The beauty of last.fm is that it can show the range of music you listen to, it can also show what a large influence one single band can have on your listening habits. For me that band is, and will always be, The Smashing Pumpkins.
It is hard to describe the spot the Pumpkins have within my musical heart, indirectly they’ve played a big part of where I am and who I am today. Getting into their music when I was a teenager lead me into an interest in visual design, I was blown away by the artwork that was created for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Later on when I finally started to use the Internet in the late 1990’s I discovered a large Smashing Pumpkins online community, a place where I met life long friends and even my wife. I would eventually start up the Australian fan community, Ozphoria and this lead me further into the rabbit hole of my career. This really spark my interest in interaction with people online, web design and everything else that comes along with running a community. From organising concerts, collecting live recordings (300+ at last count), collecting official releases, to publishing artwork and to even following the band on Australian tour and much more they’ve given me some great memories. I also landed the dream job of working for the Smashing Pumpkins as a writer for their website too. So I guess what I’m trying to get across is … I am and always will be a Smashing Pumpkins fan.
So this now brings me to the topic of the post, Twenty Thousand Smashing Pumpkins Songs. As a member for last.fm for nearly 5 years this year I’ve listen to a few tracks over the time, as Im listening to music now my count is at 141854 songs since 9th June 2005. Within that list I hit 20,000 Smashing Pumpkins songs today, the 20,000 track (by pure chance) ended up being Here is No Why. Ironically one of the most important songs to me growing up and even now, I couldn’t not post perhaps my favourite live recording of this song.
“the useless drag of another day
the endless drags of a death rock boy
mascara sure and lipstick lost
glitter burned by restless thoughts
of being forgotten …”
Taken at the height of Mellon Collie’s success this was the band as most of you would know them, live at the Brixton Academy in the UK. Enjoy, watch and wait for the Corgan snarl and scream towards the end. His voice sounds like it could break at any minute, but the power of the band and energy is something amazing to watch.
The Smashing Pumpkins Live at Brixton Academy, London 15/05/96 04 – Here Is No Why
So lets talk stats.
9th June 2005 to 6th February 2010 = 4 years, 7 months and 28 days | 1703 days in total
So with my poor maths skills, on a daily average I listen to approx 12 (11.7) Smashing Pumpkins songs per day. That would be me listening to one disc of Mellon Collie everyday of my life, it doesn’t sound like a lot but when you think every day for this long … it is quite a bit. Now of course this is a bit more than just the 7 studio albums and singles released from the band, the demos, live recordings, interviews that make up the 32 gigabytes that make up my digital Smashing Pumpkins collection does help.
Now the scary thing is, this only count songs played via my various computer or digital music players over the years. This does not count pre-computer listening (scrobbling) days from 1994 to 2005, the hours of listening to vinyl, CD’s or cassettes over the years. To include that would be extremely scary I think.
Finally, the magic moment:
