Posts Tagged ‘D’arcy Wretzky’

SMASHING PUMPKINS – ” Gish ” Classic Albums Released 28th May 1991

Posted: May 29, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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On May 28th, 1991 The Smashing Pumpkins released their debut album ‘Gish’. Billy Corgan performed nearly all of the guitar and bass parts on the record.  They had been an active band for the 3 years before the release of this album, playing small shows here and there in their hometown of Chicago, Illinois.

Upon its release, it was quite positively acclaimed. This was, of course, in May of ’91.

Arriving several months before Nirvana’s Nevermind, the Smashing Pumpkins‘ debut album, “Gish”, which was also produced by Butch Vig, was the first shot of the alternative revolution that transformed the rock & roll landscape of the ’90s. While Nirvana was a punk band, the Smashing Pumpkins and guitarist/vocalist Billy Corgan were arena rockers, co-opting their metallic riffs and epic art rock song structures with self-absorbed lyrical confessions. Though Corgan’s lyrics fall apart upon close analysis, there’s no denying his gift for arrangements. Like Brian May and Jimmy Page, he knows how to layer guitars for maximum effect, whether it’s on the pounding, sub-Sabbath rush of “I Am One” or the shimmering, psychedelic dream pop surfaces of “Rhinoceros.”

Such musical moments like these, as well as the rushing “Siva” and the folky “Daydream,” which features D’Arcy on lead vocals, demonstrate the Smashing Pumpkins‘ potential, but the rest of Gish sometimes falls prey to undistinguished songwriting and showy instrumentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSxPUXQFHgI

The album’s sessions, lasting 30 working days, were brisk by Pumpkins‘ standards, largely because of the group’s inexperience.The recording sessions put an intense strain on the band, with bassist D’arcy Wretzky later commenting that she did not know how the band survived it, and Corgan explaining he suffered a nervous breakdown

Regarding the album’s thematic content, Corgan would later say,

The album is about pain and spiritual ascension. People ask if it’s a political album. It’s not a political album, it’s a personal album. In a weird kind of way, Gish is almost like an instrumental album—it just happens to have singing on it, but the music overpowers the band in a lot of places. I was trying to say a lot of things I couldn’t really say in kind of intangible, unspeakable ways, so I was capable of doing that with the music, but I don’t think I was capable of doing it with words.

“Gish” went platinum 8 years after its release. As far as debuts go, this one is a masterpiece. You’ll love this album;

The band:  Jimmy Chamberlin – drums, Billy Corgan – vocals, lead guitar, bass, keyboards, piano, production, James Iha – rhythm guitar, vocals, D’arcy Wretzky – bass, vocals, lead vocals on “Daydream”, layouts

The SMASHING PUMPKINS – ” Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness ” Released 23rd October 1995

Posted: October 23, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Image result for mellon collie and the infinite sadness

Produced by frontman Billy Corgan; The Smashing Pumpkins’ third album is a twenty-eight-track opus of incredible scope and wonderment. Led by single Bullet with Butterfly Wings, The album features a wide array of styles, as well as greater musical input from bassist D’arcy Wretzky and second guitarist James Iha the album shot to the top of the charts and spawned a number of great singles. It has sold over ten-million units and considered one of the finest albums from the 1990s. Many would question the audacity of a group including twenty-eight tracks on an album. The fact there are no weak moments is backed by a record which sees the U.S. band present their most engaging and ambitious work yet. Billy Corgan’s unique and exceptional song writing is given room to breathe and explore. Mellon Collie’ helped reshape the face of Alternative-Rock, almost single-handedly. It is always a risk releasing a double album – regardless of how good you are – but The Smashing Pumpkins had no fear.

Go big or go home. That’s pretty much what this came down to. 25 years ago Smashing Pumpkins were commercial and critical darlings, coming off the scene-setting “Gish” and the monumental alt-rock statement of “Siamese Dream”. Their next move was a risk – a double album that shaped up as an anachronism on one hand and a potential commercial and critical disaster on the other. Their label told them as much, but Billy Corgan was set on it. “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” had to happen.

At this remove, it’s hard to imagine a world where the Pumpkins didn’t take the nuclear option. Mellon Collie feels like the last great hurrah for a certain breed of Gen X American rock band, a final grand statement from a disparate group of artists bound together by the fact that they’d upended the pop apple cart by accident.

Lacking the slash and burn punk streak of Nirvana and the cinematic dourness of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the wider Seattle set, Corgan’s music always felt more classic, more florid, less deliberately of the moment. But it’s easy to forget that both Gish and Siamese Dream were defined in part by their succinctness – shoegaze-literate hit after shoegaze-literate hit. Split across two sides that represented day and night, Mellon Collie’s sprawl was startling by comparison: 28 songs (totalling two hours) made the cut, and three times as many were written in a spree that recalled Bruce Springsteen’s feverish hot streak in the build up to Darkness On The Edge Of Town.

“I went around saying I was inspired by Pink Floyd‘s The Wall to try to create that kind of big, ambitious thing,” Corgan told David Wild in the liner notes for Mellon Collie’s 2012 reissue. “And, of course, jerks in the media still take me to task for saying that. For the record, from my point of view, I wasn’t trying to say that I had written my Wall … what I meant was that we were trying to reach for something expansive like Pink Floyd achieved with The Wall, as opposed to making a double album like The White Album by the Beatles, which was basically a wider collection of great songs by a group.”

Chief Pumpkin Billy Corgan was certainly on a creative streak in the early to mid-1990s. Between Siamese Dream, the outtakes collection Pisces Iscariot, the triple-LP length Mellon Collie, and the collection of b-sides compiled on 1996’s The Aeroplane Flies High (which showcased almost 30 new outtakes, although some were covers or written by guitarist James Iha). In this era, The Smashing Pumpkins released about 7 hours of new music recorded between December 1992 and August 1995, much of it written by Corgan, while even more music would surface on later reissues of Mellon Collie and The Aeroplane Flies High.

‘Set the Ray to Jerry’ is one of many Pumpkins outtakes that surfaced on The Aeroplane Flies High, as a b-side to 1989. It shares the gentle insistence of ‘1979’, moodily intense but never launching into a full-blooded rocker. It’s simple, with just drums, a simple James Iha guitar lead, and Corgan on bass. It was apparently written during the Gish tour, and dates back to the Siamese Dream sessions – Corgan told Guitar World that producer Flood vetoed the song.

  • Billy Corgan – Lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, piano, keyboards, autoharp, production, mixing, string arrangements
  • Jimmy Chamberlin – Drums, vocals
  • James Iha – Rhythm and lead guitar, vocals, mixing, additional production
  • D’arcy Wretzky – Bass, vocals

Originally Released 23rd October 1995