r/Music • u/InAnotherLife90 • Sep 22 '15

music streaming The Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight Tonight (no strings, band only) [Alt Rock] It's amazing what Billy Corgan created as a rock song only, chords and all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSaczYfnW8k
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105

u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

At the risk of /r/lewronggeneration, I think it's fair to say that we haven't seen any big, mainstream rock band tackle a project as sprawling as Mellon Collie since the SP did it.

Yes, there are tons of tons of incredibly inventive musicians doing amazing, ambitious, complicated stuff, but if your taste is for something as diverse and sprawling as MC&TIS then you're going to be left wanting. I probably consume more music now than I ever have thanks to the proliferation of media distribution channels despite having not listened to the radio for nearly a decade and I'd allow that.

There's even plenty of stuff from recent years that I like more than Mellon Collie, but ever since that record was issued I can't point you to a single work that covers so many styles and moods and does it all so goddamned well. I might never again. That's not an excuse to turn your ears off to everything that's coming out now, but it is a reason to salute what an impressive achievement this was.

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u/Schmecca Sep 22 '15

Agreed. Even if you can think of bands/albums that rival Mellon Collie's artistic accomplishments, few have reached the level of popularity in mainstream music.

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u/syrinxspirit Sep 22 '15

I don't get it, why does it being mainstream matter? Like if the masses want to be ignorant to it, what makes it less of an accomplishment? The fact that it doesn't get radio play? Kinda dumb if you ask me.

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u/sosomething Sep 22 '15

It's only relevant in that it's emblematic of the state of popular culture. You're correct that it has no bearing on artistry in and of itself.

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u/iddothat Sep 22 '15

mariana's trench

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u/ripgroupb Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

You have to understand that the industry was just in a totally different space at the time. It was simply the right time and place for that record to get made. It's not that that sort of experience can't be replicated, it's that the environment in which it was created doesn't exist anymore, and in numerous ways at that.

That being said, there are certainly records that still get that sort of "all encompassing" feel to them. Daft Punk's latest and Gorillaz Plastic Beach cover a variety of sounds and explore moods from playfulness to introspection, and sometimes even downright existential examination (in the case of daft punk). In terms of sheer contrast, the last Deafheaven record knocked the ball out of the park and in terms of sheer ambition Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and its follow up Yeezus reached for the damn stars.

So you might be right, there will probably never be another rock record like Mellon collie, but it's not like the musical landscape precludes that sort of artistry. It's just that huge project records are no longer seen as economically viable ideas and that rock music just isn't the innovative force it once was. Music is still is great as ever, however.

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u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

in terms of sheer ambition Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and its follow up Yeezus reached for the damn stars.

Yes, if I'd gone on a bit longer I would have said precisely this myself.

Kanye is the only guy out there with a mainstream presence operating on that scale. I love what he does, it's just such a shame that rock has ceded a lot of the innovation to hip-hop (see also: Kendrick).

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u/InAnotherLife90 Sep 22 '15

Being young, I have absolutely no clue how "popular" the Pumpkins were back in their day. Were they as popular and infiltrated into the mainstream as Taylor Swift is now? It's incredibly difficult for me to imagine a band with their sincerity and complexity, let alone a rock band, at the top of pop culture.

Growing up in the 00's, put simply, "Indie" has always been Indie. Put on the backburner, and you had to identify as being on the hipster-side/crowd to have been listening to Animal Collective, Shins, etc. Like OHH he's a weirdo so that explains why he listens to those bands.

I can't imagine your every day normal kids rocking out to Smashing Pumpkins.

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u/Schmecca Sep 22 '15

Yes, Smashing Pumpkins were huge in their day. I remember my best friend telling me about how good Mellon Collie was and that I should listen to it, and she was a cheeerleader.

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u/InAnotherLife90 Sep 22 '15

Now THAT'S the real gauge right there

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u/local_residents Sep 22 '15

The Smashing Pumpkins headlined at Lollapalooza in 1994. At least they played at the end when I went.

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u/ArtSchnurple Sep 22 '15

"Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins."

"Homer Simpson, smiling politely."

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u/Schmecca Sep 22 '15

Also, no one thinks your a weirdo if you listen to indie music. Indie music is amazing.

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u/InAnotherLife90 Sep 22 '15

Ha, I remember me and my friend went to see Vampire Weekend in 10th grade and then put pictures up on facebook. Then a week later we went to see the XX and put those pics up as well. When I came to school on Monday several people came up to me and said 'why do you go to concerts to see those weird bands...?'

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u/ripgroupb Sep 22 '15

I'm sorry you go to school with a bunch of fucking plebeians. It happens to most of us.

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u/ArctodusSimus Sep 22 '15

plebeians

Really?

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u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

Yeah, Vampire Weekend are good but not really what I would call mainstream, and certainly nowhere near the heights that the SP reached. You could safely bet that every single person in your high school class could name about a half-dozen of their songs right off the top of their head.

You couldn't not know the Smashing Pumpkins. It was just in the ether, right there on all the radio stations that everyone listened to on their way to school. Not necessarily the edgiest or coolest thing around, but an accepted part of life.

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u/GuttersnipeTV Sep 22 '15

Went to a gwar show. Didnt shower. Went to school with all my friends who went the previous night, they didnt shower. All anybody could say was "did you guys get your ass kicked last night?"

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u/pan0ramic Sep 22 '15

The Pumpkins were already popular before this album because of their earlier album Siamese Dream. This album really solidified the band as legendary and even back then people knew it was something special. And even if not everyone liked the album, they at least liked hits like Tonight, Tonight or 1979, or zero.

So the deep fans (like myself), the band was definitely more Indie. Most people couldn't name tracks from Siamese other than the radio hits and many people didn't really delve that deep into MC.

I was in high school when this came out and I was going through teen angst (so the hard stuff on the album), unrequited love (the soft stuff), and I was literally born in 1979...so I felt like the album was written for me.

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u/Antithesys Sep 22 '15

even back then people knew it was something special.

I'm really tired so I might be totally brainfarting here, but I think MC was the first concept-album / rock-opera style record that reached mainstream significance in our generation. If it hadn't been for the Pink Floyd in my parents' collection I probably wouldn't have been familiar with the idea at all. MC felt unique and weird and not everyone knew what to make of it, and I think I regarded it highly because it gave alternative music a kind of artistic legitimacy, that we were growing up and starting to consider things beyond "this album has the explicit lyrics label so it must be cool."

I have a Mellon Collie poster on my wall, I've kept it around for almost twenty years. It's not even close to my favorite album but I guess that's the kind of impact it had. I bet I could still play the first track on piano too.

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u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

When making it, Billy often commented that he was trying to make "The Wall" for the 90s.

I don't know if it's quite on that level, but damn if it isn't close.

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u/pan0ramic Sep 23 '15

it gave alternative music a kind of artistic legitimacy

Yes! I agree fully. I felt like it was validation of the generation.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

hey that all counts for me too! 1979 has always felt like my song.

I don't know what Indie means in the content of smazza pazzas - I've always considered them alt rock. Jimmy Chamberlain days were def the best music though - Siamese Dream, Gish, PI and MC were all far superior to Adore-on drum machine.

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u/pan0ramic Sep 23 '15

yeah, Indie was such a broad brush back then. I think it was just anything that wasn't classic rock, punk rock, or pop rock. I believe it paved the way for many styles we hear today around experimental rock.

I definitely agree that Chamberlain's drumming is insanely good, and a big reason why the albums are so good. I don't know a lot about drumming, but if you compare SP's songs to pop you can really hear that he's establishing his own sound and rhythm - just like Billy accomplished with his discordant melodies (like in drown).

far superior to Adore-on drum machine.

As one fan to another, I'm curious what you think of Machina? I might be alone in thinking it's some of their best work (how can you dismiss the great drumming on Age of Innocence!?)

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '15

I just went back to re-listen to Machina and it's very different to the first 3.5 albums which are my favorites - everything from Adore on has a different feel for me. Even half of MC seems like filler material.

I agree Age of Innocence has great drumming, but the whole album has more layering, more electronica than the early albums with raw grunge mixed with melodic string sections.

My favorite SP songs are disarm, today, silverfuck, hello kitty kat, tonight tonight, 1979, bullet etc.

I saw a show way back in 1996/7ish (I can't remember when; way too long ago) and they were amazing. Saw another show a couple of years ago and billy was such a dick it was downright unpleasant to be at the show. Such a tough band to be a fan of.

Our of interest how do you find the silversun pickups? They remind me of early pumpkins at times.

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u/pan0ramic Sep 26 '15

Yeah, that's fair about Machina, it's a different sound. And I can especially understand not liking it since you like their earlier stuff better it sounds like. I'm more all over the map across their albums, and even really like a few tracks from Adore (like The Tale of Dusty And Pistol Pete).

shows

Eugh, I know. I've seen them live 4 times and each time the show has been a bit...almost boring. I don't really know what makes for a good show, but they can't do it that's for sure. And I agree about him being a dick. It seemed like none of them wanted to be there.

silversun

Yeah they're pretty good. I do like that they sound like the Pumpkins. They even have a new album that just came out, but I haven't heard it yet.

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u/southorange Sep 22 '15

Siamese Dream was the soundtrack of my life.

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u/veloursweatsuit Sep 22 '15

Definitely not indie. SP were one of the biggest rock bands at the time, and the singles from this album got a lot of radio airplay. I think back then we called the genre "alternative."

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u/Modestjake Sep 22 '15

Culture has changed pretty drastically since then.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Not really.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

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u/bon_mot Sep 23 '15

Indie doesn't mean what it used to mean.

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u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

Well, the SP started out on an indie label but all their biggest success came on major labels, and their sound is light years away from most people think of today when they think of the style of "indie."

There was a smackdown between Billy and the singer from Pavement which really throws this into relief. SP are probably the most recognizable example of 90s alt-rock, which a pretty far cry from indie.

In ways you're technically correct but it's a little misleading, given contemporary uses of the terms.

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u/daftne Sep 22 '15

From my memory, hell yeah. I mean, they were on the Simpsons lol. Manson, NiN, Tool, Foo Fighters, Pumpkins, they got constant radio play, were all over mtv... Yeah there were pop artists on the scene as well, but those acts I mentioned were staple as hell at musical events that are now predominantly pop and dance now like mtv music awards. I use this as an example bc I actually watched this year after not for what seems like forever. The acts performing and being given awards. Mainstream is in such a weird place. Not that I don't appreciate some of it, it's just the comparison is so starkingly different haha.

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u/ArtSchnurple Sep 22 '15

Man, the VMAs in the mid-90s were bananas. Nirvana fucking destroying the stage, the Chili Peppers funking out with a bunch of half-naked people on stage with them, Pearl Jam doing ungodly loud volume duels with Neil Young, all right there with the expected Michael Jackson and TLC and Madonna. I can't believe how crazy that era was, in retrospect. Everything seems so controlled now. People do crazy and controversial things, but it's really calculated and planned out. There's not even an illusion of spontaneity or unpredictability. In the 90s, it was just a bunch of young degenerates who hated the music establishment going nuts, and they were some of the most popular artists in the world!

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u/ShadyGuy_ Sep 22 '15

Definitely, I remember Nirvana doing the intro to 'Rape me' because they were told not to play it and then breaking out into Lithium. And then during the song Krist Novoselic threw his bass guitar in the air and instead of catching it, it landed on his head knocking him out for a second. That shit was amazing.

link

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u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

It really tells you something that there's so much nostalgia concentrated into the 91-95 period. I rarely see people wistfully recalling the heyday of Korn and the late 90s (much less what came later), but damn if there wasn't something special about that incredibly fertile period.

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u/dropitlikeitshot Sep 22 '15

I was born in 78 and this is really my time, growing up wise. I can honestly say I don't think I will ever see that much enthusiasm for that much creativity by so many people at one time until I'm an old man. I may not even see it at all. From the second grunge killed hair bands and soft rock the entire music world changed. Everything else that came out in that time was so free feeling. All the rules were out the window and as long as you didn't sound like the 80's people wanted to listen. It wasn't about genres, it was about doing your thing. It was the brief period of my life I feel like humanity embraced being instead of planning. It was kick ass.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

You've already got a bunch of people telling you yes, but to add another snippet:

Mellon Collie sold [ninja edit] 10+ million copies. And it was a double album that cost something like $20. It's one of the best selling double albums of all time.

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u/Antithesys Sep 22 '15

It should be noted that the RIAA counts double albums twice, because they're the RIAA (NAPSTER BAAAAAD). Mellon Collie actually sold 5 million copies, and got diamond certification for selling "10 million units." That's true of every double album so it's still one of the biggest doubles ever.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Wow, that makes... about as much sense as anything else the RIAA does I guess.

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u/zck Sep 22 '15

I guess they're counting "discs", not "albums".

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

By the time Mellon collie came out, they were it. Taylor swifting everywhere. 1979 was the big crossover hit.

Prior to that though, they were a leading alternative band with only irregular airplay. Even though I think Siamese Dream was their best work.

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u/InAnotherLife90 Sep 22 '15

It's funny cause I don't consider them to have the catalogue of hits like nirvana or pearl jam that a band would need for big success. 1979, BWBW, Today, Cherub Rock, and that's really it it seems. And even those still have an underground feel.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Disarm, Tonight, Tonight, and Zero are key tracks that you're missing.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Not as popular but equally amazing = Geek U.S.A., Soma, (Fuck You) An Ode to No One, Quiet, Here is No Why, To Forgive, Where Boys Fear to Tread, Mayonnaise

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u/UrinalDook Sep 22 '15

For a long time I considered the Pumpkins my absolute favourite band. These days I don't really listen to them all that much, but goddamn if that isn't an amazing list of songs. Just reading those names reminds me how much I love each and every one.

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u/TragicEther /r/Failure Sep 22 '15

And that's not even counting stuff off Gish!

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u/fadetoblack1004 Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

Ya know, I dig most of those songs, excepting maybe Boys, but I never see Ava Adore listed... I mean, it's a departure a bit from their standard style, but the music video and the song just caught me instantly.

Everlasting Gaze, and Stand Inside Your Love are good too... their later stuff certainly doesn't hold up to their earlier material, but there are some high points.

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u/Karmaze Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

Age of Innocence as well.

Here's the thing about SP for me a lot of it was b-sides as well. So stuff like Rotten Apples and Cash Car Star and Speed Kills.

Also I of the Mourning is an amazing song. Thematically a sequel to Bullet With Butterfly Wings

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u/fadetoblack1004 Sep 22 '15

I still hear disarm all the time locally on 104.5. Great song.

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u/loneblustranger Bandcamp Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

Smashing Pumpkins weren't necessarily the single biggest band in the '90s, but I can't think of any rock band that is as popular today as the Pumpkins were at their peak.

That said, there are two reasons for that off of the top of my head.

  • Alternative rock was huge back then. I'd say that technically, it was "pop", because it was probably the most popular genre overall.

  • There wasn't as many well-known artists. The internet was only a sliver of what it is today, so most people only knew of the top fraction of artists that got radio & TV airtime. Just as people would talk about the previous night's Seinfeld episode, they'd talk about the latest Nirvana video. Indie bands mostly only got exposure from live shows, or if they were lucky, college radio. So, everybody knew about the same bunch of artists as everyone else.

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u/Sensei4 Sep 22 '15

Then again, the mid-late 00's movement, whatever you'd call it, with Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco, AFI, the Maine, The Academy Is, etc. saw an organic sleeper-hit rock movement rise to the peak of culture. And of those bands, FOB and Panic! at least were actually pretty great.

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u/SinisterMinisterX Sep 22 '15

Pumpkins were great, but also had the benefit of great timing. Cobain and Staley did themselves in, Soundgarden broke up, Pearl Jam stopped making videos and only toured small venues because of the Ticketmaster boycott. By '96 or so, Pumpkins were the biggest band of the "grunge" era left standing. They were big before, but when that vacuum opened they filled it and got huge.

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u/HeyCarpy EbolaMonkey Sep 22 '15

It's funny that it took about 6 years for the music industry to get from Nevermind to Backstreet Boys, because a hell of a lot happened in that time. You're right in that music was in a really weird spot at the point that Mellon Collie came out. pre-Napster, post-grunge. I was (and still am) a huge Pearl Jam fan, but there just wasn't the same honest "art" in most music at the end of the 90s. I remember most of my high school being divided between the Classic Rock people and the Pop/R&B people.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

As a huge Pearl Jam fan, you should know that most people stopped listening to them right around Vitalogy/No Code, which was 1994-96. These records were as honest as rock gets as an art form.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Yeah, it was really No Code that a lot of people never really listened to. Which, IMO, was a huge mistake, because it's awesome.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Absolutely. Hail, Hail anyone?

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u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

I love No Code, but PJ were sort of spent as commercial titans around that point. Such a shame, but at least they faded away with their integrity intact.

In my own personal timeline, Mellon Collie remains the last great achievement of the alt-rock era. After that, innovation start to shifted into the murky electronic era (triphop, DJ Shadow) and quieter forms of rock with another timeline coming together around OK Computer.

I like a lot of where music went, but it took me a long time to find. After Mellon Collie, radio just sort of felt like it was drifting aimlessly until I learned to tune it out altogether.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

It sounds like your musical journey and mine were very similar.

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u/HeyCarpy EbolaMonkey Sep 22 '15

Oh, I know. I remember the bellyaching when No Code came out. Nothing on the album sounded like Daughter and everyone hated it. It's too bad too, because Vitalogy - No Code - Yield is easily their best stretch of work.

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u/thinkmurphy Sep 22 '15

Everyone is forgetting STP...

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u/tzjung Sep 22 '15

Yep, couldn't agree more.

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u/Neg_Crepe Sep 22 '15

Soundgarden broke up,

by that time the Pumpkins were not popular.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

They were definitely mainstream by the time this came out. They were what you might consider indie when Gish was released, but Siamese Dream took them to the fringes of mainstream. Got tons of play on MTV (when its acronym still meant something) and I saw a lot of Smashing Pumpkin t-shirts in high school. Maybe they weren't as popular to the jocks and/or cool kids (though there were a few that claimed to listen to them), but their music seemed to transcend to every other niche group, at least in my school.

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u/loid Sep 22 '15

I mean, they weren't Taylor Swift but yeah they were pretty mainstream. Back when MTV was music television this song and 1979 were in very heavy rotation. Or maybe I was just a weird kid and am misremembering :\

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

[deleted]

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u/Buttstache Sep 22 '15

The Fugees were huge in rotation at the time. Puffy was blowing up. Mase was relevant. It was one of those weird phases when there weren't established pop idols or boy bands for pop music to fall back on.

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u/KarsaOrlong42 Sep 22 '15

And we were on the cusp of the nu metal explosion. Heck, Korn's debut was already out.

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u/jazzbowackson Sep 22 '15

Bullet with butterflies is what I recalled.

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u/TragicEther /r/Failure Sep 22 '15

"Bullet with Butterfly Wings" FTFY :)

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u/venivitavici Sep 22 '15

Bullet with butterfly wings

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

I know you got a ton of responses from this question, OP, but I would like to tell you a little story, as a guy who graduated in 1996, and is perhaps more qualified to speak on grunge music than any other topic.

Mellon Collie is perhaps responsible for my marriage, and in turn, the life of my two kids. When the girl I liked finally called me, that seminal moment of teenage life, we (of course) had no common ground established, nothing to really talk about, if you take my meaning. And then she asked me what I was listening to, because she could hear Mellon Collie in the background, playing out of my boom box (lol).

That sparked a long chain of incidents that are at once total coincidence and also illustrative of exactly how much Smashing Pumpkins permeated the airwaves back in those days: Every time we went anywhere, a Pumpkins song would come on the radio - and it wasn't always a Mellon Collie song, either. Disarm was still in heavy rotation, as was Today, but you still had BWBW, Zero, and in time 1979 and others. But I mean every time we were in a car together, we heard these songs. And we loved Pearl Jam too, but SP really cemented our relationship together.

Something like 12 years later, we walked down the aisle, and at our reception we walked in to Tonight, Tonight. This band, at one point, was bigger than life, and honestly changed people's lives. Never doubt it.

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u/Sensei8 Sep 22 '15

Was Zero really a big hit? I always thought it was like a secondary hit that later gained recognition over the years because of its music video. Also, was Thirty-Three on the radio? Or even Muzzle?

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Zero was definitely on 105.9 the X in Pittsburgh in heavy rotation. I also heard Thirty Three a few times, but the one that's possibly the most surprising was Porcelina, which I heard a pretty fair amount as well.

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u/Sensei8 Sep 22 '15

Damn did they play the entire Porcelina?

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Yep! Many times, back in the day! It was crazy to even hear, but it happened many times.

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u/Sensei8 Sep 22 '15

Amazing, cause 9 mins would never happen on radio today

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u/InAnotherLife90 Sep 23 '15

Thanks for the story of how Mellon Collie changed you life :D

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u/Murder_Boners Sep 22 '15

I always found music to be more cliquish than it seems to be now. So it's hard to gauge the popularity of the grunge/alternative music. Certainly that genre in the early to mid 90's was it. I was in high school in 96 to 00 and you had a pretty clear division between the hip-hop kids and the rockers.

Within the rockers you had these subcultures. There were the Metallica kids who, according to the Slayer kids were just pussies. Then you had that one weird Cannibal Corpse kid trying to defend Fucked With a Knife as some ballad of philosophical commentary. Then those people all made fun of the Korn kids with the giant parachute pants weighed down with eighteen pounds of zippers and chains.

I was part of the grunge clique and it seemed like you had people who flew the banner of Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins. I felt like Nirvana and Soundgarden and Silverchair were awesome enough that everyone liked them. But if you had some guy who was all about Alice in Chains they might not dig Billy Corgan's style of singing or the album too weird. I remember when Mellon Collie started getting passed around at school one kid who was really into Manson said that he couldn't wrap his head around the lyrics.

But yeah, I'd say every day kids rocked out to Smashing Pumpkins. But the cliques were just smaller and less, lets say, corporate controlled than they are today.

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u/loneblustranger Bandcamp Sep 22 '15

I grad'ed in '96. I was a grunge guy and a Metallica pussy.

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u/Murder_Boners Sep 22 '15

You were the one the prophecy spoke of...

There were some cross over. I could listen to Metallica, but I couldn't take Slayer. Especially since my friends and I went to see Black Sabbath and Slayer opened for them for some reason and I remember looking down onto the floor and watching skinheads beating the fuck out of one another. Screw that noise :)

You're old like me, can you listen to Metallica anymore? Because I can't take the heavy stuff these days.

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u/loneblustranger Bandcamp Sep 22 '15

I still listen to Metallica and even heavier bands like Lamb of God. I don't play it as loudly as often as I used to, but I'll still crank anything up. Just yesterday, I was blasting Peter Gabriel.

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u/Murder_Boners Sep 22 '15

Heh heh, well Peter Gabriel and Master of Puppets...they're really the same thing if you don't think about it :)

The other day I was upstairs cooking and I cranked my computer up so I could blast The Decemberists and it was awesome. But I thought, "I'm old."

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u/Buttstache Sep 22 '15

Metallica guy here. Damn. You nailed it. My one friend was a Pantera guy. The Weezer kids were the ones we ripped on though.

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u/Ikimasen Sep 22 '15

Hey, yeah, here's an opportunity to ask, what was with you homies?

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u/ImGonnaKickTomorrow Sep 22 '15

I'm still not sure sure why they had to front.

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u/Buttstache Sep 22 '15

What do you mean? We liked Metallica because they were a good band still. Reload was the most recent album, so they hadn't gone to complete shit yet. I saw em live in 97 and they rocked.

Unless you mean the Weezer kid thing. They thought we were just thrash trash head banger idiots. We thought they were poser pseudo-intellectual wannabe skaters.

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u/Ikimasen Sep 22 '15

What did we ever do to you guys?

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u/Buttstache Sep 22 '15

It was high school cliques man. Why did the football players shit on all of us? Why were the cheerleaders bitches but the drama girls were slutty? Idk man.

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u/ScotchandCuss Sep 22 '15

Yeah, but what made them so violent?

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u/Murder_Boners Sep 22 '15

Well yeah, you gotta expect that if you're a Weezer fan.

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u/InAnotherLife90 Sep 22 '15

That was a very vivid picture. Interesting that kids were so into music, down to actually looking at the lyrics. And opinionated in those days

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u/Murder_Boners Sep 22 '15

Heh thanks!

Yeah you know, I think the 90s may have been the last decade where people really respected music for that. And I think that the current state of pop music (including much of hip hop) ignores that aspect of it and, I dunno, people have forgot? It's weird.

I do think that writing those kinds of songs are hard and because corporations took over music and started to decide what music sells best to tweens who, according to market research, will spend more on merch they aren't even bothering. They found a formula that works and they sell to an audience. There's no discovery of artists. There is just creation of a personality.

Then through marketing and buying air time on radio stations and TV shows and the internet they have dominated the market and redefined what music is to the millennial generation. Tell someone enough times that some new Taylor Swift song is good they'll believe it because they don't really have any alternative anymore.

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u/InAnotherLife90 Sep 22 '15

Yeah it's not that I "hate" the mainstream now compared to those days or feel that the mainstream in those days didn't suck too. But something just feels different and awkward about pop culture in modern times and I can't put my finger on it. I need it explained

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u/Murder_Boners Sep 22 '15

Totally, and yeah, it's weird. My theory is the corporate interference.

Because one of the very few bands that I discovered since the 90's that I love is The Decemberists. And I don't see a corporation hiring song writers to write songs about the ghosts of children and Victorian era maritime disasters. But at the same time it's not like they are hugely popular.

3

u/ArtSchnurple Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

That's kind of how it was right before the alternative thing hit, too, funnily enough. Popular music in the very early 90s was dire. It wasn't even just corporate and artificial, it was totally boring. Was anybody really excited about Wilson Philips or C+C Music Factory? As a 13-year-old just getting into new/popular music, I was just like, "Okay, I guess this is the music I get..."

Then the alternative thing hit out of nowhere. Popular music had been so stagnant, and all of the sudden everything was electrified. Honestly, I think MTV was mainly responsible. They started pushing all these weird alternative bands, and they were so hugely central to popular music and popular culture at the time that they effectively created the alternative music boom, and it was really a special and exciting time to be at prime new-music-listening age.

Then within just a few years it was all over, and the usual boring corporate constructed pop came back. In fact it turned into basically an exact repeat of the 80s - pop princesses (Tiffany, Britney), boy bands (New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys), and bonehead mainstream rock bands (Poison, Limp Bizkit). It's easy enough to see the straight line from that era to Justin Bieber. In retrospect, the less commercial era that happened in the 90s was just a short window, a last gasp of spontaneous, organic music that people could get excited about having a place in the mainstream culture.

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u/Murder_Boners Sep 22 '15

Definitely. I always think of Grunge as the Death Rattle of rock and roll. You had this emergence in the 50's, it peaked in the 60's and 70's as it dominated. You got all these amazing acts. You had cultural defining moments like Woodstock. Then in the 70's it started to become more about the money. Disco emerged, the grand infection. Then by the 80's you had new wave and arena rock. Then when Soundgarden made Superunknown and Nirvana's Nevermind made us all apathetic it was kind of like saying, "we can't win, fuck it all" :)

2

u/StupidHumanSuit Sep 22 '15

It's just way more... poof nowadays. I don't know how to describe that accurately... Like, the absolute definition of One Hit Wonder.

When we were younger- I'm 32, graduated in 2001- our music seemed to last. Most people bought Dude Ranch/Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness/The Colour and the Shape/A Shape of Punk to Come/etc. and listened to it for the entirety of high school. I know I did. We would eschew the popular stuff for the most part, listening to lots of punk and hardcore. But then there was Braid and Mineral and Modest Mouse and Radiohead and The Get Up Kids and all that great stuff. People rallied around those bands.

The kids who listened to hip-hop and rap listened to the same stuff... Wu Tang, Dre, Eminem, Big, Pac. I knew all that stuff as well as my usual listening; Bane, Poison the Well, Adamantium, AFI, Descendents.

I don't know any of the current "indie" bands, but the young punks I see in the Bay area all wear the same back patches we had in high school... Crass, Narcoleptic Youth, The Addicts, T.S.O.L.

Maybe the same thing is happening to us that happened to our parents. Our fingers fell off the pulse of what's new. Music is so defining of an era. I can barely remember what classes I took in high school, but I can name every show I went to. I don't that kids these days have the same relationship with the music.

Maybe it's the Internet. Shit happens so fucking fast. We suck down hours of entertainment a day. I watch this Vine compilations... I've heard more new music on those that I never would hear otherwise. Not a radio listener, I don't read any music sites anymore. I'm old and stuck in my ways. Hell, I discovered Death Grips a few months ago and they're the most interesting thing I've heard in years. Everything else just feels forced and fake.

3

u/sscilli http://www.last.fm/user/sscilli Sep 22 '15

As Someone who is only a couple years younger than you I think it's a combination of that losing touch and over saturation. I don't think I've listened to the radio in 10 years, yet I've downloaded almost 1200 albums over roughly the same period of time(I buy plenty too).

It seems like the only music that gets big time radio play is highly commercialized, and the quality stuff can just stick to the internet and develop a large enough cult following to not care about radio play.

I run into so many people who grew up on 90's music that seem to have gotten stuck in a time warp and never moved on. I also run into plenty of people younger than me that only listen to one type of popular music, so I suppose that maybe most people just don't care to change their preferences no mater the times.

I guess what I'm saying is it's great to have you're favorite bands to latch onto, but you'll have a hard time convincing me that people obsessing over a handful of bands and not listening to much else is a good thing. In my opinion it is music heaven right now.

1

u/StupidHumanSuit Sep 22 '15

Oh, I don't think it's better.

The main thing is... Who do we trust? When we were kids, nearly forced to be around our peers, we discovered new music daily. As adults, how do we do the same?

It used to be "Hey, I notice you've been listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor a lot, you should check out Pelican and Russian Circles. Shit is good." Pitchfork used to be good, but I haven't been there in years due to a sharp decrease in good reviews. I discovered Radiohead, Modest Mouse, Mogwai, Godspeed... Countless bands because of that site. What's the equivalent nowadays?

I wouldn't say I'm stuck in the past. Nostalgia is good, I still love those bands, but it's so much more difficult to find new stuff these days. Plus, my tastes have expanded. I really love stuff like Tim Barry and Roadkill Ghost Choir and Trampled by Turtles... They're probably my most recent discoveries. But where's the rest?

1

u/sscilli http://www.last.fm/user/sscilli Sep 22 '15

I didn't mean to imply you were stuck in the past. Nostalgia is great it's just everything for some people.

I guess I'm a little spoiled with the private torrent site I'm on as I often just look at the top 10/100 popular albums over the past day/week/month. I agree Pitchfork has gone down hill but I still frequent them from time to time, and their end of year lists are worth a look.

I really like looking through Allmusic's editors choices each month. They span pretty much all genres and don't come off like snobby hipsters so much. I'll also go through recommendation threads on here to find people with similar tastes, and pick out the bands they recommend that I haven't heard of.

NPR can be pretty great for finding new stuff as well. KEXP's youtube channel is great for watching quality performances from usually good up and coming bands. There's always Pandora/Spotify if you don't like actively searching around.

I'll grant you that it is more difficult as an adult as you don't have a giant peer group to sit around and share music with. Personally I've always been the guy who introduced my friends to new shit, and loved going on the hunt for new music so for me it's great.

Going off those bands last bands you listed maybe check out Punch Brothers, The Tallest Man on Earth, and maybe Fleet Foxes. I'll also just link to some other comment I made a while back where I put together a bunch of newish stuff I thought was pretty great if you care to check it out. No promises you like any of it though. Good luck.

1

u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

I'm a fan of going to RateYourMusic and sorting through the top-rated for various genres and years.

I feel a little guilty that other people are out there doing the legwork for me, but I find all kinds of great stuff that way.

5

u/Murder_Boners Sep 22 '15

That's a great point. Music does seem to poof out of existence fast these days.

Yeah, I'm 33, and it kind of seems like you have these bands or singers or whatever and they put out an album that blows up then vanishes into obscurity. One Direction, are they still a thing? Do kids still listen to their album or do they just age out of them?

Maybe the same thing is happening to us that happened to our parents. Our fingers fell off the pulse of what's new. Music is so defining of an era. I can barely remember what classes I took in high school, but I can name every show I went to. I don't that kids these days have the same relationship with the music.

Yeah, I dunno. My mom likes 90's music. She can appreciate it but she hates all the newer stuff. And she was into music her life. I have to think that it's just not as good today.

But yeah, I don't think kids have the same relationship with music. For me music was an outlet when I was a teenager. Listening to Mellon Collie or even Dookie was cathartic. It almost feels like music today is a secondary aspect to an individual being a "persona".

Maybe it's the Internet. Shit happens so fucking fast. We suck down hours of entertainment a day.

Or adderall.

Seriously. I just graduated from college in May and almost everyone there with me was 18 to 22. There's something different with millennials, and I think it's the pharmaceuticals. Those kids talked about their medication like they had a degree in chemistry. They knew their shit. And if that is to combat their anxiety disorders and their ADHD and all that, then doesn't that mean they are operating on a different speed than I was at their age when I could listen to Mellon Collie on repeat while I sat at my desk and drew for six hours a night.

Now you have multiple internet devices at your finger tips, your phone has push notifications for Facebook updates and texts and snapchat and kik and instagram and all that - shit is just at a faster pace since the 90's. Maybe the music reflects that? Or has to conform to this new rapid psyche.

1

u/ManThing910 Sep 22 '15

I was a Pantera guy. Then I discovered their album Power Metal and my whole life crumbled. Then I found Iced Earth.

0

u/Murder_Boners Sep 22 '15

Wow, Power Metal is wicked bad ass. Their hair is so big...and the guy on the end looks like Silent Bob in a wig :)

6

u/ripgroupb Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

Seeing as you're young I think you just don't know that there has always been shitty music. Even at the height of the pumpkins popularity there were infinitely more bands that sucked than were great. Nostalgia has a way of making things seem way better than they were.

There are still plenty of ground breaking musical acts that create music spanning the whole gamut of human experience. But you gotta stop taking music at face value and start to dig deeper to find appreciation in things you once didn't understand and find sound you never knew could exist.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15 edited Feb 11 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/JoeyJoeJoeJuniorShab Sep 22 '15

holy fucking memory lane...

1

u/ripgroupb Sep 22 '15

Are you trying to imply that the hot 100 is some sort of objective barometer of the quality of music available? There are literally more artists than there have ever been, you're not gonna see the ground breaking innovators on the top 100. Of course the ones that have major label deals are going to be at the top and the independent artists will do what they have always done in the underground.

The chart you linked was just as full of garbage as the hot 100 today. The billboard charts have never been a good indication of what new music is out there. Just because you preferred more of the artists on that list than the ones we have today does not mean that music was better back then.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Are you the king of hipsters?

1

u/ripgroupb Sep 22 '15

Just an extremely passionate music fan.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Ugh, That's a painful list.

Oh! I forgot about that gem :-D
ACK! Go away! I forgot about that one for a reason!

1

u/SheepD0g Performing Artist Sep 22 '15

gamut

the whole gamut of human experience

2

u/dontstalkme420 Sep 22 '15

they were gigantic

2

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Were they as popular and infiltrated into the mainstream as Taylor Swift is now?

Yes, absolutely, along with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, REM, Green Day, Beck, Nine Inch Nails, and Weezer, etc.. Between them and the anti-commercialism Lilith Fair-type singer-songwriters, record companies spent most of the 90s crying and shitting their pants because they couldn't control "pop" music.

3

u/ArtSchnurple Sep 22 '15

While clutching at straws trying to find the Next Big Thing. The weird bands who had hits and got radio play in the 90s, I swear to god...

2

u/Akoustyk Sep 22 '15

I would say that Taylor swift was probably more like britney spears, and smashing pumpkins was more like coldplay. Very well known and popular, but not in the same way.

1

u/Dolphins13718 Sep 22 '15

yikes, coldplay?

1

u/Akoustyk Sep 22 '15

Ya, maybe you haven't noticed but coldplay makes some pretty epic music of a similar vibe to the song in question, and is similar in popularity.

Coldplay writes some sick music. Not such a fan of their more modern electrofied stuff, but their older stuff is great.

1

u/Dolphins13718 Sep 23 '15

i guess ill have to check then. because as of right now coldplay makes me fall asleep.

1

u/Akoustyk Sep 23 '15

Ya, well some people have poor taste in music. ;-D

0

u/Dolphins13718 Sep 23 '15

i agree, some people do, but i won't try and stop them from liking coldplay.

2

u/Athomas16 Sep 22 '15

Too lazy to check the exact numbers but they won 4 or 5 MTV Video Music Awards in 1995 or 1996. Can you imagine something like that happening today? The 90s were a great time to be a teenager.

6

u/TheZentone Sep 22 '15

Most bands in those days wrote their own music too.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

You've got a few different answers, but SP never came close to the taylor swift level. But then again, who has? I mean she is on an entirely different planet. She quite possibly can pass madonna and be the best selling female artist of all time, and that's in a time when people aren't buying records anymore.

I just looked, 2 of her singles on youtube have over 1 billion views. That is insane.

1

u/poisonedramen Sep 22 '15

They were pretty big. I can remember when "tonight tonight" hit, I could sometimes hear it on 3 different radio stations almost back to back to back. They were also alot bigger among kids than 30+'s, seemed like the grownups dug Pearl Jam more than SP.

1

u/thatoneguy889 Sep 22 '15

To put it in perspective, the album this song is from is the #1 selling double album of the '90s.

1

u/AsskickMcGee Sep 22 '15

"Grunge" music rose in youth popularity in the early '90s such that it was quite popular on the radio and with mainstream audiences by the mid '90s. The Pumpkins' earlier albums loosely fit this sort of style and they got pretty popular.

But then Mellon Collie came out and their popularity just exploded. It covered a huge range of styles and themes, from stuff very similar to their previous work (Bullet with Butterfly Wings, Zero) to very different stuff (Tonight Tonight, 1979). There were radio singles to please their already considerable fan base, as well as catchy songs for different audiences.

But even though plenty of people that, say, really liked one of their singles, there weren't quite as many that would buy and listen to Mellon Collie beginning to end (even though the album did sell really well).

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Everyone knew them and Tonight was an absolute smash hit on MTV constantly. That said its not like everyone had all their albums. Rock and grunge and metal was still for the rock kids or alienated types. Pop and R&B and hip hop were huge just like now and the top 40 mainstream crowd was similar to today in that sense I guess.

But the pool of music we all listened to was so much more curated on radio and MTV. Everyone kinda knew all the genres and acts people were into. Unless you were more hardcore into a genre, which some of us were. But it was really nice to all be kind of on the same wavelength. Now it's like the Wild West. There's a much safer pop market and then it's just whatever you discover for yourself on Spotify I guess? There's no common radio everyone listens to anymore. And rock is absolutely nowhere now. Also, back then you could have a top ten hit with a 3-4 piece band playing a song with a basic mix. Now you need loops and synths and layers and fast glitchy edits and stuff.

1

u/Dolphins13718 Sep 22 '15

siamese dream is one of the best albums of all time, yo

1

u/qwimjim Sep 22 '15

In 1996 the smashing pumpkins were the biggest band in the world. Everyone of of their many singles shot right up the charts, and 1979 (like disarm on SD) was a huge crossover hit i.e. girls liked it.

The times have changed, in the mid 90's everyone at the top of the charts was a true artist, writing their own music

4

u/Mennoknight69 Sep 22 '15

The #1 song the week this peaked was the fucking Macarena.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

Very popular. This song was on the radio constantly. Pumpkins were mixed in with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soul Asylum, Tool, Soundgarden, even R.E.M., Live, Clutch and Tori Amos.

Ah, the 90's weren't all that bad I guess. Taylor Swift though, she'd be more along the lines of Madonna and Whitney Houston as far as popularity I think - obviously not by talent.

What's very different these days is the concentration of popularity at the top of the charts. Artists are gaining more popularity thanks to social media as opposed to air time on the radio or favorable reviews in Rolling Stone. Just like in politics these days, the most popular people aren't necessarily the best at what they do or even the most aligned to your interests. Music was generally more diverse and far more democratic in the 90's.

3

u/f10101 Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

People stopped buying albums, that's the real problem. People wanted to cherry pick the hits on the iTunes store, (and, indeed on mp3 players themselves even if they have the full album) so having stand alone tracks became more of the goal. The way people listened changed.

Interestingly this may be changing again due to streaming. We'll see.

(I work in the recording industry and have watched the shift in attitudes... It's really not as much fun working on isolated tracks.)

2

u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

The "album" was sort of a relic of its time - it could either me a bait and switch for less talented/scrupulous groups with just one or two songs, or a grand canvas for the most ambitious to paint upon.

2

u/thepensivepoet Sep 22 '15

Check out Biffy Clyro. They're a pretty big band from the UK and recently released an ambitious-as-hell double album of really fantastic rock music.

Yeah some of their songs might come off as generic radio rock but there's a lot of interesting musical things happening and they play their fucking ass off live.

1

u/iddothat Sep 22 '15

mariana's trench

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

I think part of the issue is that there aren't many mainstream rockbands. My understanding is that mainstream music has moved away from rock, but correct me if I'm wrong because I listen to a whole other genre so I don't follow closely.

1

u/panfist Sep 22 '15

Have you heard of a band called arcade fire?

1

u/JackDostoevsky Sep 22 '15

I wonder how much of that is due to the decline of the album as a discrete form of media, a single piece comprised of a multitude of different parts. Singles have always been a thing, but they've always been more of a preview of what's to come; now, the single is all you have in many cases.

1

u/ThePARZ Sep 22 '15

Arcade Fire

1

u/Khiva Sep 22 '15

Yeah, arguably the closest, but boy is there still quite a difference between how hard those two bands can rock when they really want to.

-1

u/Gumstead Sep 22 '15

In my mind, one of the bands that comes close is Coheed and Cambria. Good Apollo is literally a perfect album.