There was this band of four or five guys (I don't remember if there was a keyboardist) touring an album named Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness. Supposedly the album had been released a month ago, or so.
The show started with a long song.
Amongst hypnotic changes of lights and beautiful images of the oceans reflected behind the members of the band, the cymbals and the guitar sounded slowly... as if their purpose was to wake up the audience from a warm dream.
The atmosphere was so blue and calm.
The song didn't sound like anything I had heard before.
The music was soft and enveloping.
After a few cycles, the cymbals stopped and the guitar and the drums sounded like a fierce roar. Then, again, while a bold guy with a Stratocaster sang the verse and the chorus of the song, the music returned to the softness of the beginning.
The lyrics seemed so poetic and elaborate. It seemed to me that the writer of the song was not a common guy, that he or she didn't read silly literature.
I hadn't heard of Smashing Pumpkins before, though I watched MTV almost everyday.
The bold singer, at the center of the stage, with a black and white Stratocaster on his shoulders, was difficult to ignore.
He dressed a black shirt with the legend "Zero" in silver capital letters on his chest and he also wore silver brilliant trousers. He sang with passion and his voice sounded violent and guttural sometimes and sweet and melodic other times. He also kinda sang out of tune. He looked like a mad astronaut. I thought he was the brain of the band.
Billy Corgan was a rockstar and a poet.
The drummer, behind the singer, played with intensity. He made the snares and cymbals sounded so coordinated, changing from jazz to heavy rock n' roll beats. I thought of him as the soul of the band.
On the right side of the stage, there was a thin asiatic-like guy. He seemed so shy, and out of place. He seemed an introverted man trying to be extroverted, but he was completely focused in being the lead guitarist of the band.
The bassist player, at the left of the stage, was a blonde woman. She had pale skin. Her face was covered of something that looked like powder coating, and she was scary and attractive at the same time. Somehow, she looked sad or indifferent to the fans.
Nevertheless, she tried to smile each time she had to whisper parts of the chorus of certain songs, and never stopped accompanying the chords and beats of the songs with her Fender Precision Bass.
Though I didn't know they had a romance, I thought of James Iha and D'Arcy Wretsky as the heart of the band.
He dressed a black shirt with the legend "Zero" in silver capital letters on his chest and he also wore silver brilliant trousers. He sang with passion and his voice sounded violent and guttural sometimes and sweet and melodic other times. He also kinda sang out of tune. He looked like a mad astronaut. I thought he was the brain of the band.
Billy Corgan was a rockstar and a poet.
The drummer, behind the singer, played with intensity. He made the snares and cymbals sounded so coordinated, changing from jazz to heavy rock n' roll beats. I thought of him as the soul of the band.
On the right side of the stage, there was a thin asiatic-like guy. He seemed so shy, and out of place. He seemed an introverted man trying to be extroverted, but he was completely focused in being the lead guitarist of the band.
The bassist player, at the left of the stage, was a blonde woman. She had pale skin. Her face was covered of something that looked like powder coating, and she was scary and attractive at the same time. Somehow, she looked sad or indifferent to the fans.
Nevertheless, she tried to smile each time she had to whisper parts of the chorus of certain songs, and never stopped accompanying the chords and beats of the songs with her Fender Precision Bass.
Though I didn't know they had a romance, I thought of James Iha and D'Arcy Wretsky as the heart of the band.
I was a teenager of almost 15 years old.
Music was everything for me.
The band impressed me so much.
Music was everything for me.
The band impressed me so much.
The sweet-furious formula of the previous songs, changed a lot.
Even Chamberlin used a smaller drum set than the one he used in the first part of the show.
The members of the band took their places in a small surface of the stage. I think they even sat on small chairs. I didn't know the name of any of the songs they played, but I liked them, too.
I also found the lyrics sort of poetic.
I vaguely remember that these acoustic songs talked about love and anguish.
After the third commercial pause of MTV, the band played another heavy new songs from Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness and some other older songs like Today, and I kinda recognized it. I had watched the video of the song. The members of the band were mirthfully painting an ice-cream wagon and they looked so silly and dumb in the video.
I guess they appeared so dumb that I just did not pay attention to their music.
While I watched the show on MTV, suddenly I felt I was a moron because I was so bigoted and I didn't know such an amazing band existed.
A couple of weeks later, as a Christmas gift, my father gave us money.
My brother and myself found Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness in a supermarket and we bought it in compact disc format. We really enjoyed it. We heard it everyday. We recorded it on a cassette and we listened it on a walkman on our way to school or while we traveled across the city on the backseat of the red Jetta, as our dad drove to a boring place and our mom and our little brother were so impressed by the lights and by the Christmas ornaments hanging on the tall buildings in the streets.
I listened that album for almost one year, day after day.
I even memorized all the lyrics. I even filled a notebook with Corgan-like poems.
Now, I hardly remember the lyrics. I lost that notebook as I lost my memory.
Mellon Collie was released on October 24, 1995.
