Crying Tree of Mercury appreciation

[Ram27]

never ever listened in full, tbh, i don't think until recently! the fucking dumb synth horn thing at the beginning turned me off totally. and the name sounded silly

but then i listened to christmas show at metro -- JC starts with a little beat instead. and it's so spacey and cool and warm and good!

new golden era track for me due to ignorance!

[T&T]

maximum fuzz solo is mad good fuzz. worth the entire track.

[run2pee]

It’s a dirge with no chorus. It never lifts off. Yet it is worthwhile. It’s part of the mud puddle that makes up part of the machina haze. My sons especially enjoy it while doing shatter and/or live resin

[enthusaroo]

anything pre-2003 is good

[Joey Goldberg]

u right that christmas show version is pretty sweet
kind of wild to hear 2 new (to me) versions of 2 machina songs that I now essentially prefer to the album cuts

[teh b0lly!!1]

Since day one I've always loved that song, not just 'thought it was kind of alright with a drum intro'

I think all the hate it gets is because people can't get over the arrangement, because it IS a good song

But what do I know

[Joey Goldberg]

one of the very first, if not the first time I actually listened to Machina as a whole, I was going into it probably 7 years after release, very shortly after Zeitgeist came out and it was clearly a divisive record for them. I was listening to the album loving pretty much every second, wondering "why the hell did so many fans have a problem with this?"

then Crying Tree came on and it was an almost immediate "oh that's why"

I think If All Goes Wrong was the first time the song itself actually jumped out at me, and I realized it was more than just a skipper on M1. Even if it is still on the lower tier of that album for me, I've come to like the studio version quite a bit more and it's not nearly the egregious song-sacrifice that was BTSB in relation to its superior Arising/alt versions

i mean fuckin' come on

[teh b0lly!!1]

Yeah that one got it very bad in the studio, along with a bunch of other songs. Imploding Voice is another good example of a great song that just totally got lost in translation.

Played acoustically it was really clear it was a much better song than you thought it was from listening to the record.

My personal theory is that the big explosion with d'arcy kinda transpired in the studio around the time they recorded that batch of songs that just went totally off the rails. HMM, Raindrops+Sunshowers, BSBT, Mercury, Imploding voice, maybe a few others.

I kinda resentingly wish we had this "Financial Model" Billy during Machina era because he probably would have tried to cash in on the band's dysfunction and make an outrageous Pumpkins doc in the image of Some Kind Of Monster, and it would have RULED to see the pumpkins in the studio around 2000.

[StaleIncense]

Originally Posted by Ram27

never ever listened in full, tbh, i don't think until recently! the fucking dumb synth horn thing at the beginning turned me off totally. and the name sounded silly

but then i listened to christmas show at metro -- JC starts with a little beat instead. and it's so spacey and cool and warm and good!

new golden era track for me due to ignorance!

Same for me (oh those synths), but it really clicked only once I heard this simple-but-stunning piano version:



The moment Billy released it on his myspace (!) back then I was like "oh, now I understand"...

Beautiful piece of music

(where is the Machina Reissue already..? )

[T&T]

Originally Posted by StaleIncense

Same for me (oh those synths), but it really clicked only once I heard this simple-but-stunning piano version:



The moment Billy released it on his myspace (!) back then I was like "oh, now I understand"...

Beautiful piece of music

(where is the Machina Reissue already..? )

seriously


this is as good as soothe, or any of the other delicate SP1 songs.

I'm not mad about the studio version. Billy made it fit into machina1 - fucking things up in the studio was part of the recipe for quite some time already....


to all the "studio version" haters, I think of :
Billy talks about By Starlight and how the studio version was different than how it was originally penned. no one will contest how wonderful it is.
would be curious to know it's original incarnation.

[ourruseoffools]

Originally Posted by Joey Goldberg

one of the very first, if not the first time I actually listened to Machina as a whole, I was going into it probably 7 years after release, very shortly after Zeitgeist came out and it was clearly a divisive record for them. I was listening to the album loving pretty much every second, wondering "why the hell did so many fans have a problem with this?"

then Crying Tree came on and it was an almost immediate "oh that's why"

I think If All Goes Wrong was the first time the song itself actually jumped out at me, and I realized it was more than just a skipper on M1. Even if it is still on the lower tier of that album for me, I've come to like the studio version quite a bit more and it's not nearly the egregious song-sacrifice that was BTSB in relation to its superior Arising/alt versions

i mean fuckin' come on

i want to make a thread about BSBT soon, as billy has made it clear over the years that it is the most important song of machina to him and carries a large deal of its narrative or whatever... as a songwriter its fascinating to me as he left behind so much evidence of how badly he wanted the song to work and succeed which of course fated it to being one of the least popular songs of the original run

[themadcaplaughs]

Originally Posted by teh b0lly!!1

Yeah that one got it very bad in the studio, along with a bunch of other songs. Imploding Voice is another good example of a great song that just totally got lost in translation.

Played acoustically it was really clear it was a much better song than you thought it was from listening to the record.

My personal theory is that the big explosion with d'arcy kinda transpired in the studio around the time they recorded that batch of songs that just went totally off the rails. HMM, Raindrops+Sunshowers, BSBT, Mercury, Imploding voice, maybe a few others.

I kinda resentingly wish we had this "Financial Model" Billy during Machina era because he probably would have tried to cash in on the band's dysfunction and make an outrageous Pumpkins doc in the image of Some Kind Of Monster, and it would have RULED to see the pumpkins in the studio around 2000.

I remember the days when this was considered an absolute "worst of all time" song for the band. Good times.

Both Billy and Flood pretty much confirmed what you said about D'arcy. In some message board a while back, Flood did a Q&A and mentioned that, going into the album, the intention was to make it as close to a "live off the floor" album as possible. The Arising tour was supposed to be their way or road testing and finalizing the arrangements of some of the newer songs. Obviously, once D'arcy left and was never replaced, the whole dynamic of the project changed and turned into making them weird little studio creations. More than anything, I imagine this exemplifies the influence D'arcy had on the band. She was open throughout the years that one of her big disagreements with Billy was why they could not just go back to making normal rock albums, and I have to imagine she would have kept it more in the realm of the "classic" sound.

Back when Billy was active on Instagram and first dropping a lot of bits about the Machina reissue (I wanna say 2018), he specifically talked about how, starting in 1999, knowing that this was going to the band's final album, the three of them (Billy, James, and Jimmy) decided to purposefully see how far they could push some of these songs, even if it mean making them alienating, even though some of the songs (as others have pointed out) are great.

On one hand, you kind of have to admire this outlook, particularly in light of 2022 "it's what the kids want" Corgan. It resulted in an album that, in my opinion, truly is unique and has never entirely been replicated by anyone else. On the other hand, even people who love the album to bits (like me) have to admit there are some spots on the album where it really does feel like a slog listening to the whole thing.

[vitaldust]

Originally Posted by Ram27

never ever listened in full, tbh, i don't think until recently! the fucking dumb synth horn thing at the beginning turned me off totally. and the name sounded silly

but then i listened to christmas show at metro -- JC starts with a little beat instead. and it's so spacey and cool and warm and good!

new golden era track for me due to ignorance!

This is an excellent performance of a song that was really great live.

[Shadaloo]

Really heartening to see a lot of love for this one; it was so universally despised for years. Always liked it a bunch.

[Big Truck05]

I get shit for posting about 1979 and 80% of the comments are, "I've never listed to this song" or "this song sucked when I first heard it"

Brother... I sat with this album on day one and listened to every song 6 times. And when I think back... it didn't hit crazy, but the emotion of the lyrics was incredible. And looking at the album art brought a lot of the catalog of songs into perspective.

[Joey Goldberg]

Originally Posted by Big Truck05

I get shit for posting about 1979 and 80% of the comments are, "I've never listed to this song" or "this song sucked when I first heard it"

that is actually 0% of the comments

you pitted a much-maligned latterday SP song against an all-time classic, don't cry 2 the netpho gods when you get the inevitable shit

also i'm just telling u now bro you are slowly approaching a bullet train to being the board's new (but admittedly much more likable/tolerable) FUZZYROES w/ this type of fabrication & casual hot-take-as-factage, my trucking brother!

peace...