Why do you like SP/Corgan music?

[morespsoon]

I was thinking about why some people can't agree here about certain albums/projects Corgan's done and it occurred to me that people may have different reasons for liking his music and that this may be the cause of the problems.

When it comes to music, I'm interested in emotional impact and lyrical meaning and that's about it. Corgan's music from Gish to Zeitgeist is among the best I've ever heard in those areas and that's why I'm a fan of that music.

[vbshlofbvgos]

why do you make threads?

[reprise85]

del

[Trotskilicious]

• massive blistering walls of feedback, and can shift from chaotic to dreamlike easily
• guitar heroics...i.e. playing tongue wagging solos over shoegaze drone
• epic songwriting that never seems forced, even when it's ridiculous and bombastic
• meaty, street brawling drums
• their versatility across genres
• as the 90s grow distant and grunge sounds worse to my ears they seem to still hold up pretty solidly against the test of time amongst their peers both in the mainstream and the underground
• also i have to mention that they have a very diverse set of influences but seem to mesh them brilliantly and come out as an original article despite having several elements of 80s underground and mainstream rock to their sound

[Trotskilicious]

i'm only speaking of everything up to and including adore which i think would have been a nice statement record but the wheels came off after that and they took waaay to long to make another album after that one shit the bed

so what your black door cry all day album didn't sell, record 9 rockers and a pop ballad for the radio and throw another album out

guy should have sat on all that mellon collie material and spread it out over the rest of the decade then he could shit in a hat and people would call it gold

[slunken]

pretty good summary trots

[slunken]

he could have sa t on adore too and machina though, if you think in terms of the wealth of unreleasted materieal

[Shallowed]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

[*]meaty, street brawling drums

This, as well as the fact that there is some serious fucking finesse to the drumming that you don't often get (if ever) with other poppy rock bands.

[Trotskilicious]

jimmy has an uncanny knack sounding loose and being tight simultaneously

Originally Posted by slunken

he could have sa t on adore too and machina though, if you think in terms of the wealth of unreleasted materieal

well i think statement albums are good and perhaps things were different back in the CD days where a 40 min release would make people angry but it seems like these days bands are pushing out albums at the old 60s/70s rate where it was about one 40 minute LP a year or so. I think that releasing adore when they did is fine it's just there was too much invested in the "next album" instead of treating as "an album" and following it up with something more for mainstream tastes

of course corgan can't decide if he wants to be an alternative cult band or the biggest band in the world so that's probably more the issue

[SuckSuckStyle]

the silver pants

[SlingeroGuitaro]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

• massive blistering walls of feedback, and can shift from chaotic to dreamlike easily
• guitar heroics...i.e. playing tongue wagging solos over shoegaze drone
• epic songwriting that never seems forced, even when it's ridiculous and bombastic
• meaty, street brawling drums
• their versatility across genres
• as the 90s grow distant and grunge sounds worse to my ears they seem to still hold up pretty solidly against the test of time amongst their peers both in the mainstream and the underground
• also i have to mention that they have a very diverse set of influences but seem to mesh them brilliantly and come out as an original article despite having several elements of 80s underground and mainstream rock to their sound

Pretty much this, but I was going to sum it up in one word: composition. Billy is a master composer, and an okay songwriter.

The problem with the newer material is the music is based more around songwriting than composition and it's coming across as weak.

[antiskum]

i only liked SP for james and d'arcy

[reprise85]

i liked the fashion choices the best

[MyOneAndOnly]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

• massive blistering walls of feedback, and can shift from chaotic to dreamlike easily
• guitar heroics...i.e. playing tongue wagging solos over shoegaze drone
• epic songwriting that never seems forced, even when it's ridiculous and bombastic
• meaty, street brawling drums
• their versatility across genres
• as the 90s grow distant and grunge sounds worse to my ears they seem to still hold up pretty solidly against the test of time amongst their peers both in the mainstream and the underground
• also i have to mention that they have a very diverse set of influences but seem to mesh them brilliantly and come out as an original article despite having several elements of 80s underground and mainstream rock to their sound

both of these things are exactly how I feel.

Originally Posted by SlingeroGuitaro

Pretty much this, but I was going to sum it up in one word: composition. Billy is a master composer, and an okay songwriter.

The problem with the newer material is the music is based more around songwriting than composition and it's coming across as weak.

I would add that I find even Corgan's mediocre work to be better than 90% of other bands out there.

Plus, I kind of like the fact that he's half batshit crazy. How fun would it really be if there wasn't some lunacy in there somewhere. Rock and roll can often be best when it comes from a place of disfunction.

[T&T]

i was in it for the hair and the dresses.

[Funky_Gibbon]

Pretty much everything that Trot said although I would say that whilst studio recorded songs have been increasingly weak since Adore (I'd actually say Adore was the start of it as Corgan tried to adapt to life without Jimmy) the music has still been pretty good live as long as you're not expecting a pre-Adore sound.

There have been plenty of good live performances since Adore, whether SP, Zwan or solo and those are the newer songs I find myself listening to rather than the album tracks.

[Trotskilicious]

Originally Posted by SlingeroGuitaro

Pretty much this, but I was going to sum it up in one word: composition. Billy is a master composer, and an okay songwriter.

The problem with the newer material is the music is based more around songwriting than composition and it's coming across as weak.

i'm interested to know how the two are separate concepts

is songwriting more about lyrical content while composition is the music itself? if so i definitely agree.

[SlingeroGuitaro]

Songwriting deals more with melody, progression, and lyrical content.
Composition is structure, accompaniment, bells and whistles, etc.

Think of songwriting as the foundation, composition as the house, and production as the shiny stuff that akes you want to buy it. Billy's songwriting is decent but is made better by extreme composition and production. He is spending less time writing, so the foundation is weaker already, and he admits he isn't spending as much time in the studio and is also working without an outside producer. These factors overall reveal things he has hidden in the past.

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

sounding loose and being tight simultaneously

that's how I like em

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

i'm interested to know how the two are separate concepts

is songwriting more about lyrical content while composition is the music itself? if so i definitely agree.

the lyrics have gotten exponentially worse since the "reformation" though, perhaps at an even greater rate than the composition has gone down the toilet