Machina To Zwan: The universal moment fans realized BC's lost the magic?

[Ram27]

Originally Posted by amoergosum

I just noticed that someone uploaded the full Blue Note show:

FUCK yeah

JC was on point at this show

one of the few performances of to wonder, to suffer. amazing song

[amoergosum]

[cork_soaker]

just please don't quote the chrysanthemum lyric again

[cork_soaker]

and if you must, at least don't italicize it or follow it with an ellipsis

[amoergosum]

Originally Posted by Woody

It's fucking insane these songs weren't on the album:

Chrysanthemum
Glorious
My Life & Times
Cast A Stone
Rivers
A New Poetry

[amoergosum]

...just saw these Youtube comments:



https://i.imgur.com/X2cJIye.png

[Mals Marola]

.

[Grox]

a flower's still a flower crushed to dust inside my hand

[Funbags]

That YT comment was right about Paz. The band was amazing as a 4 piece. I'm 99% certain they'd have been successful if Billy held off on being a fame whore for at least one album.

His comments about Pajo and Sweeney being worried about their indie cred piss me off so much. Did he ever consider that maybe they were right?

"I sold 20 million records"

Yeah, not by yourself you didn't.

[MyKeyZ]

I thought the Zwan album was the beginning of the Billy trying too hard to sound way too happy on record that has since taken over his songwriting. Sadly it seems there was much better unreleased material because the album was just too much on the cheery side. No one is that happy all the time. Give me the range you had. I don't mind doses of it like he has done on the great Pumpkins records. But people feel more than one feeling. Ogilala isn't any better. I tried to listen to it and couldn't make it through the first few tracks without skimming through and deleting it from my HD. Billy isn't strong on his own with just a piano or guitar for an entire record. Again, small doses works much better. Where is the rocker Billy? Give us some real guitar licks and riffs. Not this la-di-da crap. The only positive thing with Ogilala is he's not just saying lover over and over and actually wrote some real lyrics unlike the nonsense on Elegy. Ogilala could sound better with a real band behind it and good production.

[themadcaplaughs]

That fucking guy shouting "JAMES IHA" when David Pajo walks out on stage.

[Ram27]

imagine a world where zwan's first album was called 'chrysanthemum' and it didn't suck and everything was bright

[VoxUpDoc]

Zwan's first album should've been self-titled and released early '02. The cover should've just been logo in gold on a black background. The tracklisting should've been the Glasshouse show setlist. They would've been a credible indie, alt band like QOTSA, Audioslave, White Stripes etc

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OxdhMnkj0A...s1600/zwan.gif

Instead Billy made this saccharine cheese fest that he somehow thought a mainstream pop audience would buy.

[Shadaloo]

Originally Posted by Woody

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OxdhMnkj0A...s1600/zwan.gif

What the honest to fucking god blue hell were they thinking with these photos though.

Sweeney looks like he's just been caught jerking it on camera
Billy looks like a rapist
Paz winding down the end of a hardore porn scene for the money shot
Jimmy rocking the Blue Steel look
Pajo plainly about to eat the hearts of orphans

[Brisk]

Originally Posted by Ram27

FUCK yeah

JC was on point at this show

one of the few performances of to wonder, to suffer. amazing song

That is a FUCKING INSANE setlist!

[bigoltitties]

Loved Zwan, pity about some of the song choices on the album but still some great tracks and a really good departure from what he routinely trotted out up to that point.

I also kind of admired the The Future Embrace for how it tried to push boundaries even if it didn't really get to me on an emotional level. All Things Change, Camera Eye, Walking Shade, Mina Loy...decent tracks though in their own detached way.

Zeitgeist was the first full on disappointment for me. The depth to his songwriting just wasn't there. It was a straight up rawk album with horrible vocals. I never listen to it. That been said i caught them in Dublin in 07 and it was one of the best gigs ive ever been to. Lost a shoe. So i was happy to overlook Zeitgeist.

Just a case of diminishing returns since then. Still at least two albums worth of good songs written but nearly all butchered to some degree in the studio while his persona became full on reprehensible and interviews just jibberish.

And then, Ogilala. I really enjoy it for what it is. It gives me hope that he might get out of his own way, stop making such stupid decisions, stop being so egotistical and who knows, maybe a more ambitious album with noteworthy contributions from all four pumpkins lies on the horizon. That would be quite the redemption.

[Slurpee]

Originally Posted by AveryLoren

I’ve been a member here since 98/99 and I remember Zwan’s early buzz was positive. The live shows had people ecstatic but that all came crashing down when the album was released. It wasn’t just the horrendous production either. I clearly remember out of all the live songs the album pretty much consisted of what the fan base considered the worst songs. I rarely see that mentioned anywhere.

As another fucking almost 20-year Netphoria vet, this is exactly what I remember. The tapes from those early CA Zwan shows, and then the midwest shows I attended, showed Billy writing fantastic rock and a band who could play it. Slowly it died, the album being more a sign post on the way to the grave. As we learned later by the time they got in the studio things had fallen apart a fair bit.

To answer the question I was still onboard even through TFE (which I still think is way underrated). Tarantula came out and I was like cool! Then I heard the whole album and it was actually terrible, and that was the end, at least until James showed up onstage in LA...

[New Art Rioter]

Also here for approaching 20 years and remember the hype on these boards around the Arising! tour as well as the early Zwan days. I remember being fully in the sway of Corgan-mania in the initial Zwan period and the album being a bit of a surprise when it came out.

Half of it is pretty good, I still really like Lyric, Honestly, Declarations Of Faith and some others. There's an increasing amount of iffy stuff on this one though which followed a pattern set by Machina and continued onwards... Heartsong, Baby Let's Rock, Desire, and Of A Broken Heart are all pretty bleh and could have been replaced by much stronger songs.

The loud at any volume saga was also a bit of an issue, as well as the "hey! look at us larking about like old pals" vibe of the videos

[grape]

No, Adore was the end of the band's acclaim and success. It was the largest sales dropoff they ever experienced, and something they never recovered from. Machina sold even less. I remember most of my friends who liked the band around Mellon Collie and Siamese Dream just basically said "they suck now" in 1998 and that was the end of the good will towards the band by about 3/4 of the people who ever brought their records before that.

You can read almost everything he's done since then as an attempt to return to Mellon Collie glory.

Everyone bailed at Adore, it just took a few years for the online community to also collapse.

[amoergosum]

[VoxUpDoc]

Originally Posted by grape

No, Adore was the end of the band's acclaim and success. It was the largest sales dropoff they ever experienced, and something they never recovered from. Machina sold even less. I remember most of my friends who liked the band around Mellon Collie and Siamese Dream just basically said "they suck now" in 1998 and that was the end of the good will towards the band by about 3/4 of the people who ever brought their records before that.

You can read almost everything he's done since then as an attempt to return to Mellon Collie glory.

Everyone bailed at Adore, it just took a few years for the online community to also collapse.

This is true, but Adore is a fine album, maybe too long and dour. But I don't get how a fan of MCIS wouldn't at least like a good half of the album. But then I think the aesthetic of the band was maybe verging on parody. Ironic that there's genuine grief and emotion behind it yet it didn't resonate with the teen angst audience who bought into the previous records.

[Funbags]

Originally Posted by Woody

Zwan's first album should've been self-titled and released early '02. The cover should've just been logo in gold on a black background. The tracklisting should've been the Glasshouse show setlist. They would've been a credible indie, alt band like QOTSA, Audioslave, White Stripes etc

For real.

If Billy actually releases the Zwan boxset, I hope it's something like:

DISK 1: Zwan v1.0 demo album (Chrysanthemum, Glorious, etc)
DISK 2: Glasshouse soundboard
DISK 3: MSoTS remixed from scratch
DISK 4: Djali Zwan

[myosis]

people who thought that the band sucked with Adore were just the Rat in a Cage fans... they probably skipped half of the tracks on MCIS

[fuzzyroes]

Originally Posted by Woody

Zwan's first album should've been self-titled and released early '02. The cover should've just been logo in gold on a black background. The tracklisting should've been the Glasshouse show setlist. They would've been a credible indie, alt band like QOTSA, Audioslave, White Stripes etc

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OxdhMnkj0A...s1600/zwan.gif

Instead Billy made this saccharine cheese fest that he somehow thought a mainstream pop audience would buy.

Man... I always seem to forget what a talented band Billy had for that record. Basically I gotta assume that it was still just the Billy Corgan show because it would be hard to believe that it sucks as much as it does if guys like Pajo and Sweeney were involved with the writing.

[MyKeyZ]

I f--king love Adore. Loved it from the first moment I put it on. I agree the hate was just from the harder rock fans who just wanted more of the same Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Zero, etc. But sound-wise, it's really not that far off from Mellon Collie. I felt it was a natural progression.

[Grox]

wrong record for the year. the late 90s were dire for rock and rock adjacent music like adore

[VoxUpDoc]

Adore is pretty inaccessible though, there's a slow tempo to a lot of the songs, many of them worked a lot better live. I think the only chance Adore had of being commercially viable would be to cull the tracklist and running time.

Once Upon A Time
Crestfallen
Tear
Annie-Dog
Shame

I like these tracks individually but they grind the momentum of the record to a fucking standstill.

Adore Alt-90's Commercial Success Edition:

To Sheila
Ava Adore
Perfect
Daphne Descends
Appels & Oranjes
Pug
Dusty & Pistol Pete
Behold! The Night Mare
Waiting
For Martha
Blank Page
17
Bonus: Let Me Give The World To You

[fuzzyroes]

I gotta admit, I was once a casual fan who lost all interest once Adore was out.

But thinking back in hindsight as a hardcore fan, It must've been so exciting to have Jimmy returning and then hearing The Everlasting Gaze as the lead single. How could you not be pumped up? And then the album drops and there's literally no other songs that sound like it all. I can only imagine listening to Machina for the first time had to have been a little anticlimactic considering how high the anticipation must've been.

Not to say Machina's a particularly bad album or anything, it's just easy to imagine it being a letdown considering the circumstance.

Come to think of it, that's been another Billy Corgan trend... Releasing a lead single and having it sound nothing like the rest of the album. Ava Adore, TEG, Tarantula, Being Beige ETC.

[Grox]

tons of stuff on Machina sounds like The Everlasting Gaze. off the top of my head, The Imploding Voice, Heavy Metal Machine, even The Sacred + Profane...

[MyKeyZ]

Originally Posted by Woody

Adore is pretty inaccessible though, there's a slow tempo to a lot of the songs, many of them worked a lot better live. I think the only chance Adore had of being commercially viable would be to cull the tracklist and running time.

Once Upon A Time
Crestfallen
Tear
Annie-Dog
Shame

I like these tracks individually but they grind the momentum of the record to a fucking standstill.

Adore Alt-90's Commercial Success Edition:

To Sheila
Ava Adore
Perfect
Daphne Descends
Appels & Oranjes
Pug
Dusty & Pistol Pete
Behold! The Night Mare
Waiting
For Martha
Blank Page
17
Bonus: Let Me Give The World To You

I also made my own more electronic Adore that gives it a bit more edge

01 Ava Adore
02 Eye
03 Perfect
04 Daphne Descends
05 Saturnine
06 Tear
07 Crestfallen
08 Waiting
09 Appels + Oranjes
10 Pug
11 Behold! The Night Mare
12 For Martha
13 Blank Page
14 Blissed And Gone