TRON said:

THE ASSMASTER, HE NEVER LET YOU KNOW TOO MUCH!

I'm going to go with the Pumpkins. I grew out of Nirvana back in middle school, but in college, I rediscovered Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie. I think that while Nirvana had a more punk influenced style, the Pumpkins were more hard-rock, and that resonates with me. Adore was only so-so, and I never got either Machina, but Gish, Siamese Dream, and ...Infinite Sadness are definitely up there with the best albums of the 90's.

I do like both Hole albums, though. I don't know what that says about me

not when you're asking others to refrain from doing exactly that. i mean, heck, do what you want, but don't get upset when people are taking the conversation away from your focus because they're responding to your digressions. you know?

No I dont know! Go back and read the posts in this thread. I never digressed from the topic of music until someone mentioned Corgan being an asshole. I knew this topic would bring in the personality haters and not even mention anything about the music.

and cobain did not "swipe the pixies songbook verbatim", any more than he kept it a secret that he was influenced by their music. a lot of nirvana's stuff sounds like a lot of other bands he admired - the meat puppets, sonic youth, etc. - but kurt certainly didn't hold a monopoly on borrowing from other group's styles to inform his own sound. so what?

Yes he did. And you know why I've a problem with Cobain's legacy? Cos he's not as inventive as the media or the public would have you believe! Most tunes Cobain wrote had been done before. That is my point. If you know Cobain's influences, you know where he got his tunes from. He's not as original as his legacy would have you think. As a songwriter, this drives me nuts! I dont understand the laudation Cobain receives as being a great songwriter when all he did was expound upon ideas others had already explored! I dont get it! Cobain's legacy is a knee-jerk reaction to his untimely (?) death.

i think your harping on my off-handedly calling corgan "baldy" is a little excessive. so he's an idol of yours. sorry. i'm sure he's a lovely person, and certainly a fine and highly competent craftsman of pop music. but i PERSONALLY don't think - and this has to do solely with the MUSIC i've heard, and not the personalities of the artists in question - that corgan's work is anywhere near as engaging as the output cobain left behind.

So what? I'm not talking about how engaged you were during a song. I'm talking about how well the song was written. Copland wrote some pretty engaging stuff. Stravinsky didn't. But Stravinsky was a better composer than Copland. Rather you're engaged doesnt always mean "better." This is my argument for this particular matter.

again - sorry. you're permitted to hold an opposite opinion. please allow me the same courtesy.

I'm not directing this towards you, Anxiety, but why do people assume that just because they're entitled to an opinion doesnt mean that it's still stupid? But yes, Anxiety, this is the most interesting debate I've had here!

I'm no Corgan apologist. I'm just tired of all this Cobain deification; it's unnecessary and unwarranted....

IMHO.

Anxiety said:

DAY GO TO DA CLOB TO DO DA DROG.

chuckaducci said:

To be fair, inventive or not, I think his legacy would've been pretty intact with or w/o the suicide. He started a whole lot of shit when Nirvana first broke and for that alone, he's important. It's the same argument people have about Madonna. Sure, there were chicks in NY that had that street urchin look down too, but Madonna made it popular in the mid 80's. Same with Kurt and grunge. Sure, the Pixies were great and important and all that stuff, but without Kurt, their influence would've been purely an underground thing. It's kinda like Bowie in the 70's. He took fringe artists like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Kraftwerk and made them the names to drop du jour. Thus, cementing their legacy to a wider audience including their musical peers. Sure, Bowie was highly influenced by them, but at the same time, their careers wouldn't be what they are today without his absorbing and spreading their influence. Same with Cobain and the Pixies.

chuckaducci said:

i don't understand why you're holding cobain to some higher standard of originality than any other rock/pop songwriter, from dylan to lennon/mccartney to bowie to bjork. when you deconstruct dylan, you have someone impersonating blues and folk musicians. when you strip down the beatles, you have much the same thing. listen to a scott walker album and it'll make you embarrassed for david bowie. every rock musician has ripped off someone who came before them. that's why they wanted to become rock musicians - so they could emulate their idols! hell, even zappa was derivative of his blues idols and his favorite avant garde composers. so is there some reason kurt cobain should have taken a solemn oath to bring forth something into the world that was unlike anything anyone had ever heard in the history of music? as a songwriter, do YOU possess that goal? is that a fair thing to expect of yourself or of anyone else, famous or no?

i think kurt cobain simply wrote music based on what he liked to hear and the thoughts he wanted to convey, and he wrote some good pop songs that people liked. even if he were still alive today, it wouldn't change the fact that 'nevermind' knocked a michael jackson album off the #1 spot in the billboard charts. not that this means anything, but i hardly think nirvana was a flash in the pan.

and anyway - how is corgan's style so revolutionary and untouched by influence?



i guess if you're a musician who makes music for other musicians rather than for an audience of people who just want to hear good music, your standards will be different than someone who simply wants to appeal to the folks in the cheap seats.



I guess because there's that whole boring, nagging obligation that I feel some reason to maintain, in which I have to keep reminding myself that there's a whole wide world outside of my superior tastes and opinions.

Billy Corgan gets my nod. Not to over-simplify, but Kurt Cobain would basically bitch and moan through an entire album. The Pumpkins would at least deviate from time to time with more optimistic lyrics, and sometimes go off on some tripped out fantasy. It was a more interesting ride overall IMO

Axchi696 said:

Adore is one of my favorite Pumpkins albums, second only to Siamese Dream. If they would re-release it minus Ava Adore, it would be perfect IMO.

Tom said:

I love all the extra material from that too. It could've easily been another double album a la Mellon Collie.

chuckaducci said:

I can admit I didn't touch on who I thought was a better musician in my first response, mainly because some of Corgan's antics seem to deviate away from the music and what it originally stood for in the first place. I guess I spent a great deal listening to the Pumpkins opposed to Nirvana in part because of the amazing drumming of Jimmy Chamberlain. Jimmy really is a big part of the Pumpkins sound, if you notice, when Jimmy is not in the picture, Billy doesn't even attempt to make a rock album i.e. Adore, The Future Embrace. So on a musical level I was always more into the pumpkins, the drumming, the concept albums, the long rock ballad, the various takes on new wave and electronica. All in all I am still a bit worn out on all the Corgan drama, he can save all the drama. We don't need it. Keep the focus on the music.


I never really did my homework on Nirvana like my little brother did, so would still rather hear Nirvana these days.
[Edited 9/13/05 14:07pm]
[Edited 9/13/05 14:08pm]

Kurt, all damn day. I'm not going to bother to explain why, cuz all yall are doing is arguing "COBAIN! NO! FUCK COBAIN! CORGAN! COBAIN WAS A RIP OFF! WELL CORGAN'S VOICE SUCKS! KURT DAMMIT! BILLY CORGAN CUZ YOU ONLY LOVE KURT CUZ HE'S DEAD! etc etc."

there is no winning this. I liked the pumpkins but no band before or since will ever be better than nirvana.

I ducked into this thread, now i'm ducking out.

Kurt's one of my all time favorites. One of the great rock songwriters. He's also an underrated guitarrist. He never played some generic blues-lick solo just to stretch a song out. He always went for something new & weird. In Utero was one of those albums I connected to very personally, like Plastic Ono Band or Lovesexy, and Nevermind is one of the best rock albums ever. His suicide had a big effect on my life.

I liked The Pumkpins during Siamese Dream. Their guitar sound was really cool, and his songs have always been pretty good (including the ones he did for Courtney). But he seemed to get really pretentious after that. Billy's voice just bugs me now, and he's still acting like everyone cares about his every move like it's still 1994. And the music I heard from him lately just seems boring (it's better than Kurt's current stuff, though).

I know self absorbtion and woe-is-me attitude were some of Kurt's possibly annoying traits, but it obviously was not an act with Kurt. He really couldn't handle his own feelings and what he was going through. Seems like a pose with Billy.

andyman91 said:

This pretty much describes my perception of the 2. Cobain wrote some great songs, but based on my more limited knowledge of Corgan's work, Corgan has a subtlety to his work that Cobain did not.

Cobain attacks you with a machete. Corgan goes at you with a scalpel.

I don't like Kurt, he always said how Guns n Roses,Extreme and Pearl Jams was bands with no talent, but man, come on, I never got why people are/were so crazy about nirvana. I saw lots of videos from nirvana and i saw lots of detuned guitars, bad vocals, and horrible performances. Slash, Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Nuno Bettencourt, Gary Cherone, and eddie vedder sure aint among most briliant songwriters ever, but when you watch a concert of them, you see who do not have talent, them, or Kurt Cobain.

I rather see Nuno bettencourt playing 5 minutes of groovy rythm guitar, or even Axl Rose doing some basic improvising on piano before november rain, than a full show of out of tune noises and ungly screams.

I saw Kurt at Chuckie Cheese.

7salles said:

I hear you, some of the noises Nirvana made weren't pleasant, but some of their performances had an energy I've never seen in any performer--Even Guns & Roses during the Appetite years.

And Kurt didn't hate Guns' music necessarily, he hated the macho and apparently prejudiced attitude of Axl. And he didn't hate Eddie Vedder (or at least he said later that he didn't) but he thought Pearl Jam was more corporate than punk. And Extreme did More Than Words, of course Kurt hated them, guitar skills or not!

Kurt's biggest flaw was his obsession with his image (even more than his music). Like 2Pac, he was so concerned with being real & genuine that it ended up being the death of him.
[Edited 9/13/05 15:45pm]

i liked kurt's interpretive dance to tori amos' version of 'smells like teen spirit'.

Anxiety said:

Since Tori never did a Smashing pumpkins cover on her bosendorf, we have the declare Cobain the winner!

I go for Corgan though his voice is still a bit of an obstacle for me. It's been way to whiny since Mellon Collie in 1995. Cobain doesn't even come close. Corgan can do massive rock songs, great pop songs and some gorgeous ballads. Cobain was probably capable of a lot more than what he showed the world. Cobain wins the annoyance factor but talent wise Corgan by a mile. Just wish he had a better voice.
[Edited 9/13/05 16:31pm]

One thing I give Billy credit for is not ripping off Nirvana like every other band did in the 90's, the pumpkins purposely set out to not sound like them as much as possible.

Anxiety said:

What was that?

TRON said:

there's footage of nirvana doing ballet moves in concert while tori's version of 'smells like teen spirit' played over the loudspeaker. i think kurt even came out in a tutu.

Anxiety said:

From?

Courtney picked the right one, she found her Sid. Corgan is way to self-conscious to be a rock star.

Musically, the pumpkins never stirred me. Kris Novoselic over Billy.

I like Corgan's music far much more. Mostly because inside of me there will always be that whiny goth teenager who got bullied in junior high.

Corgan always wanted to be punk, but he was really his generation's Geddy Lee. Smashing Pumpkins were just prog rock, all flash, but very little emotional substance. A single jagged Cobain chord expressed more than 10 lightning fast, note-perfect Corgan solos.
[Edited 9/14/05 6:37am]

MendesCity said:

I don't know if Corgan did perfect solos, they had a pretty rough sound, you would have had to see them live between the Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie shows to get a better idea of what the band was about in my opinion. Corgan often said that SD was over produced. And that SD was not a true reflection of what the band was about at that time.

MendesCity said:

exactly.

Rush Rock though.

Meloh9 said:

I actually did sort of like Gish precisely because of that. It was a bit rougher and trippier and at least made a good stoner album.

TRON said:

i think it was on that "live! tonight! sold out!" videotape that was released a year or so after kurt died.