site called Staff Lists.  These are more  or less  rankings over songs, albums, music videos, etc. picked by Pitchfork writers, usually broken down by year or decade.  I just read this blurb about 1979 and thought it was a perfect description of the song and video.

21. The Smashing Pumpkins
"1979"
[Virgin; 1996]

It seems very wrong to reduce an important band's highest-charting single to one sound, but sorry, that whooshing progression that repeats through "1979" is amazing enough to hang a whole career on. That floating guitar figure seems to hold all the wistfulness, sadness, hope, and redemption that the Smashing Pumpkins wanted to get across in the 1990s, and everything else-- and they released a ton of great music then, don't let the last 10 years obscure that-- was pretty much gravy. Somehow that riff and the song's title-- '79 was a pivotal year for Corgan's generation, signaling the end of the last decade that would be spent only in childhood-- must have motivated Billy Corgan to speak in straightforward and human terms. Here he wasn't whining, he wasn't throwing a tantrum, he didn't want to be the voice of a generation or be someone's therapist. Instead, he put together a cluster of images that was more about an undefined feeling than a message, and it happened to be the most universal sentiment he'd ever manage. "1979" was Billy Corgan asking, "You know this feeling?" and the second you heard that guitar line the immediate answer was, "I do-- tell me more." --Mark Richardson

Smashing Pumpkins- Siamese Dream

After a successful debut album in Gish, the Pumpkins came back with Siamese Dream.  Gish sort of got lost in mix after the grunge explosion, but Siamese Dream cemented the Smashing Pumpkins as one of the most important bands of the 1990's.  The Smashing Pumpkins are a band out of Chicago and frontman, Billy Corgan, actually grew up about 15 minutes from my house in Elk Grove.  Corgan was the driving force behind the Pumpkins both creatively and physically.  Stories later leaked of Corgan overdubbing the guitar  and bass track of James Iha and D'arcy Wretzky on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.  Such control over the band and its music partially led to the departure of Iha and Wretzky from the band in 2000.  Siamese Dream also features the last of Billy's long hair.

The tracks for Siamese Dream were not uploaded in the correct order into my Mediafire account, so just be careful in which order to add them to iTunes.

Cherub Rock- the best opening song to any album ever

Disarm

Mayonaise

I know this song does not appear on Siamese Dream, but this is my absolute favorite song and I didn't know when I will get a chance to post some Smashing Pumpkins again so here is 1979.  It is also one of my favorite music videos of all time as well.

and for good measure here is Billy singing Morning Dew