Somewhat Intense Breakdown Of Machina

[Big Truck05]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25_IFbecgpQ

[Big Truck05]

DISC 1 · MACHINA / Act I
The story begins with Zero, lead singer of a fictionalized version of The Smashing Pumpkins. He believes that he hears a message through the radio from God telling him to serve a higher purpose. He embraces the message, changing his public persona to Glass and the band's name into The Machines of God. Amid this turmoil, Glass finds his soulmate in a woman named June. This leads him to try to balance his earthly love with the higher calling he believes to have received, not realizing he doesn't really have to make a choice. Meanwhile, June develops a drug addiction and Glass feels he needs to save her, but his hedonism and electric energy just accelerates her ever increasing problems. His band is decaying, his love is withdrawing, he begins to doubt his calling from God, and he grows deeply embittered.

00:00:00 Glass' Theme
00:01:52 The Imploding Voice
00:06:17 Cash Car Star
00:09:38 Stand Inside Your Love
00:13:51 Real Love
00:18:02 Innosense
00:20:36 Raindrops + Sunshowers
00:25:25 The Sacred and Profane
00:29:40 Glass and the Ghost Children
00:39:36 Let Me Give the World to You
00:43:46 Vanity
00:47:52 Soot and Stars

DISC 2 · MACHINA / Act II
Glass is now on a crusade to save his band, his girl, his audience, and consequently the world - but he has forgotten to save himself. He becomes paranoid, believing that everyone is out to get him. The band's new album is released only to be not well received by the fans or the general public for the first time since the band's beginning. Glass is publicly humiliated and his descend into madness begins. He feels betrayed by June and in one final argument, she admits she never loved him at all and that believes he is insane. She says goodbye for the last time and storms off into the rainy night, minutes later losing control of her car and being killed when it skids off the road. Following a nightmare about fighting in a war, he decides to break up The Machines of God.

00:54:38 Dross
00:58:04 Whyte Spyder
01:01:44 Lucky 13
01:04:47 Go
01:08:35 Le Deux Machina
01:10:28 Speed Kills
01:15:40 Blue Skies Bring Tears
01:21:26 Heavy Metal Machine
01:27:21 The Crying Tree of Mercury
01:31:08 Wound
01:35:09 Try, Try, Try
01:40:19 This Time

DISC 3 · MACHINA / Act III
Glass decides to play a final show to then descend into isolation and anonymity. He feels truly and utterly alone and is quickly forgotten by the public. All of the things that gave him strength, focus and identity are gone while he is seen facing his own doubts and mortality for the first time. After a period of life in the shadows, he slowly finds inner peace with his spirit, forgiving and accepting all that has happened to him, understanding that his desire to find perfection above his own humanity led him to things that he did not really want or need. He begins to love and empathize with others without fear of consequence, and so in his aloneness realizes that he was never really alone at all. He reconciles with God, and so in this moment his destiny is finally fulfilled.

01:45:12 Winterlong
01:50:11 The Everlasting Gaze
01:54:13 Saturnine
01:58:15 In My Body
02:05:11 I of the Mourning
02:09:48 If There Is a God
02:11:59 Slow Dawn
02:15:10 Home
02:19:41 Here's to the Atom Bomb
02:24:08 With Every Light
02:28:06 Age of Innocence

DISC 4 · Transmuted to hold within the hollow spectres of complacency

02:32:09 Wound [Sadlands Demo]
02:35:30 Glass and the Ghost Children [Demo]
02:41:14 Blue Skies Bring Tears [Alternate Version]
02:44:36 Sleeping Giant [Demo]
02:48:20 If There Is a God [Sadlands Demo]
02:50:20 Glass' Theme [Alternate Version]
02:52:19 Raindrops + Sunshowers [Demo]
02:56:47 Try, Try, Try [Alternate Version]
03:01:09 Le Deux Machina [Sadlands Demo]
03:06:56 Speed Kills [Alternate Version]
03:11:50 Age of Innocence [Demo]
03:15:56 Let Me Give the World to You [Sadlands Demo]
03:20:06 The Everlasting Gaze [Demo]
03:24:38 Autumn [Sadlands Demo]
03:26:38 Here's to the Atom Bomb [Alternate Version]
03:30:30 Soul Power
03:33:29 Blue Skies Bring Tears [Sadlands Demo/Take 1]

DISC 5 · Amidst the rubble of urban decay and barren wastelands

03:37:56 Blue Skies Bring Tears [Sadlands Demo/Take 2]
03:40:39 If There Is a God [Demo]
03:42:53 Heavy Metal Machine [Alternate Version]
03:49:34 Laugh [Sadlands Demo]
03:52:26 Identify [Demo]
03:57:00 Glass' Theme [Demo]
03:58:56 Vanity [Sadlands Demo]
04:03:26 Home [Demo]
04:07:00 Drain [Sadlands Demo]
04:09:50 Speed Kills [Sadlands Demo]
04:13:30 Blue Skies Bring Tears [Demo]
04:17:39 Glass and the Ghost Children [Sadlands Demo]
04:23:21 If There Is a God [Alternate Version]
04:25:55 Don't Wanna Be Your Lover [Sadlands Demo]
04:28:42 Without You [Demo]
04:32:12 Cash Car Star [Alternate Version]
04:35:57 Here I Am [Sadlands Demo]
04:39:24 Untitled

DISC 6 · A million miles, a few smiles and a pocketful of tears

04:43:16 Pale Scales [Live]
04:45:33 The Everlasting Gaze [Live]
04:49:28 Glass' Theme [Live]
04:51:34 Heavy Metal Machine [Live]
04:58:00 Tonight, Tonight [Live]
05:01:56 Ava Adore [Live]
05:08:56 I Am One [Live]
05:16:23 Rock On [Live]
05:22:14 Zero [Live]
05:26:56 I of the Mourning [Live]
05:34:07 1979 [Live]
05:39:24 X.Y.U. [Live]
05:48:30 We Love You [Live]

[wHATcOLOR]

Originally Posted by Big Truck05

Glass is now on a crusade to save his band, his girl, his audience, and consequently the world - but he has forgotten to save himself.

to be fair, there are several contenders for worst sentence in there, but i think this one takes the cake. does there exist a dumber description of this inane machina "concept"?


*Le Deux Machina [Sadlands Version]*

[wHATcOLOR]

and just to be clear, i am 100% on board for the machina reissue, i'm genuinely like a lot of the music and i'm excited for this thing (aside from disappointment that they aren't using the original artist)

but at a certain point... man. at a certain point, why would anyone believe this is a "concept" worth spending time digging into?

[Big Truck05]

Originally Posted by wHATcOLOR

and just to be clear, i am 100% on board for the machina reissue, i'm genuinely like a lot of the music and i'm excited for this thing (aside from disappointment that they aren't using the original artist)

but at a certain point... man. at a certain point, why would anyone believe this is a "concept" worth spending time digging into?

I am with you on this. I've always been an advocate of the music, not the concept.

TBH, I never even realized Billy was creating this whole "world" of characters and whatnot. I think it's dumb. I left Choose Your Own Adventure back in '89.

[Raskolnikov]

Originally Posted by wHATcOLOR

(aside from disappointment that they aren't using the original artist)

Agreed. Doing a Machina reissue without Vasily art is even more blasphemous than that bullshit clipart they used on the TAFH reissue record sleeves. That thing was horseshit.

[slunken]

lol this is just a playlist

hardly an intense breakdown

[soniclovenoize]

Whittle this down to 1 disc and you're good

[slunken]

Originally Posted by Big Truck05

I left Choose Your Own Adventure back in '89.

what you mean is you never graduated to Fighting Fantasy

[AveryLoren]

While I am all aboard the Machina story (I do believe he had one in mind) this is just inane conceptualizing. Machina does feel like a three act structure to me, though.

[Big Truck05]

Originally Posted by slunken

lol this is just a playlist

hardly an intense breakdown

"somewhat"

[Big Truck05]

Originally Posted by Raskolnikov

Agreed. Doing a Machina reissue without Vasily art is even more blasphemous than that bullshit clipart they used on the TAFH reissue record sleeves. That thing was horseshit.

Couldn't agree more. He actually made the album better.

[cork_soaker]

Originally Posted by wHATcOLOR

to be fair, there are several contenders for worst sentence in there

The band's new album is released only to be not well received by the fans or the general public for the first time since the band's beginning. Glass is publicly humiliated and his descend into madness begins.

[wHATcOLOR]

oh good call.. that one's brutal too

[eviltimeban]

Originally Posted by cork_soaker

Glass is publicly humiliated and his descend into HOT DOGS begins.

FYP

[T&T]

I'm glad I did all my cringy things 20+ years ago.
at this point I just don't care

but I get the 'planned masterpiece concept double album', and in the last stretch you notice no one else is onboard, it gets chopped in half and you try and salvage something from the heap..

[thedeadofnight]

Lol at thinking the "storyline" is anything other than revisionist horseshit. Same with MCIS and the "character" thing, all just a facade to hide the fact they can't write songs anymore.

[Shadaloo]

That whiteboard image from back in the day where he';s got a bunch of story beats circled and pointing at each other's been around for a long time, so no. It's not recent revisionism or anything.



He plainly did want to write a concept album. The lyrics in Machina do have a bunch of allusions to a band breaking up, a love affair that ends in drugs and a car crash, etc. But he never sat down and really scripted the thing front to back.

It's not an especially deep concept or anything. Obviously the whole thing was him taking his own experiences and applying them to a fictional narrative.

When I sat down and looked at the lyrics from a narrative perspective a few years back, it was to try and form a playlist, but that's pretty much all.

[thedeadofnight]

The album had a story, they made the album and everyone understood the message pretty clearly, it's about the band breaking up and its leader having a mental breakdown. There's really no need to dig deeper into this story and try to flesh it out any more, just reissue the fucking album and release the Metro DVD. Anyway, it's not like we could trust Billy to artistically do any reconstruction of the story any justice anyway. Have you heard his recent projects? And by recent I mean the last 10 years...

[LoveIsSuicide42]

The concepts on Machina are cryptic, metafictional, ambitious, and engaging. It's haphazardly unified at a conceptual level rather than deeply narrativized. There is a grand sense of stretching toward something so much bigger than simply being a band. SP has always questioned what it actually means to be a band, and the willingness to do that is what makes their best stuff so special... Billy comes across as a pretentious douche when he tries to retroactively fit it together in a linear way, or make it seem like this great work of genius was perfectly planned and happening right under your nose the entire time, but that doesn't mean that there isn't something compelling and imaginative about the returns of this creative process. To me, I imagine a re-made, fixed up Machina is going to push the record to feeling a lot more like Mellon Collie.

[Joey Goldberg]

thanks Big Truck, I really appreciate it

but quite frankly I'd rather watch the Legend of Beavis video posted in that other thread

[slunken]

Originally Posted by Shadaloo

That whiteboard image from back in the day where he';s got a bunch of story beats circled and pointing at each other's been around for a long time, so no. It's not recent revisionism or anything.



He plainly did want to write a concept album. The lyrics in Machina do have a bunch of allusions to a band breaking up, a love affair that ends in drugs and a car crash, etc. But he never sat down and really scripted the thing front to back.

It's not an especially deep concept or anything. Obviously the whole thing was him taking his own experiences and applying them to a fictional narrative.

When I sat down and looked at the lyrics from a narrative perspective a few years back, it was to try and form a playlist, but that's pretty much all.

the chart is also a perfect "hero's journey" story circle

[soniclovenoize]

Originally Posted by Shadaloo

That whiteboard image from back in the day where he';s got a bunch of story beats circled and pointing at each other's been around for a long time, so no. It's not recent revisionism or anything.



He plainly did want to write a concept album. The lyrics in Machina do have a bunch of allusions to a band breaking up, a love affair that ends in drugs and a car crash, etc. But he never sat down and really scripted the thing front to back.

It's not an especially deep concept or anything. Obviously the whole thing was him taking his own experiences and applying them to a fictional narrative.

When I sat down and looked at the lyrics from a narrative perspective a few years back, it was to try and form a playlist, but that's pretty much all.

Yep, this is the way to do it. Then you can further narrow down what some of the songs are about, based on what Corgan has said...

- SIYL is meant to be when Glass first meets June, so it would be in the LOVE/GIRL plot point.
- the second half of G+TGC is about June's drug addiction. Thus it would appear in the LOSS OF BALANCE plot point.
- LMGTWTY is meant to be sarcastic, an anti-love song. Thus it would appear in the DESCENT plot point, possibly LOSS OF BALANCE.
- Speed Kills is when June dies. Thus it would appear in the DESCENT plot point.
- BSBT is supposed to be Glass's apocalyptic dream before he breaks up the band. Thus it would appear in the DESCENT or ALONE NEGATIVE plot points.
- With Every Light was meant to be the redemptive in which Glass finds peace, so it would end the album.

MY PERSONAL OPINION for some others:
- The Imploding Voice is the heavenly voice Glass hears on the radio, thus should be in the EPIPHANY plot point.
- Wound is describing Glass's personal turmoil and self doubt after hearing the voice on the radio (as mentioned in Corgan's synopsis), so should be in EPIPHANY, following directly after The Imploding Voice.
- Real Love and Raindrops + Sunshowers are is describing Glass attempting to balance his love of June with his own holy charge, so it would appear in CROSSROADS
- Dross is describing the fight between Glass and June, which happens right before she dies. This it should precede Speed Kills in DESCENT.
- HHM and Everlasting Gaze seem to be when Glass loses his faith after June dies, as described in Corgan's synopsis. So they would be in DESCENT or ALONE NEGATIVE
- I of the Mourning mentions blowing the dust off his guitar. Thus it would appear after the band breaks up in ALONE NEGATIVE plot point.
- Slow Dawn, Here's to the Atom Bomb and Try Try Try all seem to lyrically allude to the city streets, so I believe they all fit in the narrative when Glass is just an anonymous person on the streets, in ALONE NEGATIVE.

I've thought way too much about this.

Also, I like the idea of the concept, but I really don't think there was enough A-tier songs to make a double album. This would have worked best as a single album, maybe even Machina 1 itself resequenced into narrative order with maybe Speed Kills, Glass Theme and CCS added.

[T&T]

we're pulling at strings here

we could as easily draw threads of ideas to a concept album behind siamese dream with as much intent/content and then throw in the PI songs to compliment/confuse the lot....
"billy the mastermind" is more like "billy's half cocked ideas". His HUGE fame with SD and MCIS are the alignment of stars more than his otherworldly genius. Go ahead billy... write and record another SD - I dare you (but he can't)

[soniclovenoize]

Originally Posted by T&T

we're pulling at strings here

we could as easily draw threads of ideas to a concept album behind siamese dream with as much intent/content and then throw in the PI songs to compliment/confuse the lot....
"billy the mastermind" is more like "billy's half cocked ideas". His HUGE fame with SD and MCIS are the alignment of stars more than his otherworldly genius. Go ahead billy... write and record another SD - I dare you (but he can't)

Sure but the difference here is that Corgan literally said "this was a concept album, there is a story."

[T&T]

"the concept is my depression and family abuse" billy about SD. "it was just an act"

wait... billy did say those things. billy isn't even his real name, it's just a persona...

jimmy isn't his real name either.

we've been writing/living the machina mystery since before gish.
gish month happened but in a secret, not to reveal the mystery.

[T&T]

saying "it's a concept album" is a prime excuse for including bad songs.

on The Wall... there's a few songs that are there only for the concept that I could 100% live without. first one to mind is "the trial". - song totally sucks.

[Shadaloo]

Originally Posted by thedeadofnight

The album had a story, they made the album and everyone understood the message pretty clearly, it's about the band breaking up and its leader having a mental breakdown. There's really no need to dig deeper into this story and try to flesh it out any more, just reissue the fucking album and release the Metro DVD. Anyway, it's not like we could trust Billy to artistically do any reconstruction of the story any justice anyway. Have you heard his recent projects? And by recent I mean the last 10 years...

I dunno, if you sketched out a bunch of chapters for a novel you wrote 20 years ago, it's a simple matter to put them back in the right order.

The only issue is, yes, now he's got it set on being fifty-odd tracks when all this time he's said it was supposed to be a double album. But I think it ought to be pretty easy to separate what he originally wanted to be on there versus what he's adding on now.

No matter what he does, even IF he put it out only as the double album he always said it was originally, you're going to get a situation where people trim it down to the tracks they prefer and argue about how it could have been a stronger album without X or with Y. People do it with MCIS to this day.

Tell you what though, for discussion's sake, if he HAD pitched a fifty-song album back in the day it'd make perfect sense for Virgin to have told him no sight unseen and for him to minimize it all these years by telling us it was only supposed to be two discs or whathaveyou.

[cork_soaker]

Originally Posted by thedeadofnight

it's about the band breaking up and its leader having a mental breakdown.

The Somewhat Intense Breakdown of Glass

[cork_soaker]

shatterin’ fass