Memories | The Smashing Pumpkins

Sadness

Zachary Seabrook, tx, US

So when I was younger, about 13, I struggled hard with depression but didn’t know what I was dealing with at the time. I felt so unbelievably sad and alone. To fit in I listened to Slipknot, Korn, Limp Bizkit, even though the music never really spoke to me. One day my mom took me to the mall, probably trying to get me out of my funk and I spent my allowance money on a double CD of a band I didn’t know much about. It changed my life. I fell in love with the haunting, beautiful and sometimes angry melodies and lyrics. Every night I fell asleep to it, sometimes still crying but it was better. The Pumpkins taught me that sadness is ok and beautiful. I knew then that I was not alone. Others felt the same and our pain is echoed by the moon and stars. That album helped me to break the shackles that bound me. I still feel sad sometimes but I deal with it in a healthy, optimistic and wise way. Thank you for always being there for me. For reminding me I’m not alone and that life wouldn’t be as magical without this sadness I have within me. You helped be tame that beast and I am forever grateful. I love you pumpkins.

UNLUCKY 3/17/2000

Joseph harbaugh Rogers, AR, US

Well if was already an UNLUCKY St Patrick’s Day (corgan’s birthday )

and I was late driving this gals car that I borrowed to drive to Pittsburg to see SP my favorite band. My friends were inside with my ticket and I wasn’t. I offered the $100 bill that my brothers western unioned me to go see them- just to prove to him that I wasn’t lying. He said no- sold out show. So I went 2 doors down from the Metropol and got smashed. I got Darcy’s signature after the show and that was all. Then the car I borrowed got towed. Could nt get any worse.

20 years later SP came to Rogers Ar and I got to see them nearly 7 rows from front. Justice.

The only stereo in the house

Chris P US

My dad watched soccer like he always has in the living room. There was a stereo that played cassettes in that living room. Matter of fact it was under the TV stand. I was so excited because this was the first cassette I ever bought. I had gone to the store earlier with my dad to get the cassette. I had picked Load by Metallica but he didn’t like the fact that it had fire on the cover. Told me that was devil Music. Anyway I grabbed MCIS and decided to go with that instead. After dinner with the family it was finally time to listen to the tape. My dad had a game he had to watch that same night. I couldn’t resist so I played the album on the stereo under the TV which was full blast audio with his soccer game. I had to put my ear as close as I could to the speaker because he didn’t want the noise from the music to interrupt his game. That has always been a very fond memory of a day with my dad, soccer and SP.

MCIS bonding

Robert Norfolk, US

MCIS was released when I was about 6 years old and I was staying over at my cousin Steve’s house, he was about 17 at the time and a huge pumpkins fan. I had never heard anything by them at this point so Steve and I listened to the radio show ahead of the release and I was hooked. The next day Steve took me with him to get the album .On the ride back we listened to the album about 3 times and then sat in the driveway and listened to it again . When I left his house he had recorded me a copy (piracy is wrong but I was like 6 so cut me some slack I couldn’t get a job), I listened to that thing until no sound would come out of that maxwell tape and it would be the first album I ever bought with my own money a few years later. Anytime I hear that album it brings me back to my cousin’s house and sitting in the driveway hanging out with Steve.

We Only Come Out at Night

Sebastian los angeles, ca, US

This song has always been such a curious piece of art, i always found it simultaneously beautiful, whimsical, and a little bit silly/lighthearted. Anyway, i had been teaching a friend to play bass and this seemed like the perfect song and as we went along learning it, we both started to have very interesting dreams…

Mics- and the peace and love I gained

Melissa McGinnis Houston, Texas , US

When I think about this album, I take a deep breath, close my eyes and smile. I’m taken back to 1996. To a time in my youth when I found a s grew in love. I was a senior in high school. I met my first real boyfriend. I can remember listening to muzzle, and thirty-three and in the arms of sleep while laying in his bed, him playing in my hair. Napping, making love. Really starting to not just like myself, but seeing myself thru someone else’s eyes to learn to love myself. When I hear the album intro it takes me back. And I remember this perfect time In my life with such clarity.

Magic was made to this wonderful double album.

Expanding My Horizons

Daniel Moe, Vic, AU

Being a teen through most of the 90’s, i should have been in the right place and time to enjoy the best “alt-rock” during its prime… but unfortunately i spent the first half of the decade obsessing over electronica. Epic songs like Smells like Teen Spirit and Bullet with Butterfly Wings, etc, just sort of blurred into my background… but when i saw the video for Tonight Tonight, my attention was caught and kept! It was such an emotive story with perfect visual appeal that i immediately paid more attention to the music. This video single handedly cured my single mindedness toward music and opened me up to Rock and other genres. I wish i had been on board to enjoy other greats like Nirvana, Radiohead, Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth etc, from the start… but better late than never! Thank you always for this album and the epic videos that went with it. Pure art.

Intro to rock

Frank Maryville, TN, US

The smashing pumpkins are the band that got me into music! I was in sixth grade when I got Mellon collie.

I just remember having a the joy of listening to what I thought was the most bad ass album! Soft and beautiful meets rock! How does this exist so perfectly? Just an amazing sound. Through and through!

I would put my headphones on and play both albums start to finish, n64 just came out so I would play mc on repeat while I played at time best graphics video game.

I’m sure their are way cooler memories or stories. But the smashing pumpkins Mellon collie was my first rock album and the reason I got into music. I’m forever grateful for that! Will always be one of my all time favorite albums!

When I first discovered SP

Lawro Orpington, GB

I first heard 1979, Tonight, Tonight, and Bullet with Butterfly Wings back in 1996, on a mixtape my sister had recorded over time from the radio. Back when songs lasted more than a few weeks in our consciousness. I was ten, and we were on our way to the UK from South Africa for a family holiday. No three songs had ever struck me so hard, and shortly afterwards I bought the MCIS double CD album. The rest is history; SP defined my music taste throughout my teenage years, and I’m still a big fan now in my mid thirties. MCIS is where it all started.

Shakedown 1979

Carlo Angelo Manila, PH

Bought the double cassette late ’95. I saw Bullet once on MTV and super excited for SP’s new album. At the time I already have Siamese Dream and Pisces Iscariot for a year or so. I remember sitting in front of the stereo all the way through, following the lyrics through the inlay sheet. They look so cool in the group photo! When 1979 came on I thought, “this is going to be a huge hit, lots of people will love this song”. That the song I gravitated to because that’s my birth year. I was 15 at the time.

“Thatnight, thatnight”

Pavel Reyes Bayamo, Granma, CU

In the late 90´s, back when I was a kid, Rock music was kind of forbidden in my country for political reasons, there was only one show on TV that included every once in a while a couple of Hard Rock video clips late at night, but I was already in love with Rock and Heavy Metal by
then and that music healed me from the tough days I had, becoming an adolescent and living the worst economic crisis we have ever had in this country before or after.

One of those nights watching the show, waiting for the new clips late at night, there appeared a new band I didn´t know that started to play a song making use of Georges Méliés´ paraphernalia in his classic film “A Trip to the Moon”, right there my world stopped for about 4 minutes. It was simply amazing, I loved their music from that moment on, that song spoke straight to my heart and the visuals caught my attention equally. I took my notebook in a rush and wrote down: The Smashing Pumpkins – “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” and started from that day on a hunt to see where I could find a copy on a cassette of the whole album or at least that incredible song. Some years later I met a girl who had it on a tape that brought her father from the U.S. and then I knew what I suspected: I just enjoyed and LOVED the whole album and it made me a HUGE fan of the band until today.

Almost 20 years later I had the chance to travel to Germany and go for the first time in my life to a Rock Music Store. You may guess which was the first CD I bought there…

Lifetime Fan!

Jared Nichols Mesa, AZ, US

Alternative and grunge hit the scene just as I truly came into musical awakening. Nirvana may have ignited it, but it was the unique sounds of Siamese Dream that solidified my love of music.

When Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness released, I was near the end of my High School journey and a group of friends attended the concert in Phoenix, AZ…on my birthday. I have never missed a Pumpkins concert in AZ since. I even have the black long sleeved Zero shirt from that day.

I introduce my brother to the Pumpkins with this album (who has posted his own memory) and is my constant companion to every show…we’ve even travelled to other states to see Billy’s solo act and the reunion tour three times.

Mellon Collie solidified my love for music and the Smashing Pumpkins are to this day, my favorite band.

When I was young

Hallie Corvallis, OR , US

When I was 11 or so, I was in my dads garage when Bullet with Butterfly Wings came on the radio, I thought, I’ve always loved this song and will always remember it. I never thought it would open up this huge creative side of me, all my art work and everything I put my mind to I always think of this album and creativity flies, it’s just so inspiring for me and I’m sure other people as well.

Changed my life

Eben Las Vista, NE, US

I remember being 15 years old and listening to the album. My friends would want me to go out with them, but I was like “sorry, I can’t stop listening to this album”. It blue my mind. It was like seeing a new color for the first time. I couldn’t imagine it. It was then that I decided to learn how to play guitar, so I could figure out how they were making all the sounds they did. 25 years later I’m still doing that haha

A melancholy to Forgive

Grace Ashworth California, US

My mother showed me the Smashing Pumpkins when I was very young. I’ve been listening to the them my entire life. The first album I can consciously remember listening to was Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness. As a kid I had this constant existential crisis going on. Why did I exist and why was I going to die. Overall I was just a melancholy kid. For some reason, when I think back on my childhood, I think of this album. Something in the words and somber tone of some of the songs makes the lonely, sad child in me feel understood. In specific I have always related to: To forgive specifically.

Believe in me as I believe in you

Gloria MacKinnon Hamilton, Ontario, CA

Born in 84, when this album released I was coming of age, developing my own musical taste, form of expression and personhood. This album shaped that. With my babysitting money I got the double cassette and wore it out. With my earbuds in, it was the first time I heard music as art and it became one of the soundtracks of my life. It will always be. I’ve celebrated with it, I cried with it, I’ve loved with it, I’ve lost with it. This album is a part of me til the end.

Guess and Check

Michael Urbana Ohio, US

I fell in love with the song Tonight Tonight. Except I only ever heard it on the radio and I never heard the DJ say the name. I knew it was by The Pumpkins. I started buying their albums looking for it. Siamese Dream, Pisces Iscariot, then Gish, and finally MCIS. Such a tremendous album. All the others too. Huge fan. Greatful to the Lord for this band and their music.

The power, fury and beauty that is Mellon Collie

Justin Moose jaw , CA

I remember walking to the mall with my birthday money just to buy mellon collie on double cassette. I popped into my walkman and was taken on a musical journey, through emotions and thoughts I was begging to feel in my young teen mind. Billy Corgan said things I wanted to scream. The lyrics and music were so epic and intense .The artwork was so amazing and beautiful even though it was tiny. Through the years I would get to see the details better by first rebuying the album on CD and then on vinyl.

Smashing Pumpkins - Memories!

First album to leave a permanent mark

Thomas BOIVIN Bathernay, FR