"I think its called Nine Inch Nails or something... My Grandma listens to that stuff all the time."
"Whatever. If he's going to jump around like that you'd think he'd at least have the decency to find some pants."
It is an inevitable consequence of growing older that one generation tends to lose touch with the next's musical tastes. My parents had no idea what to make of the screeching, squealing angst blaring from my stereo, and my guitar when I was a teenager. That was generally accepted to be normal. Dad would give me hell for listening to "that noise" and I would return fire with your typical flurry of barbs about how soul crushingly sad it is that someone wrote a hit song about a girl who thinks a tractor is sexy.
This is the way of things. And I'm okay with that.
However... Lately I've been worrying that I might lose touch with my own generation's music through the overwhelming power of nostalgia.
Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I'm pretty much obsessed with The Smashing Pumpkins. They have been my favorite band since I was about 16 and had a new "favorite band" every week. Thankfully they were the one that finally stuck.
Over the last 14 years I've purchased pretty much everything they've ever recorded and have seen them in concert 5 times (Hoping to make it 6 this spring).
I really love this band.
I also feel like I've kind of grown up with their music from the point that I discovered them. I picked them up kind of late... Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness had already been out a year when I finally picked up my first Pumpkins album.
That album was Siamese Dream... Which, in my humble opinion, is the best album ever.
I've been asked in the past "What is it about that album for you?"It is just "that album" for me. I think everybody has one (I hope so anyway). It's that "If I were stranded on a desert island..." album. I could listen to it at any time of the day, any time of the year, and as many times as you like and still love it. It was so bad that before I finally joined the 21st century and changed over to digital music I had to buy a second copy of the CD because I had worn out the first.
Now don't get the sense that I listen to nothing but the pumpkins all day every day. That isn't true. My music collection contains somewhere in the ballpark of 700 albums by various artists... Now that isnt to say that I'm some sort of musical journeyman. That wouldn't be true either. I just like what I like and don't have much use for anything else.
Anyway, a few other things I can tell you about Siamese Dream is that it always reminds me of spring no matter when I'm listening. I always get a feeling of freshly cut grass and sun rays. It's not always in a happy way really... I mean its not necessarily sad either. Sometimes its just restless, which is pretty much the definition of me. It gives me the feeling that there is all this beauty out there but I have absolutely no idea what to do with it. It's not so much angry as some of the later Pumpkins work became... Reznor had "The Downward Spiral" and SD is more like "The Hopelessly Romantic Melodramatic Spiral."
Something else that this album is though, is young. It feels so very young even though it's nearly 20 years old. The songs scream youthful confusion, and that is something I related to, and still do relate to. I feel like that has created a powerful bond between myself and this album.
But what happens when I become further separated from the source material?
When I'm 50 years old and the path of my life has either been finally set by my own will, or simply decided for me by my inactivity, will this album still be the brilliant gem of my musical existence or will it be a depressing reminder of a time when I had chances and never took them? Will I still be able to listen to it and feel that same calming feeling or will I just be wishing I was 30 years younger and listening to this album? It's a question that I think about a lot. I mean I wont say that it keeps me up at night or anything... But it weighs heavily on my mind.
Sometimes I feel like my inaction defines me much more than my action. Simply because you'd have to dig deep in my history to find any action. I more often just sit around thinking about all the action I might take. That, to me, is what Siamese Dream is about. Sitting around, and thinking about all the things you might do.
There is a line from a much later pumpkins song that goes "What is it you want? What is it you want to change?"
That's a good question.
