Leaving A Piece Of Youth
Kenleigh G Asheville, NC, US
When I was younger my dad introduced me to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I have memories of being a small child and riding in his truck listening to songs like “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”. My dad works a lot but some of my favorite memories with him are connected to this album.
Fast forward to this year and I started college and adopted an ESA kitten, Sal, who sadly passed away due to unknown complications. One of my last memories with him is resting in my bed with him sitting on my chest listening to “Tonight, Tonight” and him purring. Even though these things are in the past now, they shaped me into the person I am today. Thank you for being part of the journey.
A Zero in Brazil
Eddie Thomaz Dallas, TX, US
In 1994, when I was 13 years old, my family and I moved to São Paulo, Brazil. I barely spoke the language, did not know how to read or write in Portuguese and was put into public school. I did not fit in at all, people made fun of me because I was different. I felt like a complete outsider. I loved SP from the beginning of their career, their music made me feel better about myself and get through those difficult times. When MCATIS came out in 1995, CDs in Brazil, especially imports were super expensive ($40). I got a job as a waiter, it took me two months working to save up the money just to buy the album, I remember running to the cd store grabbing a copy of the album rushing home and putting it on CD 1 track 4, Zero. I must have listened to that track a thousand times, then, to my unexpected surprise, I was blown away by the rest of the album. So much diversity, complexity / simplicity, love/anger in each song, it made me feel accepted. One of my favorite memories to this day is listening to Porcelina on my headset in a beach in Brazil, up to then, I had never felt so at peace. Your music made a difference in my life. People associate your music to me, I constantly get messages, “Eddie, every time I listen to Smashing Pumpkins, I think about you”. It influenced me to become a musician. I even had the opportunity in 2010 to open a show for the Smashing Pumpkins and meet all of them in 2010. Thank you for being a part of my life.
How SP Came Into My Life
Pat Meyer Pennsylvania, US
Now this goes as far back as when I was very young. Much of my older cousins were one of those kids who grew up in the 90’s as teenagers. A couple of them are fans of The Smashing Pumpkins. The name pretty much fascinated me for a very long time. I didn’t get into their music until I was 15. I bought the double album “Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness”. Ever since that time, Jeff Soles (one of my older cousins and devoted SP fan who met Billy Corgan at their 2000 show) Would clue me in on how to catch on to their other material. I’ve followed up on all of their music since becoming a full-fledged SP fan. I’ve always considered “Mellon Collie” to be not only the best album I have ever heard, but also the holy grail of 90’s alternative rock albums; and I still think that to be true to this day.
Horizon
Zachary Osseo, MN, US
I found out about The Smashing Pumpkins when I was 15 years old, and they’ve since been my favorite band, (I’m 19, now). It was a fun time of my life; an age of discovery, thoroughly wrought with long nights spent alone in my room, listening to shoegaze, drawing and painting the nights away.
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the first CD I ever bought, (at the aforementioned age, at a Down in the Valley). I brought it home and and studied every square inch of the jewel case / booklet whilst religiously listening to those 122 minutes on repeat, and found myself endlessly tantalized
by the artwork displayed on the back of the CD case… The sheer beauty conveyed in the piece was heartwarming to my young soul. I decided I’d use it as inspiration for a drawing, (as, above all else, I’m first an artist). So, I began the three-week-straight process of creating a wonderful pen and ink piece, appropriately named, “Horizon”.
At 15, and to this day, I considered this piece the “turning point” of my artistic endeavors. It was when my art became an identity for me, really. It marked the “growing up” of both me and my art; for no longer was I churning out mindless sketches of heads exploding and people eating eyeballs. No, from that point on, my art became something greater.
I think this theme of “growing up” is prominent throughout the entirety of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and, thankfully it crept in and played its part in my life. 15 was also a very lonely time of life for me, and these themes are as well evident throughout the album. I experienced my first love, and first breakup. It was the age when most, if not all, of my childhood friends decided it best to abandon me for one reason or another.
However, through better or worse and through thick and thin, all of these things have played a huge part in creating who I am today, and that’s, at the very least, someone who’s alive and smiles often.
I think that’s the lesson that could be taken away from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It’s a wildly manic record that soars from the highest highs of, “Tonight, Tonight” to the gaping, trenching lows of “X.Y.U.” — from track to track, it’s always on the horizon of something new.
And, what is life if not that, exactly?
I don’t know, man.
P.S. —
one funny memory I have from first becoming a fan: I’d frequently play Smashing Pumpkins on my family’s Amazon Echo, and, because of this, turned on most of my 8 younger siblings to the band. Due to this, I distinctly remember my younger brothers yelling, “Alexa, play “Rat in a Cage!“