before i started listening to the smashing pumpkins at 14 i really liked nirvana and shoegaze music i'd make on tapes off alternative radio (mbv, ride, swervedriver, the jesus and mary chain's poppier moments, color me badd (i was 13?), crappy indie rock i heard on college radio like silkworm and cub, i dunno, i'm kind of a music nerd). i was kind of obsessed with the singles soundtrack but always skipped drown cause i thought the smashing pumpkins was a stupid band name i wanted nothing to do with until the first spin cover came out and i decided they were the cute band alert to end all cute band alerts.

like most self interested arty types, i sort of abandoned the smashing pumpkins before my 16th birthday since indie/punk/sonic youth recommended/straight edge hardcore/early emo/metal/teenage hipsterdom was an arena where i could be a participant rather than a spectator. despite being so arguably geeked that i post on smashingpumpkins.com (shudder), i hadn't actually heard melancholy until about a year ago.

last febuary, on a whim, i decided it'd be fun to dump a bunch of SP on my iPod and see how it held up against answer two to this, a fcukload of spacemen 3 and my bloody valentine rarities (still kind of religious to me somehow, my bloody valentine have been a personal favorite for over half my life), la monte young and other such dream syndicate beauts and whateverthe[bad word removed], errr, nirvana? early roxy music? late roxy music? kraut rock? forever changes by love? fela kuti? the sun city girls? jay z? i dunno. music is vast in the digital age.

equal to my experimental/high art type music friend's horror, and how fcuking funny that is considering they all like wu tang, something about the music "grabbed" me pretty deeply and it kind of took over my musical interests. the truth that i'm kind of a mouthy lil btich despite my sweeter, chlidlike qualities makes billy corgan a pretty realistic role model for me i suppose. the deeper i got into demos, the more sense that made, then superchrist was released which is, basically, the song i've been itching to hear for the past 10 years (live, that violin bit doesn't really make any sense to me and the vocals sound better when they're harder to hear (i hate the clean production on them on the fresh cuts version in all frankness, despite the guitars being stellar), but, [bad word removed], maybe it'll evolve and maybe i'm a psych purist besides which, i don't really think i'm their target market, i felt like a fashion alien when i went to their concert).