__2004-11-19 @ 2:05 a.m._______
I'm up too late again...I was looking up prices for new laptops. Not sure what I should get but I know the features I want. So that's a start. I think as long as I can put more than half of the price down for a payment, I'll be able to handle some monthly payments afterwards. Just getting excited thinking about it.
Actually, I'm getting pretty tired and Adam and Kathleen are coming into town tomorrow (today) and we have a big day ahead of us. I'm really excited to see Adam. I think he will absolutely love the Bay area, knowing his tastes and interests. But then again, vacationing here and being from the midwest leaves a lot to be amazed at. It's almost everything, scenery-wise, that the midwest isn't. I really glad I'm spending time out here, to be honest. I want to pick up all my friends and plop them right here, in a perfect world. Actually, what would be better, is if you all just visited over the course of the next couple of years. We'll have huge, concentrated and amazing, action packed days! I think I kind of like to host...and now we'll see if I'm any good at it.
Does anyone else really like the songs "Lily," and "Beautiful," by the Pumpkins? Billy, a friend of mine as you can see over to your left there, really takes artistic risks by doing songs like these...and after hearing these tunes, one would realize how a band branded as "grunge," would be asking for commercial suicide for even trying to pull shit off like this. But, brilliantly, they pack all these crazy, off-the-wall ideas inside this double-album-something-for-everyone record, to escape the aforementioned suicide. The thing about the Pumpkins that was so aggravating to the indie-rock bands of the time like Pavement and so inspiring and easily forgiving to people like me is the relentless guts and completely inflated ego that Billy Corgan brought to the table. I mean, what kind of asshole has the guts to follow up Gish, an indie-rock opus in and of itself with critical acclaim galore, with a classic rock influenced, mellow dramatic, outrageously ambitious record like Siamese Dream? Then, after he gets dissed by the indie/grunge crowd for his commercial leanings and achieves moderate commercial success with that album, he goes for the fucking impossible with Mellon Collie- an album that, theoretically, shouldn't work for a band like the Pumpkins- I mean, the odds were against them. Two great records, critical acclaim, and an underground scene that had basically left them before they even starting walking down the proverbial isle of super rock stardom. Here, should lie the hugely, monstrously, all production, all frills, all commercial, no-songs-to-back-it album. And I'm not saying that this record is all killer, no filler...because there are quite a few songs that are just that of the latter. But certainly not a failure, artistically. Not Tommy or The Wall or the White Album (the album it wishes it was), but a respectable attempt to go for it all...to embody all that is rock n roll and do it well. And it seems like a great story for the review back in 1996, and reviews fell on both sides (and I'll note that I think it was much easier for critics to pick apart the record and leave it as a dead young buck smashed by the semi truck for an ego that is Billy Corgan), but there are simply great songs that refuse to be critically refuted by anyone. Then, after the ruckus that happened between Mellon Collie and their next album, they come out with Adore? "Who the fuck do you think you are?" said......EVERYONE! I can just see it. "Guys, lets ditch everything that's EVER made our fans like us and put together a really bizarre album that will, ultimately, flatten the band's career for good...sound like a plan? Good, lets get to work then." Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and now it is clear to see that Adore was just another masterful set of tunes that clung to the inflated ego and perfectionist ideology of the man that had bigger balls than any of the Eddie Vedder wannabes of today. Not that Pearl Jam didn't experiment themselves, but at the same time that they were trying to do different things, they couldn't and didn't look the media in the face...they just said fuck it all together.
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