 | roseinthedark |
| | CITAZIONE (nikoz @ 5/12/2011, 11:20) Commenti vari estrapolati dalle recenti interviste %u002B commento track-by-track di BC nei libretti delle reissues, riportati da spfc nelle singole pagine delle canzoni.. Cose per cui un vero spfreak dovrebbe vivere. GISHCITAZIONE I Am One
"That's my one drum beat. When I first came up with the beat, Jimmy didn't wanna play it. [...] Lyrically, it's not much of a song. It's got something to do with the holy trinity, that's all I can tell you" -BC, Matt Pinfield interview, Nov. 2011
"A statement of spiritual unity, based on the gnosis of the holy trinity. Lyrically stripped from an article I'd read on Bishop Desmond Tutu. Our first single, re-born here faster, Jack-over-the-candlestick nimble. Yellow Strat on the left, Black Les Paul on the right. Full pan. An unmistakable drum rattle from the venerable, now closed, Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Just an amble down the road from the ominous state capitol. Laws are made, laws to be broken. I am one, you are one. Infinite repeat." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE Siva
"Well, originally it was, it was 'Shiva' with an h, and that's the god of, like... destruction and- sex... and uh, then I kinda read about it and I realized that was not what I wanted for the song, I didn't want it to be identified with a specific god, it has more to do with, like, you know there's yin and yang and there's shiva and shaki, and so it's like the male aspect of Hinduism. And that's not really what the song's -about-, but... it's hard to explain." -BC (120 minutes)
"Siva's probably the first Smashing Pumpkins song where I felt, "OK, I'm on to something." I wrote the riff one day sitting in my used record store job- I used to just sit there & play acoustic all day, I wrote it on an acoustic guitar- and all I had was the "neneneneneh, neh neh, neeh." And finally I felt like, OK, I've got the heaviness I'm looking for, but it doesn't sound like heavy metal. And that was the sort of turning point for the Smashing Pumpkins, 'cause we were able to play heavy metal style, which I'd grown up in, but it didn't come across as heavy metal- it was a little bit sexier & a little bit darker." -BC, Matt Pinfield interview, Nov. 2011
"A misspell on Shiva the inhaler, the loving destroyer. A riff born whilst working away at the used record store on Broadway, watching humanity walk by dying. A prototyped blueprint of many that would follow. A breakthrough; finding the perfect light, capturing our essence that matches street power against eternal grace. Laced with LSD visions of making love by the glow of the streetlight blasting into my room on the second floor, illuminating the night. Christmas lights strung along where the pictures should be." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE Rhinoceros
"Well, it's a horrible video, I'll start there. The concept was, originally we were supposed to play in a very, very small red room. And when we got to the set that day, it was a very, very large red room. And we were like, what're we supposed to do? So the video is basically like, us being bored, um, most of the video. Literally, like us being bored on camera. At one point the record company wanted to release it as a single, and we're like "But the song's 5 minutes long", & they were trying to figure out how to edit it. That's kinda what I mean by the band's naivete, I mean- now you would say, that's a pretty good pop song, "she knows, she knows, she knows", good cat- good hook. We had no consciousness about time or length, we just would write the songs, & if they were 5 minutes long, or 7 minutes long, that's how long they were. That song is actually somewhat inspired by my first LSD trip. I was tripping my brains out for the first time, and- I was probably 22? 21? And uh, I had this prophetic, you know, this beautiful, inspired moment, I thought, "I must write this down." So I scribbled on a piece of paper this great insight, & I woke up the next day & I was like, "What was that thing that I scribbled down?" & it said, "Open your eyes to these mustard lies." So I actually put the line in the song." -BC, Matt Pinfield interview, Nov. 2011
"Idealism hidden amongst the ruins of a sentimental smear. Pandas, balloons, ice cream kids and cones; a knowing girl bats her eyelashes at you across the fairground. You know her, but you know she knows. But what is it that she knows about you? Secrets are held up for instant review, then blasted across the stratosphere with happy hope. No one is there to catch your dreams where they fall. Your dreams are all mustard lies, you see. You must open your eyes now to what you don't want to see." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE Bury Me
"The alternate version on the b-disc is the original demo, which was done before we ever met Butch, so you can see the decision was made to pretty much keep faithful version of the album version, there's really not much difference at all, other than Butch's version is far superior. It's a song I actually thought about taking off the album. By the time we got around to recording Gish, I wasn't that partial to the song. Didn't think it was that good of a song. And- but it was one of those things, like- well, we kinda looked around, we didn't have anything better, and I hadn't taken the time to write anything better, so we just ended up recording it. I kinda like it more now, because it does again capture some kind of spirit of the band. There's sort of an awkwardness to it that I like. God knows what the lyrics are about. "Bury me in love, bury me in blood"? Um, a little dark? Yeah, I dunno what else to say about that song. I wrote it in my bedroom, and- you know, a song like that we would spend a tremendous amount of time taking what is almost like a non-song, and working it & working it & working it until it's very dynamic. So even though- the song would survive & succeed & we'd play it live because the dynamics would work, even if the song wasn't so great. So I think it does kinda show something in there. But as a song, I don't rate it much at this point." -BC, Matt Pinfield interview, Nov. 2011
"Bury me in love. Bury me in blood. These lines have no connection to a meaning. Impressions strung along the wires, criss-crossing chants and chasms. Nothing has any meaning. I am buried beneath non-meaning. We are lost. Songs like these point the way; dead ends that are worth coming into blindly with fatal force. I often forget songs like this exist, but they are testament to a faith I once had, now forgotten." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE Crush
"My future wife sleeps across the room, it's 3 a.m. I am far too shy to write a song like this in front of anyone, even her. Her apartment sits above a restored, historic theatre. The riff is stolen, but I can never say where it came from. I am shamed by that, but I make it mine nonetheless. I want to be an original, without a prior copy. I cannot escape that I am made up of tiny, stitched together pieces. Curtis Mayfield's poetry inspires the romantic lyric. The whole world shimmers for all at night. Light dances off the face of my beloved. I am both in love and crushed by love. The bells are there to remind me." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE Suffer
"Even though 'Suffer' appears to be a romantic diatribe about suffering, it's actually a romantic diatribe about growing up." -BC (Jim Stapleton book)
"Existential love is for lovers, a raga dedicated to being trapped in who you are. A girl I love once and still hands me a penny whistle, and says 'do you know how to play?' I am the piper, calling in the morning hues with my simple melody. An apocalypse comes with my tune, riders now face the dawn. They have come to behead those who stand along the road, so we run and hide in the dense hungles instead. They will come for us anyway. Instead of fighting we will dance around a fire. We cease to be. Pan plays the flute far better than I." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE Snail
"Snail's one of those songs, maybe in a different era would've been probably more of a pretty acoustic song. But we were hell-bent on sort of making really loud music. So it's this kind of, it's very influenced obviously by 60s psychedelia, the lyrics & all this flower, & snails, & sunshine & all this stuff. But we're trying to find this way of playing at a really high volume, so it's almost like playing electrified folk music or something. The other thing I would point out is, the drums were done in one take. And, the direction would've been something like this to Jimmy: "OK, y'know, at the end, just go off." And so every time Jimmy would quote-unquote "go off", he would play something completely different, so whatever he does on that one particular take is so stunning- I mean, he plays such an incredible drum take at the end, that when we got to the end, we were like, "OK, that's it, you're not gonna do any bettern." And so, that's kinda the world we lived in. I mean, now, it'd almost be unfathomable in the Pro-Tool world, you'd have to do it 47 times and chop it all up. But there you have this perfectly imperfect take of Jimmy just- again, before the consciousness, before the indie world descends on us, before we're held up into the light of the mainstream world & the New York press- there's us, just making this kind of raw, power music. Which is not heavy metal, it's not really alternative music of the time, what is it? It's this kind of sunshine-fueled power music, or something." -BC, Matt Pinfield interview, Nov. 2011
"7 dreams. 7 and 7 is? 7. A girl I've named 'Flower.' She puts the sun on her tongue, tastes the stars like snowflakes. The height of who we would have been if we didn't always need to have more, and more, and then some more. The last of the innocents here. The drums are cut in one take, in a flurry of savant madness. His nose is broken, busted open in chivalry of cause. A siren calls to a snail who moves far too slow. But no one can catch him, so he moves fast enough I suppose. An electric guitar is held in front of the amp on fire until the glue shakes loose from the wood, and the tubes light up into phosphorescent blue. Hearts explode into diamonds, spades, clubs, and hollow rings." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE Tristessa
"I was very into Jack Kerouac, and I read a little book by Jack Kerouac called Tristessa, which was about a Mexican prostitute. And although the song's not about a Mexican prostitute, I thought it was such a cool title for a- I've always like girls' names in songs. Always been attracted to that. Um, like "Caroline, No", that kinda stuff. So um, I dunno, it's kinda vague. I think it's about an LSD trip, I'm not really sure. What I like about Tristessa, in hindsight, is it's probably similar to Siva as- Siva & Tristessa probably more than any other 2 songs on Gish sort of point the way where the Pumpkins are headed, this very electric, kinetic style. The use of the guitar as almost like, as Eastern instruments, pulling on the strings, & taking them out of tune, & kind of playing with the harmonics of the guitars, & a lot of open strings, & that whatever, you know. People used to say, when they'd come see us live, they'd be like, "I can't believe there's only 2 guitars playing." Because the style we would play, it would almost sound like there were 3 guitars. And James & I really learned how to do a certain kind of technique that would sort of make the band sound bigger than the other bands that we might be playing on the bill on. So, Tristessa sorta captures that, that technique & that style. And uh, still play it live, still like the song, so- it must not be too bad." -BC, Matt Pinfield interview, Nov. 2011
"Lifted from author Jack Kerouac's book of the same name, written, I think, about a Spanish prostitute. I see myself not as a whore but as a mirrored reflection in the feminine creative mind. I will await the artist within to come out to play. I call out her name longingly, coyly. Maybe I know that the artist in me is indeed meant to be a whore? Our second single this was, re-recorded to try to clarify an earlier version. In the trade-off something vital gets lost. I won't even bother to try to make it better, a shrug of ambivalence. I have already moved on from her." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE Window Paine
"Coming down off the long trip now. It's almost over people. There is still one more vista to reach, one last dive into the deep. Pistons start to sputter, the wings start to sag, nose points straight down. The window to my heart is opened up with lysergic acid and strychnine. Alchemy pries open now what a crowbar cannot. We are in the ethers now. With no oxygen, the ends fray and even the pleasantries are over. It's a rude conclusion to draw. An awakening. The trip doesn't end, it just stops." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE Daydream
"An oath in neon blue. One last simple thought to share. The other voice sings the song because the voice is prettier, more cold and far away. It's a beautiful dream but we know it ain't gonna happen; who are we fooling here? Still, it's nice to hum along. A husband and wife descend from the heavens to play the last little coda. They do not wear white. Our first encounter with the other way." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes CITAZIONE I'm Going Crazy
"Recorded live in the control room of Smart. We gather around the microphone, laughing and giggling at how stupid the song is. Who writes this shit? A false chord is fretted in mockery, the strange sound of the impending breakdown. It's too late to pull up, we are over the brink, there is no going back. They are coming to take me away ha! To be one, you must be crazy. To be crazy, you must be everyone. Bagpipes filter softly into the room, as a marching band strolls lazily past, smoking their last cigarette. Parade is over friends. Go home." -BC, Gish 2011 re-issue liner notes  | | | |
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