I was on the veranda and a small falcon was cleaning its claw and sniffing its cloaca and I was thinking about how Rooster and I met in the summer of a year that had no sun and when we were older we would listen to R.E.M. and The Bangles and move to Massachusetts and I thought we were all going to be fine and then Billy Corgan started singing “Where Boys Fear to Tread” and I got up from the editing bay. The table that my computer sits on was fished out of a dumpster more than a decade ago, and now one of the legs is about to give out and everything on the face of it is dirty and grimy and covered with my feathers and spit. And blood. Billy Corgan was singing “Where Boys Fear to Tread” and I was getting antsy.
I was thinking what if this was all there ever was and all there ever would be, and how the song “Afternoon Delight” is about getting laid and now there’s weed named after it, and all the weed is regulated and partially-owned by the government (probably [in all likelihood]). I was thinking about Rooster hiding a dime bag in his under-feather carriage decades ago and then how bad that weed actually was compared to what’s out now, a skunk in childproof casing. Billy Corgan was singing “Where Boys Fear to Tread” and I was walking around the room and looking at all of the old pictures that Da Boss has stashed away in photo albums and record sleeves. Around the world. Billy Corgan was singing “Where Boys Fear to Tread” when Da Boss opened the door and immediately put his hands to his ears and told me to turn it off.
He hadn’t listened to The Smashing Pumpkins since July 15, 2019, and wouldn’t again until at least January 1, 2030.
Why? He said his “obsession” with the band was inhibiting his creativity. Fair enough. GOD KNOWS I HAVE ENOUGH TO DO FOR THIS GUY!!! Says he couldn’t have possibly been this prolific if he hadn’t stopped listening to them. The weirdest part is that he still buys their new records. “I’ll listen to them someday,” he says, “and I want to support them. I really love The Smashing Pumpkins.” He also said that Billy Corgan had the same advice for guitar players: don’t play like me, play like yourself. Da Boss started talking about how the Pumpkins “obscured [his] own voice,” the one inside of him. That’s when I tuned out and put on The Spy Who Loved Me score. So good. Carly Simon? Nobody does it better THAT’S RIGHT!
Da Boss spent the day after the election remixing two songs for the movie that didn’t sound right: “SATUR-19” and “Silver Sidearm;” the former comes in around eight minutes in, and the latter plays over the end credits. “Hopefully it sounds right,” he says, “Can you put all the new mixes in and see which one sounds the best and make rough mixes of each and have them ready for me in a couple of hours? I’m going to watch a movie and then look at Twitter for an hour. Actually switch that. No—add two hours of Twitter. Can you have it ready by midnight? Thank you.”
I’m going to play The Smashing Pumpkins in his room when he’s sleeping so I can RELAX!!!
—Follow Monica Quibbits on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits