David wrote:BanjoPickles wrote:2). His voice became very nasally around 2002.
Only from 2002?
The werrrrld is a vaaampiiire... I agree so much with your criticism of him as a person. He’s a total tool. I love Mellon Collie and Siamese Dream like everyone else, Gish was good, and I don’t even mind Adore and Machina but haven’t listened to anything after that. I also really liked the Zwan album before they self-destructed. Despite that, people like him make rock music interesting. How many asshole rockstars are out there anymore? Maybe I’m a little out of touch with modern rock but there doesn’t seem to be a Billy Corgan, a Morrissey, an Axl Rose, or the Gallagher brothers anymore making great music.
What I meant by the nasally comment was that, from the beginning of the band, all the way through Machina, there was a weird, almost beautiful quality to his voice (33, Soma, Spaceboy, To Sheila) that was replaced with one of the most boring voices in music. He sings with next to no emotion, which stands in such contrast to the Gish-Machina era. I mean, Machina is easily the worst album from the original run, but compare This Time to anything off of, say, Monuments or American Gothic. He snoozes his way through each song. I will give him full credit for Oceania, Kaleidyscope, and I also loved his solo album Ogilala.
I totally get what you're saying about douchebags in music. There are far too many "nice" pop/rock stars nowadays, which is sort of sad. However, like I said, it'd be easier to let Billy's jerkish tendencies slide if he hasn't always been this way. If anything, he has only gotten worse, more curmudgeonly. Like I said, if you look back on the early years of Pearl Jam now, Eddie grandstanding about how much he "hated" fame (which was such a crock), seems so ridiculous now. If he was still doing that, at 55, I don't know if I could take him/them seriously. Thankfully, Eddie left that persona behind, and I like him all the better for it. Billy still whines about how his fanbase abandoned him, how they didn't like challenging music (sorry, Billy, there is far more challenging music in the world than yours that didn't net even a fraction of the attention you received), and how the music press doesn't take him seriously. In his mind, he is still making 5 star records, which he hasn't made in a very long time.
I am 100% in agreement with you, regarding Zwan. I loved that band, the album, and all of the unreleased content you can thankfully find on youtube (Friends as Lovers, Riverview, Spilled Milk, God's Gonna Set this World On Fire). I was lucky enough to have seen them three times, and I also was lucky enough to catch their very last American show at the Aragon in Chicago (which more than made up for the fact that I missed the Pumpkins' 2000 farewell show). To be honest, David, I was a bit heartbroken when I read that Zwan broke up. I was annoyed when Billy announced his dirty laundry to the world, as he always does, throwing the rest of the band under the bus like he did with the Pumpkins. I remember thinking "when does this stop being everybody else's fault?"
In 2005, so many Pumpkins fans were excited when Billy announced the "reunion," through an ad in the Chicago Sun Times.....but I wasn't. Somehow, I knew that the reunion wouldn't include everyone, and it felt like he was retreating. To be honest, I would have almost preferred if he would have kept going on his own. I'll give him props, though: there was a three year period (2009-2012) where his music was nearly as experimental, interesting, and engaging as the best work he had ever done. Songs like Superchrist, Widow Wake My Mind, Stitch in Time, Cottonwood Symphony, Spangled, the Oceania album (sorry, but I refuse to consider it part of the TbK project). He worked with some absolutely stellar drop-in musicians, did whatever he wanted to do, and the effort showed.
Anyway, sorry for the novel. As much as I can't stand Billy, I still have a total love-hate thing for the band/his music. I was lucky enough to catch them in Seattle for the 2018 "reunion" tour.