The Smashing Pumpkins - Glass and The Machines of God

The Smashing Pumpkins – 

Glass and The Machines of God

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Disc One:

1.  If There Is A God

2.  Cash Car Star

3.  The Imploding Voice

4.  Wound

5.  The Sacred + Profane

6.  Stand Inside Your Love

7.  Real Love

8.  Innosence

9.  Let Me Give The World To You

10.  The Crying Tree of Mercury

11.  White Spyder

12.  Raindrops + Sunshowers

13.  Glass + The Ghost Children

14.  Go

Disc Two:

1.  Glass Theme

2.  The Everlasting Gaze

3.  Dross

4.  In My Body

5.  Speed Kills

6.  Lucky 13

7.  Heavy Metal Machine

8.  Blue Skies Bring Tears

9.  I of the Mourning

10.  Here’s To The Atom Bomb

11.  Try, Try, Try

12.  Home

13.  This Time

14.  With Every Light

This is a reconstruction of the proposed double-concept album originally meant to be The Smashing Pumpkins’ fifth and final proper studio album in 1999.  Originally conceived as a rock opera, the concept was dropped because of band member disintegration and disinterest as well as record label pushback.  The album was eventually released as the massive commercial failure MACHINA/The Machines of God in 2000, with most of the leftover tracks released posthumously by the band without their label’s consent as MACHINA II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music later than year.  This reconstruction attempts to cull the best possible sources (including the Machina pre-master and the best vinyl rip of Machina II), unifying their respective volumes and organize them into a cohesive double album that follows the Machina storyline.  Specific alternate versions of some tracks were utilized to give the album more of an organic “live band”-sound as opposed to the overproduced Machina album.

The Smashing Pumpkins were no strangers to turmoil.  Firing their drummer Jimmy Chamberlin in 1996 for perpetual drug use, the band made a 180-turn from their patented guitar sonics that made 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness a landmark double album to an unusual combination of acoustic and electronic for their follow-up, 1998’s Adore.  Despite having superior songwriting and inventive arrangements, the album was less of a success as their previous efforts.  The tour in support of the album showed the band re-interpreting the soft-spoken material for a live rock-band, and the eventual re-hiring of Chamberlin in late 1998 showed promise that The Smashing Pumpkins were back to what they did best: loud fuzzy guitars pared with some of the best drumming of the decade. 

By April 1999, the band reconvened for their Arising Tour, meant to showcase the return of the original lineup.  Most of the set featured all new material, effortlessly written by head-Pumpkin Billy Corgan within the four months prior.  These tunes were part of a larger song cycle that would fill two CDs of a double-concept album tentatively called Glass and The Machines of God which concerned a rock star named Glass , his true love June, their rise and fall and Glass's redemption.  Most notably, the four members of The Smashing Pumpkins were to portray the characters of the concept album—Glass and his band The Machines of God, who were literal parodies of the public personas of the four members of The Smashing Pumpkins themselves —in promotion of the album. 

Unfortunately the machine was never switched on.  Halfway through recording the album, bass player D’Arcy Wretzky was dismissed from the band due to alleged erratic behavior; how could the band portray a convincing parody of themselves without the key members?  The situation worsened with guitarist James Iha’s increasing ambivalence to the band itself, as well as a record label unwilling to promote a convoluted double-album follow-up to the commercial failure Adore.  The solution was to scrap the concept and release the best material as MACHINA/The Machines of God, much like Lifehouse became Who’s Next 25 years earlier (a reconstruction also featured on this blog).  Machina was even more of a failure than Adore and by the end of the tour in support of the album, Iha wanted out.  The Smashing Pumpkins played their final show that December.  In one final rebellious move against the record label that had abandoned him, Corgan released the outtakes from the Machina sessions as a limited edition vinyl release, Machina II, with the explicit instructions to share and pirate it, making the album one of the first to be freely distributed on the internet by a major artist. 

Reconstructing Glass and The Machines of God is no easy task.  Corgan has been extremely vague and cryptic about how it would have been constructed, in as much as leaking false numerical codes allegedly forming track sequences.  Point of fact, of the 30-or-so songs recording during the sessions, Corgan has only divulged the narrative context of “Blue Skies Bring Tears”, “Speed Kills” and “With Every Light”.  Luckily Corgan has leaked a blueprint of the song cycle itself with a list of 17 of the cycle’s songs, all offering varying ways the songs could fit into the cycle.  Using this map, as well as song lyric interpretation matched with the synopsis of the album’s story written in Corgan’s typical superfluous prose, we are able to chart out a track sequence.  Both Corgan’s chart and his synopsis are included for reference. 

The only issue left is what sources should be used.  To avoid the terrible mastering found on Machina I, I used a rip of the leaked pre-master, featuring a larger dynamic range as well as subtlety different mixes.  As for the Machina II tracks I used the best possible source, the Virgin promo rip.  I then re-EQd the entire rip to match the EQ parameters of the tracks that were officially released (since those few were sourced from a non-vinyl master).  Since we also have a number of alternate versions of many of the songs, I specifically vied towards the versions of the songs that featured more of an organic ‘live-band’ and stripped-down arrangement and production, as that was allegedly how Glass and The Machines of God would have sounded.  The bootlegs Machina Acoustic Demos and The Original FEMM Tape were used, they were not the "th13rteen remasters" but original CD rips.  Setting a 28-song limit to ensure that this not become too overblown, a few songs were left on the cutting room floor: “The Age of Innocence” is excluded from this reconstruction as the song was written and recorded at the last minute and tagged onto the end of the Machina album, having nothing to do with the song cycle at all; “Slow Dawn”, “Vanity” and “Saturnine” all seemed too unfinished, skeletal and unneeded to communicate the story; “Soul Power” was a cover; and “Le Deux Machina” was already an element of “Glass + The Ghost Children”.  By the end, I have arranged two nearly 60-minute discs of 14 songs each, which seemed to be The Standard Smashing Pumpkins Album Length. 

Disc one beings with Glass establishing his character as a rather agnostic rock star, leader of The Machines of God, utilizing Corgan’s acoustic demo of “If There Is A God” which overlaps into the pummeling “Cash Car Star”; although most reconstructions of this album begin with “Glass Theme”, I chose this alternate route because this was how the band often performed the two songs live.  It was also quite reminiscent of the first two tracks from The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1994 b-sides compilation Pisces Iscariot, which always struck me as an extremely dynamic opening.  “The Imploding Voice” represents ‘The Voice’ of God speaking to Glass through the radio and instructing him to spread the word of love to the world through his music; “Wound” is Glass’s reaction to the sudden realization that he is a modern-day prophet and with “The Sacred + Profane” Glass begins to change the message of his band’s music with heavenly divination. 

The next part of the song cycle involves Glass’s love interest June and so all of the ‘love songs’ are grouped together—“Stand Inside Your Love”, “Real Love”, “Innosence” and “Let Me Give The World To You”.  Following this, Glass reaches a ‘crossroads’ in trying to balance his hedonistic rock n roll life with June vs. what he believes as his spiritual duty, articulated in “The Crying Tree of Mercury”, “White Spyder” (the spyder being a symbol for June’s drug use) and “Raindrops + Sunshowers.”  Following is the standard Smashing Pumpkins epic 10-mnute track, “Glass + The Ghost Children” in which the dictaphone middle section now actually makes sense as it specifically deals with Glass confessing his holy charge to June but fearing he may be instead mad.  James Iha’s “Go” has been problematic as it didn’t seem to fit in with the Machina concept at all, so it is sequenced here to close disc one, much as his “Take Me Down” closes disc one of Mellon Collie.  Perhaps it is sung from June’s point of view?

The second disc opens with what Corgan revealed as the ‘live set’ of the album, in which several songs would be grouped together as a mock live performance of The Machines of God.  Opening with actual audience ambience from a soundboard tape of their 9/20/2000 performance, Glass has grown cynical from his fans’ perceived betrayal of ‘rock n roll’ in “Glass Theme” and questions if ‘The Voice’ was even real in “The Everlasting Gaze” as his own band’s record sales plummet.  June becomes alienated from Glass and her resent is stated in “Dross”, following by increased drug use and a withdrawal inside herself in “In My Body”.  After an explosive fight, June is killed in a car crash as depicted in “Speed Kills”, using the ‘live-band’ version from Machina 2.  Glass blames himself and this sends him over the edge in “Lucky 13”, finally deciding to break up the band in “Heavy Metal Machine”.  

The night before the final show, Glass has a terrifying dream as heard in “Blue Skies Bring Tears”: a vision that without God, love, fans or even a band, he is now completely alone.  Here I chose an early arrangement of the song as performed on the Arising Tour to avoid the overproduced album versions.  Abandoning all belongings, Glass takes to the streets as a beggar, as depicted in “I of the Mourning”, and “Here’s To The Atom Bomb” (the mellow version from Machina 2).  In being alone and with nothing, he realizes that love, God, etc was there in his heart all along in “Try, Try, Try” (the mellow version found on the "Untitled" promo CD), “Home” and “This Time”.  The album closes with “With Every Light”, as Corgan had claimed, some sort of happy ending. 

An interesting side note is that within 6 months to a year from now, Corgan plans to release a remixed and remastered Machina featuring his originally-intended double-album tracklist as a part of the remastered series of The Smashing Pumpkins’ discography.  Will it appear and sound as I have offered here?  That is anyone’s guess, and I am curious to see how close I am to his vision.  But keep in mind Billy Corgan’s penchant for historical revision, as well as the recent fan dissatisfaction with the remasters’ quality control issues.  Whether this reconstruction is truly what the artist intended, it will always be here as an 'album that never was' just in case the real deal is crushed underneath Corgan’s own heavy metal machine. 

Sources used:

Rotten Apples/Judas O (2001 Virgin Records)

The Original F.E.M.M. Tape (bootleg 2003)

MACHINA/the machines of God (pre-master, 1999)

MACHINA II/friends and enemies of modern music (Virgin Records-sourced needledrop, 2001)

Machina Acoustic Demos (bootleg)

Untitled (Virgin promo CD 2001)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR and Audacity--> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

Weezer - Songs From The Black Hole

Weezer – Songs From The Black Hole

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Act I:

1.  Blast Off!

2.  You Won’t Get With Me Tonight

3.  Why Bother?

4.  Maria’s Theme

5.  Come To My Pod

6.  This Is Not For Me

7.  Tired of Sex 

Act II:

8.  Superfriend

9.  She’s Had A Girl

10.  Good News!

11.  Getting Up and Leaving

12.  Now I Finally See

13.  Getchoo

14.  I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams

Act III:

15.  Waiting On You

16.  No Other One

17.  Devotion

18.  What Is This I Find?

19.  Longtime Sunshine

In an intentional effort for this blog to cover contemporary albums as well as the classic, this is a reconstruction of what could have been Weezer’s second album, the intended 1995 “space”-rock opera Songs From The Black Hole.  After a few rounds of demo-stage development and an initial recording session, the album was eventually scrapped and reworked into the first four songs of their second album proper, 1996’s Pinkerton.  My reconstruction is designed to be a full, complete album (as much as possible anyways) so a number of edits and crossfades were made; this is not simply a playlist of the intended songs from Songs From The Black Hole.  Furthermore, in an effort for the album to become ‘more operatic’, pieces of "Longtime Sunshine" were used throughout to create a leitmotif and the entire album was organized into three 15-minute acts.  All recordings used were authentic Weezer or Rivers Cuomo recordings; no fan-made covers or re-imaginations were used.  

This reconstruction is technically a revision as I had previously created one in late 2010 upon the release of Alone III (the solo Rivers Cuomo release containing the final missing pieces needed to reconstruct Songs From The Black Hole).  Unfortunately that reconstruction suffered from the ethos of ‘trying to being the first!’ and had some errors I regret making.  It was a hasty reconstruction made to compete with about thirty others, all making ‘their own take on SFTBH’, and mine contained some missteps (namely my attempt to change the ending of the rock opera itself!).  I believe hindsight has allowed me to create a more natural, flowing, and complete Songs From The Black Hole reconstruction, one truer to Rivers Cuomo’s original narrative and presented as a sonically finished album.  

A problem with the source material is the varying quality of recordings.  Since only half of this album was even recorded properly in the studio, half of this reconstruction can only exist as solo Rivers Cuomo demo tapes.  Luckily for us, Weezer intentionally recorded the songs from Songs From The Black Hole—and Pinkerton as well—in a rough, harsh and abrasive manner, reminiscent of live recordings.  The reality is that these rough-sounding studio recordings generally sit well alongside Cuomo’s own rough-sounding home demos!  To further push this envelope I chose to use alternate 'rough takes' of “Getchoo” and “Tired of Sex” found on the Pinkerton Delux remaster.  That also allows us a further alternate listening experience to that of Pinkerton (which is the reason we are doing this in the firstplace, right?).

A second lucky break for us, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and roadie Karl Koch has given the Weezer fan community an abundance of information about this intended album.  We know there were three official tracklists: two demo versions and an actual script of the opera, complete with character dialog and musical interludes, written by Cuomo.  The question is which tracklist should be used?  In looking at the source material available, it seems that the elongated and often superfluous script-tracklist contains versions of the songs we simply do not have.  For instance, alternate lyrical versions of “Tragic Girl”; we could not use this track in our reconstruction because the version we have does not fit the lyrical narrative and thus makes no sense.  Furthermore, it seems the demo versions available to us from the Alone series are all from Cuomo’s second tracklist (because of the inclusion of “Who You Callin Bitch?”), yet the available version of “You Won’t Get With Me Tonight” is from the first tracklist (as the lyrics overlap with the aforementioned “Who You Callin Bitch?” instead of acting as a closing number).  The answer is to combine all three versions of the tracklist into one ad hoc tracklist.  Furthermore, each act features the addition of one song not originally featured on the tracklists in an effort to round each act up to 15 minutes and thus a 45-minute total album runtime.  These include “Why Bother?” (long-known to have been a part of the project but just simply not found on the demo), “Waiting On You” (featured in the third script-tracklist but not the demos) and “Getting Up And Leaving” (while not a part of either of the three tracklists, a Pinkerton-era outtake that thematically fits perfectly into SFTBH).   Lastly, some volume adjustments were made on certain songs to make this a more sonically dynamic album all around.  

Act I of my reconstruction begins with the piano intro to “Longtime Sunshine” hard edited into “Blast Off!”.  Not only does this create an excellent leitmotif and introduction to the album but it solves the problem of the missing first beat of “Blast Off” (lost somewhere on an older demo presumably).   Here we see the main protagonist Jonas embarking on a space-mission and discussing his woes to shipmates Wuan, Dondo and the android M1.  Upon entering the scene, Dondo calls the ship’s cook—Jonas’s ex-flame Maria--an unflattering expletive, which instigates a conversation between Jonas and Maria contained in the lyrics of the following song.   This becomes problematic in my reconstruction since we have two songs that occupy the same “narrative space” from two different tracklists: “Who You Callin Bitch” and “You Won’t Get With Me Tonight”.  Since the later is a mainstay of the album and, in this author’s opinion, is one of the band’s best songs, we should give the song its prominent place.  Here I’ve created a hard edit from the first half of “Who You Calling Bitch” directly into “You Won’t Get With Me Tonight” so there is little lyrical overlap.  The channels of the song were switched so that the drums are predominantly panned to the left to match the previous songs.  This segues directly into “Why Bother?”, which although was not present on any of the tracklists, it is common knowledge that it was a part of SFTBH.  Here it is placed in the only logical position, as Jonas explains his hesitancy to be with Maria because of previous heartbreaks.  “Maria’s Theme” is the combination of “Oh Jonas” and “Please Remember” with a softened fade-in from its usually clipped beginning, in which Jonas is beckoned by Maria and finally gives in to his own desires.  Segued into the love scene of “Come To My Pod”, it is followed by Jonas’s sudden realization that this is not for him in the aptly-titled “This Is Not For Me”, which I have crossfaded into the beginning of the studio outtake version of “Tired of Sex” mimicking the demo arrangements.  

Act II fades in with the a capella arrangement of “Longtime Sunshine” (thought to be the “reprise” version found on the demo sequence) edited into “Superfriend” in which Jonas confides to his friend Laurel his romantic woes, who subsequently scorns him.  Laurel is the “good girl”, in contrast to the "bad girl" Maria, and Jonas realizes he is smitten by his shipmate and confidant; unfortunately Laurel has friend-zoned him, halting his affection.  Later, Maria gives birth to Jonas’s daughter as depicted in the following “She’s Had A Girl” and Jonas realizes he is trapped.  Suddenly Wuan and Dondo enter the scene and announce that their spaceship has finally landed in “Good News!”.  Next is my own creative decision to beef up the album by adding “Getting Up And Leaving”, a song not usually from Songs From The Black Hole.  Yet it completely fits in with the themes of escapism in the opera, and when placed here, Jonas is literally leaving Maria and his newborn daughter (details otherwise ambiguous).  Next is “Now I Finally See” in which Jonas realizes he wants to be with Laurel and tries to win her over.  She denies him yet again (details of this are ambiguous in the opera) and Jonas laments in the rough tracking alternate take of “Getchoo” while likewise Laurel second-guesses herself in “I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams”.

Act III opens with the last non-tracklist addition, the Pinkerton B-side “Waiting On You”, which was actually written for the unreleased SFTBH anyways.  Here Maria cries out, waiting, wanting and hoping for Jonas’s return to her and their child.  After Laurel’s rejection, Jonas has an epiphany that Maria, the “bad girl”, was the right girl for him all along in “No Other One” and the two lovers finally embrace and rejoice in “Devotion”.  In a devastatingly dramatic turn, all expectations come crashing down when Jonas finds a used condom in “What Is This I Find?”  Used by Maria and either Wuan or Dondo during Jonas’s absence, this fulfills his own prophesy from Act I—"Why bother?  It’s gonna hurt me."  At the conclusion of the rock opera, Jonas reiterates the reoccurring sentiment of escapism throughout Songs From The Black Hole in “Longtime Sunshine”, a metaphor for 'the great something' that Jonas is searching for, be it space travels or amorous ventures.   

What is the moral of this story, if any?  Jonas is tragic character poisoned by his own wanderlust.  He leaves us with a final goodbye and a warning that one’s own indecision is one's own condemnation.  One can never truly escape anything, and it’s often best to buckle down and face it head-on rather than run away from it.  Or, rather, blast off up into the stars... 

Sources used:

Rivers Cuomo – Alone: The Home Demos of Rivers Cuomo (2007)

Rivers Cuomo – Alone II: The Home Demos of Rivers Cuomo (2008)

Rivers Cuomo – Alone III: The Pinkerton Years (2010)

Weezer – Pinkerton (deluxe edition, 2010)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR & Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included