Pumpkins and MTV’s return (1994–1995)

The Smashing Pumpkins are uncool. Were they always this way? 🎃

I assume kids today still have their first loves, whether it be musical groups or YouTube personalities or parasocial interests on Instagram. Growing up in the 1990s, there was one band that was fated to be my spirit-animal. Like many teenaged boys, it started with a girl.

Women seemed to love The Smashing Pumpkins (emphasis on The) and frontman Billy Corgan. My junior high school crush’s favorite song was, “Today”, and the rest is history.

To give a little context, my small hometown in Arkansas had banned MTV’s broadcast, circa 1988–1993! I don’t know how or why, but I guess that MTV was presumed “evil” (it was at the height of hair metal and excess). MTV came back in 1994, and it was crack cocaine to anyone under age 30. It was our pipeline into the rest of the country’s happenings, and things were happening.

In 1994, The Smashing Pumpkins (emphasis on The) were the hottest band — the next iteration of rock. Their music video for “Today” received heavy airplay.

For the band, success was a combination of hard work, talent, and timing. Billy Corgan’s biggest rival (romantically and musically) had died. The world was looking for the Next Nirvana, the next sound. Home internet was also exploding. It was time to get eclectic and a little psychedelic. The Smashing Pumpkins were a go-to alt-rock template band, with a female bassist and an Asian guitarist. They were hip, but also not hip.

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The band were a long-haired psychedelic band at its core, but they had embraced the “alt rock” wave. Corgan cited then-uncool bands like Boston, Queen, and Rush as heroes. And they were combative to music magazines and journalists.

Siamese Dream was my first adult CD purchase. The closest Best Buy was 70 miles away from my hometown, and they had the cheapest discs and the most selection. In the car ride home, I immediately opened the packaging, put my CD into the Walkman and blasted “Disarm” at maximum volume. For me, that album was a seminal moment, and little did I realize that next year (1995) would cement my passion for music and fandom.

It was 30 years ago that Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness had them climb into households of suburban dads and Disney moms.

My burgeoning love for Alternative music led to a fan site in July of 1997. GeoCities, Angelfire, and other hosts were going strong at the time. The “Carmance” site, the most prominent of the unofficial Pumpkin sites, showed me how easy it was to build a website ❤️

The SP Heart

Sites like Netphoria.org and Starla.org would soon follow…

starla.org in all its Web 1.0 glory

I’ve heard Billy Corgan described as an egomaniac and a “goofball”. He’s a self-described Gnostic Christian and “extremely religious”. He’s definitely eccentric. But, uncool? Yes, but there’s a curse of being cool: it means you will eventually be a passing trend.

As I’ve followed the band since 1993, I want to go on about 2025 version of the band and Billy Corgan: The two reunions, the MySpace/LiveJournal posts of the 2000s, but those are whole other gourds to carve 🔪

For MTV and music videos to be relevant today, you’d have to inhibit the democratization of filmmaking with iPhones. Music videos are a loss-leader to any new band that no one has ever seen. The big-budget cinematography is relegated to just a few now: Lady Gaga still seems to be making high-dollar videos, and so are a lot of Latin and Korean artists. You can watch all those on YouTube…. right after you watch an inexpensive DIY video! Even those videos pale to the height of the 1990s. I was glad to have been there, even if the TVs weren’t high def 💘