Smashing Pumpkins - Waiting For The Past

Label: Bootleg
Year: 1991

Yes, I understand that Billy Corgan has a humongous bald melon head. And yes, I am completely aware that after Jimmy Chamberlain got hooked on the horse, and D'arcy bailed out and James Iha quit(?) that the band lapsed into a severe state of creative decline (and infinite sadness?). I got it. I know.
But I also am well versed in the band's previous ability to stoke some of the most ferocious and rollicking big guitar music ever. I heard them do it! I saw them do it! Despite (all my rage?) all the baggage that seemed to come along with the band in those early years, they were head and shoulders above their peers in their ability to unleash a warm, heavy, blissed out bounty. They dealt out blistering guitar solos when guitar solos were taboo relics of dinosaur rock. They embraced a hippie-damage aesthetic when flower power was a joke to be sneered at...possibly ironically...it's hard to say. They were unrepentant in their quest to rock out, when you were supposed to be flailing around to a noisy Stooges sludge concoction. They were weird in a time when being weird was getting harder to do (weirdness was co-opted, you see).
So, whatever. Slag them off if you must. But I'm telling you...these fuckers were raging in a way that nobody else was trying. Enough to excuse a few "Zero" t-shirts (but not enough to excuse Ava Adore, or whatever that record was called...holy shit.)
This bootleg is from three sources; live in Madison, WI 06-16-90, live in Madison, WI 10-16-91, and one "studio" track. There are some very seldom heard songs on here. Plus some slower versions of songs you are well aware of. And that cover art...it's a glorious mess of 90's graphic study!

*originally posted 10.20.15, reposted 12.07.21

DL