Review- The Smashing Pumpkins/ Adore Deluxe Edition Box Set

The Smashing Pumpkins/ Adore Deluxe Edition Box Set (Virgin/ Universal, 2014)

'90s nostalgia...I am not feeling it. I bought the original album the day that it came out and loved it immediately. While every late 30s/ early 40-something claims that they loved Gish and maybe Siamese Dream, the fact of the matter is that The Pumpkins could do no wrong to these people until this album came out. This album was a successful artistic experiment to me but was essentially career suicide as far as the general audience was concerned.

I tend to dislike electronic music, as it feels like a soulless shuffle of beeps and blips. The curious thing about my disdain of it is that I found this album to be highly listenable. I loathed Techno and DJs during this time. While I enjoy the Pumpkins at their rockingest, it was always the quieter interludes and dynamics which drew me to them like a moth to the flame. This album delivered it in spades. The acoustic, almost folky sound was marinated in electronics...and for my money it worked. Lyrically Corgan was pushing himself to his poetic best. Those with less ability call it pretentious. The rest of us celebrate his work while he is still alive, as all of the naysayers will when he dies.

The Rock was almost nonexistent on this album. Sure, Pug is basically an electronica version of Blue Oyster Cult's Godzilla and the guitar solo for Ava Adore was Billy Corgan's love letter to Brian May, but beyond that Rock was dead in 1998. I was a sad panda at that time. I immediately recognized the bridge of For Martha as the Mellon Collie outtake Wishing You Were Real (I had the silver back Moonraker bootleg The Mellon Collie Demos in 1996; still own it and many others). If I had a blog in 1998 these observations would have been listed after a single listen.

While the original album is remastered on Disc One (not sure why- it was recorded digitally and mixed and mastered for the CD format to begin with), it is the Mono mix on Disc Two, originally done for the vinyl release, that really made me sit up and take notice. Songs with excessive bass like Ava Adore are rendered a muddy, thuddy mess. Once Upon A Time was a revelation, though. The mono mix for that song was like hearing it again for the first time. So much better. Shame remains one of my all time favorite Pumpkins songs in mono or stereo.

I was an avid bootleg trader back in the Internet stone age. Dial up made torrents pointless, so traders burned CDs and mailed them to one another. I have had many of the unreleased songs found on Discs three through five for years. Songs like Chewing Gum and My Mistake are old favorites to me. Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely thrilled to see this stuff see an official release. The 2014 remixes of songs are worthless to me, though. There are several B-sides, soundtrack songs, and EP tracks omitted from this set, any of which would have been preferred to the pointless 2014 remixes. It was cool to finally hear the Adore version of Let Me Give The World To You, as that was one of those mythical songs that never surfaced way back when. Had the band included this and released it as a single this album might not have stiffed on the charts. It is easy to say this from my armchair 16 years later. Who could predict that the band's audience wouldn't join them on the journey?

Disc Six is a live compilation. I caught the band on this tour when they played the State Theatre in Detroit in July of 1998. While I loved the different arrangements of these songs the crowd was bored to tears due to the downbeat nature of the album. They played the album in it's entirety and three songs off of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness in radically different form. The songs from Hallowe'en 1998 at Dodger Stadium were televised as part of the Kiss Psycho Circus tour opening night special. I remember watching it, and I have a bootleg of the full Pumpkins show somewhere in my stacks of Pumpkins bootlegs.

I have yet to watch any of the DVDs that have come with any of the other five Deluxe Edition box sets, so why start now? I listen to music. If I want to watch music I will go to a concert. I am extremely old fashioned in this regard, and it comes from growing up in a house without cable and listening to music rather than watching it on MTV like all of my friends did.

This box set is quite an undertaking. Six audio CDs and one DVD in a deluxe box. The box has a foil wrapping and the cover is a different shot from the roll of the original album cover. It is presented in color here. I never realized that the woman's dress was a flower until seeing it in color. Inside are several “snapshots” and a nice booklet. The seven discs are all in individual card sleeves. You certainly get your bang for the buck here. While I own everything from this era I like comprehensive compilations too. I would have been in for an eight disc set with the remaining material B-side, EP, and soundtrack material. Maybe when Billy Corgan does the super duper duper ultra mega box in 2030...

Adore remains one of my personal favorites, possibly the greatest break up album of all time. Little did I realize that the band itself was breaking up internally at the time. I have no nostalgia for the '90s; that is for those that were too young to live it. I lived the decade and am done with it. This album still sounds good to my ears but it is not a nostalgia trip. I remain passionate about the band all of these years later and look forward to both new albums next year, and buying them again in 2031 in box set format.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 4.25 out of 5. 

Reviews- The Smashing Pumpkins/ The Aeroplane Flies High Deluxe Edition and Dio/ Magica Deluxe Edition

The Smashing Pumpkins/The Aeroplane Flies High (Virgin/Universal, 2013)

When Billy Corgan goes in, he goes large. Case in point this deluxe edition 6 CD/1 DVD box set. The original 1996 five CD box set was the after party to 1995's double album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I bought every one of the singles for that album for the B-sides...then the UK ones which had more songs...then the box set which had even MORE songs. Pumpkins fans have never had a shortage of music to listen to, that's for sure. The 28 non-LP tracks that adorned the original release are bolstered by an additional demos, unreleased songs, live songs, and the first official CD release of the song Infinite Sadness, previously only available on the original 3-LP version of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

The band could have cobbled an album out of the 28 B-sides from the original 1996 box set and it would have helped to cement their fan base in terms of popularity. It might have made the transition to Adore a little easier for the fans as well. Oh well, hindsight and all that jazz, right? On to the bonus tracks!

Disc 1- The bonus tracks are all instrumental sketches from the Gravity Demos bootleg. I was an avid bootleg trader in the Internet stone age, prior to torrents when you either bought commercial CDs or traded burned CDs through the mail. I've had these for years but am thrilled to have officially mastered and authorized versions. A/Ab/E/B/F# became Endless Summer during the Zwan era. Ugly is way punchier than the B-side version, a quiet-loud hybrid of the acoustic demo found on last year's MCIS box set.

Disc 2- The bonus tracks are assorted demos and alternate takes from the MCIS album. Marquis In Spades (8-Track Demo) (Demo Version) is acoustic, being even better than the electric version. Take Me Down (Instrumental) sounds like early Pink Floyd with the bongos and stuff.

Discs 3 and 4- Bonus tracks culled from the band's four night stand at the Double Door in Chicago in February of 1995 prior to entering the studio for MCIS. I have an audience recording bootleg of at least one of the shows and loved it, but this is mindblowing in “high res”.

Disc 5– A maddening 34:48 live version of Silverfuck recorded in 1996. I saw them do an equally long, nauseating version for an encore in Toledo, OH in January of 1997. Jammy and trippy and aimless, it was an encore and left the audience begging for mercy, not screaming for more. At least at the show we had the giant video screens with all of the crazy imagery. On CD it's just long-winded and boring.

Disc 6- Live Inside The Dark Globe is the band's first fully live album. The Earphoria promo CD (and subsequent 2002 commercial release) had a few studio tracks on it, so it doesn't count as a proper live album in my opinion. Your mileage may vary. This disc is compiled from multiple shows. The band changed their setlists nightly in this era, focusing mostly on the then-new Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album. There is only one non-MCIS song here. I saw them do all of these live at the shows I caught on this tour except Lily (My One And Only) and Bodies, the latter which was almost never done live. Philadelphians in 1996 have no idea how fortunate they were!

As for the DVD...yeah, I haven't watched any of the DVDs that have come with any of the other reissue box sets, either. Hell, I've never watched the DVD that came with the Zwan album. I just don't watch DVDs or TV unless my kids have it on. I read comic books, go online, and go to concerts or movies, none of which is a judgment against anyone who does watch TV or DVDs, I'm just making a point of reference as to how I waste my free time and explaining why I am not commenting on the DVD portion of this box set.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 4 out of 5.

The OCD zone- For those of you who just walked in, this portion of the review is restricted to commentary on packaging. Here I nitpick the materials and tactile sensations of physical media. The box features the original design on a foil-wrapped box similar in size to the rest of the non-MCIS reissues. The 7 discs are all in digipak sleeves, and all have individual designs. The 6 audio CD sleeves have a reflective foil design while the DVD has a printed design. The booklet features lyrics as well as in depth, song by song commentary by Billy Corgan.

Dio/ Magica Deluxe Edition (Niji, 2013)

This 2 disc re-release of the 2000 album contains 2 bonus studio tracks, Annica (from the Japanese pressing) and Electra (from the Tournado box set and The Very Beast Of Dio Vol. 2), which was the final song that Dio completed before passing away. The album has been remastered, which always boggles my mind when an album was originally mixed and mastered for the CD format like this one was. The six bonus live songs have marginal sound quality but are good listens. Challis has always been a cheesy rip-off of Cat Scratch Fever and I have always felt that the song was beneath Dio's dignity. This is a middle-of-the-pack Dio album but is worth owning.

The OCD zone- The 2 CD set has a gatefold digipak cover. There's a decent booklet and a list of “all” of the tour dates, which omits the first leg of the tour. I caught the band in Cleveland on Easter Sunday in 2000 at The Odeon, and that date is not listed. The sample setlist also features more songs than the band did on either of the dates that I caught them on for this tour.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Review- The Smashing Pumpkins/ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness Deluxe Edition

The Smashing Pumpkins/ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness Deluxe Edition (2012; original album released in 1995)

This era of the band is near and dear to my heart, as many of my life's changes from adolescence into adulthood occurred during the release cycle and tour for this album. As corny as it sounds, I credit this album with saving my life. The album itself is the first 2 discs in the box, remastered. I scratch my head with remastering material that was originally mastered for the CD format. It does sound different, with things popping out of the mix that weren't as pronounced on the original release. This feels more like a remix or EQ tweaking than a remaster. Suffice it to say that the original album is brilliant and holds up some 17 years later. I'll keep this review focused on the extras since I would just ramble on endlessly about the brilliance of this double album.

The card that was in the shrinkwrapping on the back of the box.

It's great to finally see Methusela (Sadlands Demo) officially released, as it is one of those great songs that has always had me puzzled as to why it was never used anywhere before. X.Y.U. (Take 11) is savage, being closer to the live version musically. Autumn Nocturne (Sadlands Demo) has been a favorite of mine since I procured the silver back, factory manufactured The Mellon Collie Demos bootleg back in 1996. It was at this point that I began acquiring insane amounts of bootlegs, eventually becoming a bootleg trader in the Internet stone ages, back when dial-up connectivity made downloading prohibitive and the small but dedicated trading community traded pure sourced, non-compressed files via blank CDs. Hey kids, did you know that blank CDs once cost about $6 each and were only 74 minutes? 

Ugly (Sadlands Demo) is another one from the aforementioned Mellon Collie Demos bootleg. I am absolutely, positively thrilled to see these lost gems get a proper, official release. I have long felt that it was criminal that these treasures were buried and unavailable to the general public. Lily (My One and Only) (Sadlands Demo) is another one from the aforementioned The Mellon Collie Demos bootleg, so I've been listening to this version nearly as long as the album proper. It's a more stripped down take with the lyric “ But a constable is knocking at my door”. I always thought that Billy used constable in the early version instead of officer because it seems like the original concept for the album was a turn of the century love story. By turn of the century I mean turn of the 20^th century, by the way. 

This was the most prolific era for Billy Corgan as a songwriter, as he was shitting out song ideas that most bands would kill for. He was writing and recording so many songs that it was impossible for him to release it all, even with a double album and 5 singles with several B-sides each and a seemingly endless parade of compilations and soundtracks. Ideas fell through the cracks, such as Glamey Glamey (Sadlands Demo), which never got beyond the instrumental phase (as far as we fans know). It's a flippin' incredible riff that he left to rot. Other songs like Meladori Magpie saw the light of day as a B-side, but only the diehards hunted these down and it never got the attention it deserved. It's a charming, romantic, country tinged song. Pennies was another B-side that deserved better. I'd rank it among Corgan's cleverest songs, a snarky send off to a jilted lover played and sang in a deceptively catchy, sing-a-long manner. 

Towers of Rabble was like the Maltese Falcon of Pumpkins demos during my trader days. Everyone knew of it, no one had it, and torrents as such were new and not as expansive as they are today. It has all of the ingredients of what could have been a classic Pumpkins song, but it was never fully realized and was abandoned. One must give props to Corgan for endlessly moving forward. Once he is done with an era, he's done with it. No going back and tweaking old ideas or reusing outtakes when ideas ran out. I can't say that I would've done the same thing.

This box set qualifies as a dream come true for me. I have had some of these demos forever but have always hoped that they would someday see the light of day. That day has arrived. If you are, or ever were, a fan of the band, particularly this era, then this box set is a must buy. This is the holy grail, ladies and gentlemen. While the box sets for the first three albums have had omissions that left me wrangling my hands together, this hits every sweet spot and has the kitchen sink thrown in. There are other things from this era not on this box, but I'm happy.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 5 out of 5.

The OCD zone- I love packaging and physical media, and this box set is a bonanza. The box itself has a magnetic clamp and the cover has a lacquered, layered feeling. Very strange and very cool. The booklets are all LP sized, as is the box itself. The first booklet is an expanded version of the first booklet in the CD, with tons of new liner notes and pictures including Corgan's original sketches and ideas for the pictures in the original booklet. The second booklet is an LP sized replica of the original second booklet for the CD, the lyric one. There CD's are housed in a hardcover gatefold with 6 slots (5 CDs, 1 DVD) and has a luxurious felt feel to it. There are several cardboard LP sized stills and a small card explaining the Japanning process used in constructing the album artwork. Try downloading any of this shit, torrent dwellers. The tactile sensations and overall presentation enhance the listening experience and are why I will always, always, always be a physical media dinosaur.

Review- The Smashing Pumpkins @ The Palace of Auburn Hills in Auburn Hills, MI on October 23, 2012

The Smashing Pumpkins w/Morning Parade @ The Palace of Auburn Hills in Auburn Hills, MI on October 23, 2012 (Detroit 10/23/12)

It's been just over a year since The Smashing Pumpkins v2.1 last played Detroit. The Palace is a basketball arena located 20 plus miles outside of the city proper in Auburn Hills. I love the building but hate the location and the $15 that they charge you to park there. I pulled into the parking lot around 7ish, and was able to score a sweet parking spot. I was disappointed at the turnout, with my best guesstimate being around 5,000 people in attendance. The upper bowl was curtained off and roughly half of the concession stands were shuttered. 

I snatched a pic of my ticket before they forced an upgrade on me

I was surprised to have my $75 lower bowl seat upgraded not once, but twice, ultimately winding up in the second row of lower bowl in the first section next to the stage. I was on Nicole's side, so stage right I'm guessing. I had the honor of ending up next to a middle aged drunken Gen X asshole who was there with his younger brother. He insisted in trying to bait Billy throughout the show, yelling BIIIIIIiiiiIIIIIIlllLLLLLLLyyyYYYYyyyyYYYYyyy over and over. And over. And over. The glares of everyone in the audience around him was lost upon him. I could hear him talk over the music on occasion, and he was telling his brother how he was trying to “recreate The Breslin Center show by having Billy throw a beer at him again”. Breslin Center? Was this guy trying to recreate his 1994 experience at being an asshole or something? He kept yelling for “BIIIIiiiiIILLLLLlllYYYyyyyYYY PLAY YOUR CLASSICS”. 

He criticized the crowd for “not being into it” or moshing enough during Bullet With Butterfly Wings. I wanted to spit on him for the longest time, but after a while I started feeling sorry for him. What a loser. The defining moment of his youth was purportedly pissing Billy Corgan off in 1994, and here he was 18 years later and still hasn't gotten the point. I can only imagine him being bitter, not really into music per se' but somehow found out about this show. This guy was every bit the cliché' that the Boston fans that I mocked in 1994 were. Stuck entirely in their youth, trying desperately to recapture it in drunken stupors, and blaming everyone else for their problems. Sad.

It was at this point that I realized what an impossible, uphill battle the band faces. I was always about the next album, the next B-side, the next show, looking ahead for the band. The rest of the old school fans seem to have become the classic Rock cliches that they mocked in the '90s. There's got to be irony in there somewhere, but I have been over irony for some time. Maybe irony jumped the shark or whatever the kids call it now. 

Roughly 20 minutes before the Pumpkins came on.

It filled in more when they came on, but come on, Detroit.

The lights went down and the globe/orb thing was revealed. The crowd was quiet, and I had a feeling of uneasiness. Oh geez, first attendance was sparse, now the crowd would be unreceptive. Billy played some odd sounding thing on the keyboard and then it was off to the races. Quasar and Panopticon saw the band in full Rock mode, while The Celestials and Violet Rays were slower and moodier. I kept looking around trying to gauge the audience's response to the new stuff. It seemed pretty uniform, regardless of which song off of Oceania was played. 

The globe was a giant projection screen, with the images dancing around the entire sphere. It was trippy, and the recurring themes were flowers and flying turtles, constellations and the moon. Trippy stuff. I loved it all. My Love Is Winter was next.

There were three keyboards at the front of the stage, and Billy, bassist/vocalist Nicole Fiorentino and guitarist Jeff Schroeder all took turns playing various parts. One Diamond, One Heart and Pinwheels are two songs which showed why this was necessary. 

Oceania and Pale Horse are the highlights of the new album for me, but The Chimera was the star of the new album live. It really shines in a live setting, and I hope that it sticks around in the set in the future. Glissandra and Inkless were also great live. Wildflower was awesome live. The band was jamming a bit, and things started getting darker sounding. Their cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity was incredible. X.Y.U. …wow, I haven't seen them do that one live since 1997. Disarm was done in “band” mode, similar to the live arrangement on the Rock Invasion Tour ('93-94). 

 

Tonite Reprise was the rarity of the night. It was originally included on the triple-vinyl Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and then the Tonight, Tonight single. It led straight into a great rendition of Tonight, Tonight, a favorite of mine. The setlist leaned heavily on Mellon Collie, perhaps because that was the frame of mind Billy was in after prepping the 5 disc beast of a box set coming this December. Bullet With Butterfly Wings actually had a mosh pit. 

 

A Song For A Son was a welcome return to the set. Teargarden By Kaleidyscope doesn't get enough love. I wish that Spangled was in the set, too. Zero and Cherub Rock rounded out the set.

The encore was incredible. Jeff played the intro to Black Diamond with the violet lights that Paul Stanley uses. Billy sang the first verse, and I was shocked to see Mike Byrne take the lead vocals a la Peter Criss. He did a fine, fine job, and Billy and Jeff strangled the shit out of their guitars during the solos. If you were kid in Detroit in the '70s then Kiss is in your blood. Ava Adore was done in chugging mode, rocking similar to Here Is No Why. Muzzle was a pleasant surprise for the encore. Thank you, Smashing Pumpkins.

I hope that the disappointing turnout doesn't dissuade them from coming back to Detroit. Maybe the Fox Theatre would be a better choice, although I doubt that stage would fit in there. 

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Review- The Smashing Pumpkins/ Pisces Iscariot deluxe edition box set

The Smashing Pumpkins/ Pisces Iscariot deluxe edition box set (Virgin, 2012; original album issued in 1994)

Billy Corgan states in the booklet that this was never intended to be the third Smashing Pumpkins album, but rather a fleshed out B-side compilation that played like a mix tape. Whatever the case may be, I have always considered it to be their third studio album, kind of a hodge-podge mix of songs not unlike Something New by The Beatles.

The remastering sounds a bit different than the original album, but nowhere near as revelatory as the Gish and Siamese Dream reissues. There is more breath and space to the sound than the original album. No one is buying these box sets for the remastered albums anyways, they are buying them for the bonus discs, DVDs, and other paraphernalia. This box set features a cassette replica of the original EP that the band sold at club shows circa 1989. This version, both the cardboard and the cassette itself, are colored red to avoid dishonest eBay sellers from pawning it off as an original. There are also a series of bizarre postcards/ snapshots, a booklet with fresh song by song liner notes, and lyrics. The thing about these reissues that annoys me is that the original packaging elements are not present, such as Billy's original song by song commentary from 1994 and all of the original pictures. Knowing Billy Corgan and the way that he gotten me to buy and re-buy singles and EPs over the years, he will reintroduce those original elements with still another bonus disc of material in the 2030s. Worse still, I'll happily buy it.

The bonus disc has a lot of “dream come true” songs on it. I was highly active in the bootleg trading community in the pre-Napster/pre-torrent Internet stone age and have had many of these songs in various forms since the '90s. Cinnamon Girl and several others are the same versions found on the infamous Reel Time Sessions from 1989. To get them in a properly mastered, officially issued version has long been a dream of mine. Vanilla is another that I have enjoyed for years. The 2012 mix of Glynis, minus the female backing vocalist, is divine.

There are also songs that even us hardcore collectors didn't have. The studio version of Why Am I So Tired? being chief among the true rarities. Can Tower of Rabble be far behind? Dare I dream of getting it on the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness box set this fall? Purr Snickety is finally issued on CD after all of these years, and like the other two box sets, just enough is left off of the bonus disc so as to not render all of your zillion CD singles, EPs, and compilations obsolete. A pox upon you, Billy Corgan!

I am really looking forward to the 5 disc Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness box set this fall.

Review- The Smashing Pumpkins/ Oceania

The Smashing Pumpkins/ Oceania (Martha's Music, 2012)

If this were a Rolling Stone magazine review, this would be the sentence where I state how this is their best work since ___________ (most commercially/critically acclaimed album, in this band's case Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness). That is the cop-out statement that RS always uses to absolve themselves for failing to acknowledge the work of an artist after they choose to not shine a spotlight on them anymore. Since this is not a RS review, I can freely state that this is indeed a great album, but you know what? Every Pumpkins/Zwan/Corgan album between MCIS and now have had their moments, with plenty of great songs over the years. 2008s American Gothic EP was the return to form that the masses failed to notice.

Oceania is part of the Teargarden By Kaleidyscope era which started off as free downloads on the band's site in late 2009. There were two EPs released in 2010, Teargarden By Kaleidyscope Vol. 1: Songs For A Sailor and Teargarden By Kaleidyscope Vol. 2: The Solstice Bare. Both of those had some great material on them. In the summer of 2010 Corgan toured with a brand new line-up consisting of Guitarist Jeff Schroeder (the sole remaining member of the 2007-2008 touring band), Bassist Nicole Fiorentino, and Drummer Mike Byrne. I was so blown away by the Grand Rapids, MI show in July of 2010. I knew that I had witnessed the rebirth of this band. They toured the US again in the fall of 2011, right after completing this album, and this cemented my belief that this is the definitive line up of the band. I have been a fan since 1993 but have no nostalgic longing to see that incarnation again.

Moving forward to the present and future, we have Oceania. Billy has been acquiring vintage organs and synthesizers over the last several years, and employs them all over this album. The fashionable thing to say, or what Rolling Stone will likely say, is that this is the album that should've followed Siamese Dream, to which I would say nonsense. These songs are clearly psychedelic, and the band is rocking the dynamics something fierce again, but there are moments that are as indebted to the Machina and post-Pumpkins eras as the ones that channel Gish and SD. There are the occasional electronic flourish and prog-rock tendencies, such as the albums' title track. It is my favorite on the album, and hits every Pumpkins sweet spot. Pinwheels and Pale Horse are also among the highlights of an album of highlights.

Billy Corgan also uses many of the vocal effects and layering that were so prevalent on the early albums. Nicole Fiorentino handles the high pitched backing vocals, and the results are nothing short of stellar. The Celestials is another interesting song, with plenty of dynamics. The Chimera and Quasar are among the more rocking moments on the album. Several of these songs are familiar to those of us who saw the band last fall. My Love Is Winter is one that I remember from that show. This may be the first album by the band that the world at large has paid attention to since the Clinton administration, but to us diehards it's just another great addition to Corgan and company's body of work. I can't wait to see what's coming next.

The OCD zone- The packaging on the CD is a tri-fold digipak with an actual plastic hub. The booklet has lyrics and there are plenty of cryptic, symbolic images that I will stare at long enough to piece together with the rest of the Teargarden puzzle.

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Reviews: The Smashing Pumpkin- Gish and Siamese Dream deluxe edition remastered reissues

The Smashing Pumpkins/ Gish and Siamese Dream deluxe editions (Virgin/ EMI, 2011)

I have no problem buying remastered CDs of material that was released before the CD era, say, 1990. But Gish and Siamese Dream were recorded, mixed, and mastered for the CD format to begin with, so I have some issues, philosophically speaking, with the remastering of these albums. Is it necessary? Are these remastered or remixed? The EQs are different, with higher highs and lower lows. I will critique these albums based on the following criteria: Remastering, the bonus disc, and the packaging. There is a DVD with a full live show included in each box, but I haven't gotten around to watching them yet, and probably won't until my Winter sabbatical next month.

I have the original Caroline and the 1994 Virgin re-release/remastered versions of Gish. There was very little difference between the two, but this 2011 remaster is head and shoulders above them both. The guitar solos are much louder in the mix than on the original album, and this is where my “remixed” comments come into play. The same can be said with the distortion at the end of Rhinoceros and the beginning of Bury Me, which sound much different than they did on the original album. The biggest improvement, aside from the expanded dynamic range in the mix, is in the drums. Gish has always had a flat, tinny sound to it, but the cymbals and bass drum are far more pleasing to the ear here than they were on the original album. While the mastering is louder and clearer, it is not brick-walled. Indeed, it sounds more analog than the original album. Crush is the highlight out of the remastered tunes. It really comes to life here. I have listened to both of these albums hundreds of times over the years, but hearing them again for the first time was a treat.

There is a wealth of unreleased Pumpkins songs, from the band's inception in 1988 through the completion of their second album in 1993. I have many of these from my trader days (in glorious, non-compressed WAV files from the blanks and postage trading era) but have always had an eye to buy them if they were ever officially issued. When I heard the rumblings of a Gish box set 3 years ago, I figured that it would have all of those demos, the Reel Time Sessions, etc. Instead, Gish has several B-sides remixed, 2/3 of the 1992 Peel Sessions EP, demos, and only 3 of songs from the Reel Time Sessions bootleg. Why they didn't include the version of Rhinoceros with the organ solo is beyond me. Working titles aside, there are only two officially unreleased songs on the Gish bonus CD (Honeyspider and Jesus is the Sun). Pulseczar was released on the 1994 promo/ 2002 reissue Earphoria, so calling it unreleased is untrue.

I feel like they missed the mark with the bonus material. I wish that this was a 5 or 10 disc box set, with every B-side, both the Peel Sessions and Lull Eps as well as all of the demos. It also would have been nice to have all of the original album packaging elements present on this reissue.

Siamese Dream is the better purchase of the two from top to bottom. For one, it's a better album, for two the remastering brings out far more nuances, and finally, the bonus disc is a treasure trove of unreleased songs and works-in-progress versions that would radically change before they saw the light of day. Today sounds huge when it kicks in. The original album had a compressed, brittle, digital filtered sound to it, which I just chalked up to it being the way that the album sounded. Here, there is breath, warmth, and light. Hummer and Rocket made me misty eyed, as they sounded so much more beautiful than even the original versions that I fell in love with many moons ago.

The bonus disc is comprised of a few truly unreleased songs, and radically different versions of others. Hello Kitty Kat has completely different lyrics and chorus. Apathy's Last Kiss is a different version then the obscure B-side, which is one of my all-time favorite Pumpkins songs. Siamese Dream is the jewel of the set. Another obscure B-side, this has also long been a favorite of mine. This is a full band electric version, with the part of the previously released B-side being only the second half of the song. It is radically different than the B-side version. The drum beat is different in Quiet, and the song feels totally different because of it. It's things like that that always made bootleg collecting, particularly the demos, so interesting to me. Spaceboy sounds like the album version, sans orchestral embellishments. It sounds great but lacks the emotional punch of the original. Soma has some of James Iha's country tinged playing that Billy always ended up chopping out of the final product. Some of the songs are instrumental takes, which are interesting listens once or twice. All of them Rock much harder, and had Billy went for the Rock rather than dynamics, then history would have been much different. While I am a rocker first and foremost, it has always been the dynamics which have drawn me to this band like a moth to the flame.

So all in all, the bonus discs are good but not great. I would've preferred a more archival approach, with one disc consisting of all officially issued B-sides, and then a few more discs of demos. I wish that all of the original artwork, including the B-side sleeves, were included in the booklets. I am hoping that the forthcoming Smashing Pumpkins Record Club will be a more comprehensive undertaking. While I still wrestle with the remastered vs. remixed/ is it wrong to remaster something originally mastered for the CD format thing, I will listen to the original version only for historical and/or nostalgic purposes from here on out. I will listen to these Bob Ludwig remasters for pleasure.

Oh, and adding the The before their name seems wrong here. They didn't call themselves The Smashing Pumpkins until 1995. Verb vs. adjective.