round 1

(3) Smashing Pumpkins, “Landslide”
TOOK THE CANDY FROM
(14) Luna, “Sweet Child of Mine”
162-156
AND WILL PLAY ON IN THE SECOND ROUND

Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the aggregate of the poll below and the @marchxness twitter poll. Polls closed @ 9am Arizona time on 3/8/22.

patrick masterson: Let’s Talk About the smashing pumpkins’ “Landslide”: A Journey to the End of Hate

A landslide is a mass movement of soil, rocks or other debris down a slope or across the surface of the earth; a mudslide is distinct, defined as the large-scale movement of fine particles that are partly liquefied down or along a slope.

It’s late 1973. On one side of the country living in and around New York City and Long Island, my parents don’t yet know each other.
In the middle of the country, Mick Fleetwood is calling time on the Mystery to Me tour following a concert at Lincoln’s Pershing Auditorium: Fleetwood Mac are breaking up. Emotionally wrecked by the recent revelation that his wife Jenny Boyd was cheating on him with guitarist Bob Weston, Mick says in a meeting after the show that he can’t continue playing in the same band as Bob. Road manager John Courage fires Weston and sends him on the first plane back to the UK in an effort to save the tour, but it’s a wasted effort. The rest of the band packs up and heads home shortly thereafter.
And somewhere out west in Aspen, Stevie Nicks is at a crossroads. She’s 27 years old and alone at a house overlooking the picturesque Rockies while boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham is out touring for Don Everly. Her record with Buckingham is tanking and they’re about to be dropped by Polydor. After trying to make it in Los Angeles, she’s wondering what happens next: Do we fight to stay in this business? Do we fight to stay in this business together? Do I just call time on L.A. and find a real career in something else back home in San Francisco? Mirror in the sky, changing ocean tides and seasons: The questions are sliding down, piling up; the answers remain out of reach, buried in the snow. There’s a weight with no relief and she’s no kid anymore.

The taxonomy of landslides began in 1978 and was being refined as late as 2014 into what is known as Hungr-Leroueil-Picarelli classification, which distinguishes slides by three elements: type of movement, rock and soil.

It’s late 1993. On one side of the Atlantic, I’m in South Carolina and just starting the fourth grade. I can do extremely basic songs on a beige Yamaha recorder and I’m taking once-a-week piano lessons, but it goes without saying that I am, broadly speaking, a terrible musician. I like Hendrix, Zeppelin and Floyd but have no substantive opinions about music. The only subcultures I’m familiar with involve cars and airplanes.
On the other, Billy Corgan is 26 and on the ascent. After six years of dating, he’d quietly married girlfriend Chris Fabian over the summer. And after a promising debut, the sophomore Smashing Pumpkins album he put together practically alone with producer Butch Vig down in Georgia that spring while he grew increasingly suicidal and the rest of his band processed breakups and drug addiction is now drawing unanimous praise; for all the physical and psychological toil, months of recording and going $250,000 over budget, Virgin has a hit and Siamese Dream is gaining a legion of followers among the grunge faithful. The man and the band have found their footing, some stability, and they’ve just landed in the UK for 11 shows that will start with a brief session at the BBC and finish at Brixton Academy, both in London, to cap off a monthlong European tour. On the recording docket for their first day in England are two Siamese Dream songs, “Disarm” and “Quiet,” plus two covers: Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.”

The Heart Mountain slide in Wyoming is the largest known landslide above sea level and occurred 48 million years ago, affecting an area of roughly 2,000 cubic kilometers.

It’s the summer of 1996. My cousin Kelley, indisputably the coolest person I know, is down from Long Island visiting for a few days with my uncle and grandfather, and she’s let me borrow her cassette player for a while. On it are songs by a Chicago band called The Smashing Pumpkins, who I have heard in passing on our local alt-rock station but never registered the presence of otherwise. I continually rewind three songs in particular: “Tonight, Tonight,” full of lush orchestral accompaniment and a steadily ascending sense of drama; “Eye,” an addictive bit of synth-rock minimalism that she’s clearly taped off the radio; and “Zero,” which has maybe the coolest guitar riff I’ve ever heard. It occurs to me that I never hear this band on VH1. I wonder what else gets played on MTV that I don’t know about because our cable company is too conservative to provide it. For the first time in my life, I register that there’s a music culture I don’t know anything about but might actually like.
It takes a return visit by Kelley to hear the same cassette a year later and an interregnum where I can’t stop playing Third Eye Blind’s debut, but by early 1999, things are pretty much settled: If anyone asks, The Smashing Pumpkins are my favorite band. I request the remaining albums I don’t yet have for Christmas. I get excited for Machina. I consider the possibility of seeing them live. I’m on messageboards and downloading what I can find from Napster. I’m sliding into serious fandom as the millennium turns over. And I’m crestfallen when Billy Corgan announces the breakup of the band on my 15th birthday and I force a chapter in my life to close.

The largest known landslide is the submarine Agulhas slide near South Africa, occurring approximately 2.6 million years ago and affecting some 20,000 cubic kilometers.

For the number of times it’s come up over the years, I’ve never grown tired of playing devil’s advocate to the critical consensus (Siamese Dream) or popular vote (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness) that the best album by The Smashing Pumpkins—still my favorite band as I sit here at home, in Chicago of all places, writing this out in the winter of 2022—is (well, actually) wedged between those two. Ostensibly just a loose collection of b-sides and rarities, songs the band didn’t or couldn’t find a home for, Pisces Iscariot was still one of 1994’s best records. There was unrelenting rock ("Frail and Bedazzled," "Hello Kitty Kat"), there were quieter tracks ("Soothe," "Obscured"), there was even a pleasant James Iha number (“Blew Away”); in sum, despite being a bunch of castaways, it had everything you could hope for from a Pumpkins LP ahead of the shark-jumping double album that would instigate the capitalized-article “The” and their ensuing imperial phase, where they’d bleed in their own light once and for all.
An important component to maintaining that momentum in the breather between formal full-lengths, Corgan’s solo cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” recorded live at the BBC was released as a Pisces single in late 1994 and peaked at #30 on the Billboard charts that December. In the land before “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” “Landslide” was ubiquitous on modern rock radio; anecdotally speaking, it stayed that way in certain parts of the country for years after, too, inescapable long after its relevance as a stopgap single. As a result, it’s no exaggeration to say that, “Zero” notwithstanding, “Landslide” is the most important Smashing Pumpkins song to me — not because I love it, but because I really, really don’t.
“I don’t love it” is too tepid for how I feel about the Pumpkins’ “Landslide” cover, actually. Let’s try again: I hate this song. It’s bad in so many ways, and it makes an impressive case both for voting for Wade Pavlick’s excellent essay on Luna’s “Sweet Child of Mine” to your right and for never listening to The Smashing Pumpkins again. But it’s also crucial because it taught me how to think about art more critically, how to consider that even your favorites could be flawed. It taught me to kill my idols. It paved the way for learning there are no heroes. And it prepared me well not just for second-guessing my own instincts, but also for grappling (and coping) with a modern world plagued by everything from environmental disasters to institutional rot to misleading overinformation. It showed, ultimately, how nothing is beyond reproach. Everything good must come qualified. Maybe it’s why I became a professional fact-checker and copy editor.
So, okay: Those are some big, bleak leaps! Let’s take a step back, then, and first address what’s good about this song. Almost half a century ago, Stevie Nicks peered out a Colorado window and came up with a wonderful metaphor. It’s a song about being in flux, the uncertain liminal state between wherever there was and wherever here will be, a place every person knows to some degree. Its lyrics don’t read as forced, Buckingham’s guitar on the original an understated complement allowing Stevie to use the full range of her voice to get her message across. It’s sweet without being sickly sentimental, and numerous covers in its wake only drive home that the jury has long been in, the evidence incontrovertible: There is no better version of “Landslide” than the original.
There is also no worse version than what Billy Corgan offers up on Pisces Iscariot (aside from, I guess I should also qualify this, every other time he’s played it). Let’s leave aside that even Fleetwood Mac didn’t think it was worth making a single. It’s not just that it’s a solo acoustic performance, though that doesn’t help the cause; like cars and jets, I believe rock music is best at high volume (say what you will, but at least “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” has some rich licks scrawled across the underlying histrionics). Still, I’ve never shied away from enjoying a number on the quiet side. Unfortunately, unlike Nicks, who can handle the weight of her own song, Billy evidently struggles and everyone ends up coming off all the worse for it. One of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies says to look closely at the most embarrassing detail and amplify it; “Landslide” offers us the unique thrill of hearing Billy look closely and amplify every embarrassing detail.
He admits in the Pisces liner notes that he didn’t even know how to play this song correctly before Jimmy Flemion of The Frogs corrected him. It’s unclear from the booklet if Billy had figured it out by the time of the BBC recording, but a side-by-side listen with the original sure seems to suggest he didn’t. It’s a lax, spartan interpretation.
Even that could be forgiven, however, were it not for Corgan’s delivery. Can you hear that there, on the breeze? Well, of course you can: The wince you just made was you recalling Billy Corgan’s voice at its most irritating. I once heard his singing described as a drowning rat, which I long found funny but got a little defensive about because there are plenty of instances where that isn’t the case, where his delivery elides his worst characteristics—“Soma,” say, or “Perfect,” which really is, or “French Movie Theme.” Not here. God, just listening back to this again is painful. He repeatedly struggles, then abandons the high notes. In some places he’s rushing his delivery for no reason, others he’s on beat but unwilling (or, more likely, unable) to sustain notes and, thus, the performance. But what might be the real coup de grâce for anyone looking to give this cover (and band) a chance is the way he draws out the “I’m” in “I’m getting older, too”—real mercury-down-the-ear-canal type stuff. I get angry just thinking about it.
Even before they rebooted as a lamentable simulacrum of their first run, The Smashing Pumpkins had a ton of covers both recorded and live. Most of them are inoffensively middling; the band was never better than when they played their own material. But “Landslide” is a special case of musical taxidermy, eviscerating the original’s real-time adult maturation and stuffing it instead with stunted teen angst too ridiculous to acknowledge.
It has, of course, featured regularly in setlists since 2008. Fans love the cover. So does Stevie Nicks.

There is no central database for recording landslides, though some for specific countries or regions (e.g., UNESCO, Norway, the U.S.) do exist.

It’s a fine line. Before The Smashing Pumpkins, it never occurred to me to love music — nor to hate it. I was more naturally ambivalent, content to receive inherited wisdom and nod my head or switch stations, skip to a CD’s next track and move on. But as the years have piled up—I’m 36 right now, and as a little memento mori for you, Billy Corgan turns 55 this year, Stevie Nicks 74—my tolerance for things I don’t like has also worn down. I won’t invest time in fantasy novels or bad TV just because they’re available. I’ve given up on liking fish. And I’m bold enough now to admit I’m never playing “Landslide” again after this essay if I can help it. But I couldn’t have known how much I’d hate it without knowing how much I’d love the band first.
Somewhere right now, a 36-year-old is digging through old CDs, clicking around aimlessly on Spotify, landing on Pisces Iscariot. It all comes rushing back—the disc may be scratched or the laptop beat up, but the people, the places, the adolescent struggle, the scope of their life and everything that’s changed since remains crystalline. Sure, why not? For old time’s sake, on it goes. Somewhere else, a teen is taking a break from TikTok to look through their parents’ music collection and stumbles upon a record with this blurry green face by someone called … Smashing Pumpkins? Pisces Iscariot? Tough to say and strange either way, but maybe there’s something to it. Let’s see, they say, checking their phone to see if it’s also available for streaming. Where one chapter closes, another opens. I know it’s happening. That’s the reflection in the snow-covered hills.
It’s not just about climbing the mountain, though; it’s about having the sense to turn around and take stock of the terrain, gain perspective, heighten awareness, see there are many paths forward. Some people have that. Those who don’t mostly avoid committing themselves to tape for posterity to prove as much. Mostly.

Patrick Masterson lives and works in Chicago, the home of The Smashing Pumpkins, but he promises it’s just an accident of history. He can be found @pmmmasterson.

wade pavlick on luna’s “sweet child o’ mine”

“Hey, have you heard that new Stranglers song? Always The Sun?”
     This is how I am greeted on the first day of the second semester at my new school. The boy sitting in the desk next to me has a gleam in his eye, eager in this moment to share his love of music with me.
I don't even know what to say. No, I haven't heard it. And what kind of name is that anyway? The Stranglers? It sounds dangerous. The kind of music our church leaders warned us against, fierce, dark and foreboding, nothing like the pop songs that warm my heart every day. But I'm almost fifteen now and adulthood is just around the corner. Maybe this is what I need? Though, I know that what I really need is connection, someone with a friendly hand reaching out. And here he is, this boy with music in his heart.
I grew up a single child, lonely even when I wasn't alone. I didn't understand others, found it hard to connect with the way people navigated in the world, It was awkward, this human social struggle. It was so hard to bear an honest expression. So, I receded into the avenues of my mind, immersed in the depths of a book or the quiet places people leave behind. It was easy to disappear, embrace the silence and the patience therein. It became a room where I could feel and be, in a more natural way. It was a place I often filled with music, songs that gave names to the feelings that I found so hard to express. It was here that clarity filled me like a balloon, singing along to Journey, while joy elevated into belief that refused to stop. Or, shouting in anguish with The Human League, desperate for someone to see me, to want me.
I spent an entire week waiting to hear that song from The Stranglers. How would I know it? But I had special instructions from Mark, my new friend, “Listen to 91X and, believe me, you'll know it,” he told me. A few days later it came across the airwaves and, yes, I knew it! And, yes, I loved it! Along the way I discovered so much more, a new world of music, alternative college radio. I fell for bands like REM, yearned for heartbreak with The Psychedelic Furs, danced away my anguish with Roxy Music and ached to be like The Replacements. I'd found a realm that belonged to me, a new community of friends who wanted to share their innermost thoughts on INXS's prayer for a brand new day. These were my people and I knew that I would never be lonely again.

By the time we were Seniors, Guns 'N Roses were the biggest thing in the land. It seemed like they came out of nowhere, the residue of hairband complacency, but they'd been around for years in Los Angeles. 'Appetite For Destruction' was almost a year old when 'Sweet Child Of Mine' hit the airwaves in the summer of 1988. I didn't like them, with their messy blues that sounded like it was dragged through the muck, while Axel Rose's prepubescent shriek skittered around above it all. Slash's crystalline guitar licks running through like a vein of silver seemed to be the only element holding it together. But history doesn't lie, there was something in their music, something that gave voice to a generation, that catapulted us into a decade of apathy and grunge.
In 1980, President Reagan heralded in the new dawn by claiming that “We may be the generation that sees Armageddon.”  It was this mentality of despair that became a guide for many of us who came of age during that decade. It was never, “If we drop the bomb”, but rather, “When”. So, as the 80s came to a close, it wasn't that we lacked a sense of hope, but more that we knew not to expect it anyway. That our parents, the generation before us, had no intention of sharing any of it. When you live with the constant threat of destruction during such primordial years, it only makes sense that you'd come to have an appetite for it. Guns 'N Roses channeled that essence and spoke to us, said, “Come on, let's break some shit.” It was dangerous and filthy and we were ready to embrace it.
But isn't that what Rock N Roll is all about anyway? Doesn't every generation need an outlet to help them overcome the oppression of the one that came before? To rebel against an establishment that has no faith in them? Isn't that what music, what art, what creativity is at heart, truly? A call for meaning, to push back against the tide of conformity, against a status quo that crushes your agency! And Guns 'N Roses were so good at it! From the explicit anti-establishment images in their videos, which caused MTV to hesitate to air them, to their live performances that felt unhinged, dangerous. They tapped into the source and were eager to share it with us.
     Gen X ate it up. By the time we graduated a year later, we were ready to harness that energy and bring it to the world. It was glorious and dark and fucking real! What more could an discontent eighteen-year-old ask for? The 90s were about to crack open its door and we were ready to pounce.
Welcome to the jungle.

“Sweet Child Of Mine” was Appetite's ballad. That was the format back then. All the Rock albums at the time had a bring me down song, a come to Jesus moment, to show their tender side. Even Guns 'N Roses, the hair punk anti-heroes had to conform somewhat. Although, it did turn out to be their only ever #1 hit that launched them beyond the atmosphere. I never thought of it as a ballad. It lacked the syrup, after all. They ended up clarifying it as a power ballad, with Slash's arpeggio leading the way. It was a power pop angel hearkening with guitar driven sentimentality. It was the one song I gravitated toward, with my notions of romance still clinging to the tendrils of my clouded heart. Little did I know, but the band's ethos of nihilistic hedonism lay slumbering around in there and it wouldn't take long for me to embrace their ways. Yet, at the time, I still believed that the dream of love and appreciation would conquer all. The pop songs I adored growing up had promised so much, after all, but in the end I had no idea what the future had in store for me. It wasn't long until I couldn't escape that ever-present thought of, “Where do we go? Where do we go now? Where do we go?”
It was ten years on when it began to make sense to me. I was in my late twenties, desperately trying to find purpose in life. I was so different, no longer that frightened boy, who was waiting for the universe to grant me beauty and love the way certain lyrics promised. Somewhere along the way the darkness in desire had warped me. Or rather, I allowed this hunger to distort the poetry of my youth, leaving a trail of deceit and tears behind me. I had learned that lying and cheating never reveals truth or beauty. It is always destructive. It always leads to unhappiness and I had come to a moment in life when I had to change or I would be miserable forever.
It's interesting how a band will come to define an era. It's so personal, but I can look back and see clearly how a song or a certain group was so instrumental in defining what I was thinking at the time, or how I perceived the world right then. Luna's 'The Days Of Our Nights' album came out in the fall of 1999. I was a newlywed, having been married for about a month. My partner and I were already into their music, with their previous two albums in heavy rotation on our humble stereo. We fell in love with their dreamy discordant chords and dadaesque lyrics that felt in rhythm with this new phase of our lives. 'Days' is a power pop masterpiece, where almost every track embodies the spirit of the GnR's 'Sweet Child Of Mine', culminating in the honey of Luna's blessed cover. Dean Wareham's haunting guitar pulls you in to a warm safe memory of what you once were but it's so much more tender, seeking a richer experience, evolved, hopeful. That's exactly who we were at the time. We were striving to be together, maybe forever, and though it was easy at times, with open-hearted passion, there's more to a lasting relationship than a simple embrace. The person next to you has to be as important to you as yourself. Their dreams, desires, needs must be just as vital as your own. That's what it means to take a vow with someone. It takes determination, to do the work, to believe in someone else completely and respect who they are with all that you are. It also takes time, each day, every moment tuningcalibrating your presence toward this partnership.
It was difficult for me, confusing. The passages of my heart were not as clear as I had hoped. It was still so hard to bear an honest expression, though I wasn't a child anymore. I could no longer fall back on such immature excuses. When I heard Luna's version of  'Sweet Child Of Mine”, I realized that I could never have a love as deep as I wanted unless I came to know my true self. I had to find out how to love the person that I was, faults and all, and embrace the person that I wanted to be. The lyrics had new meaning. I was the sweet child and none of the visions, the freshness of the bright blue sky or the terror of the thunder and rain were out there in some other place. I had to take control of my life, rather than allowing my environment to control me, and that meant that I had to learn how to believe in myself.

Christina and I are still married, going on 23 years, and we still get lost in each other the way I still get lost in Luna's glorious cover of 'Sweet Child Of Mine'. Luna has been there the entire time, from the playfulness of 'Bewitched' to the delirious guitar work of 'Pup Tent' to the amazing covers on their most recent album 'A Sentimental Education'. Music is such a delicate aspect of our relationship. Christina opened my life to a variety of performers I never imagined before I met her, stunning melodies from all over the world, in any genre. We have spent hours and hours of endless nights ensconced in the wonder of music. Whether it's being immersed in the likes of Bill Evans and his tender keys or lost in the mindless dance party led by Yelle, it's a magical experience for us, part of who we've become. This is the way of the path. You build a love that lasts. It doesn't just happen.
We have two children, and my daughter was recently telling me about her and her friends favorite song right now. It's a parody Star Wars song that is hilariously excellent in the same way we thought Weird Al Yankovic was hilariously excellent. Of course, when I asked her if she knew who Weird Al was, she was like, “Yeah, Dad, everybody knows who Weird Al is.” This is her time, a new era, one where every song is available to anyone in an instant. It's hard to imagine that a certain band, or a certain song will become such a defining classic for this generation the way that Guns 'N Roses did for us back then. The internet has changed the the way we consume things. There are no more gatekeepers. There's no more waiting to hear that one riff that will set our radios on fire. Yet, that doesn't mean that it's worse, somehow. It's just different. Who's going to provide the shrieking fiery refrain that addresses all of their fears and anxiety? They have their own Armageddon. There's so much uncertainty about the future. Maybe it's not the bomb that hovers over their lives, but there's Climate Change and the diminishing returns of Capitalism and a looming Civil War. They, too, need an outlet, an expression that will help them fight these causes with hope and clarity. Maybe the laughter found in Star Wars parody tunes is enough for now, and there will always be so much adventure in discovering new music and sharing it with others. This is a universal truth that goes beyond any barrier, that cuts through any discord and lifts us, always. Each of us, in our own way, will come to find music that will embody who we are, right where we are.
     The other night, Mark and I shared an evening together, a drink in hand and good sounds filling the room. We had a lengthy discussion regarding the merits of hearing Townes Van Zandt stripped down, just a guitar in his hand and a desire to share his voice. There aren't many in this life who have expressed so much with so little. He was a true wonder. So many of our conversations begin with, “What are you listening to right now?” For more than thirty years, we've shared this love of music that all began with a search for the greatness of The Stranglers. He invites us over often, our families spending time around the pool or around the barbecue. It's always a delight to see them.
His oldest is in her first year of college. Mine is applying for his higher education path right now. They've known each other their entire lives, since before they can even remember. One plays piano, the other viola. Music is part of who they are. They will forever know the joy of expression through this medium, no need for words, just a melody, just a tone that is all their own. All of it simply because of one question.
Have you heard that song by that band?

Wade Pavlick lives in San Diego with his Wife, two children and two munchkin dogs. His writing may be found in Black Candies and the anthology Last Night On Earth. You can follow him on Twitter @MishuPishu