Tuesday, October 25, 2011

No. 954 – Pissant


Performer: Smashing Pumpkins
Songwriter: Billy Corgan
Original Release: Cherub Rock single
Year: 1993
Definitive Version: None

It seems crazy that a band would have enough leftovers after only two albums to be able to put out an entire album of “B sides,” but Smashing Pumpkins was that band. I was grateful to have new material again a year after Siamese Dream came out, even if it technically wasn’t new.

This song is the hardest of the bunch, and it hit me at just the right time. When Pisces Iscariot was released in the fall of 1994, I had initiated the family rift by disclosing to my dad and stepmother that Debbie and I had decided to go from being friends to lovers, and to top it off, my first love had left me in shambles. I’m talking, of course, about baseball. The Strike and cancellation of the 1994 postseason, which would have started the day Pisces Iscariot came out, meant that I would have no sports-entertainment release that fall. I still hadn’t rekindled my love for Ohio State football at that point, and hockey was underreported in Columbus (this being six years before the Blue Jackets came along). That was a pretty heavy one-two punch.

So, as you can imagine, I carried a lot of anger with me as the leaves started to change and drop. And I was definitely receptive to music to thrash about to when I was alone in my apartment.

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