The songs are all fine, some are actually superb, but it is beneath the guitars and lyrics that my idea of true beauty is to found with the drumming of Jimmy Chamberlin. It sounds like a well-constructed record, produced perfectly, rather than a garage band found some money, and that is why maybe this album holds up as well as it does, despite the fact that the more psychedelic elements of the album still aren’t quite to my tastes. There is much to love about the debut album Gish. So, thirty years on, it's time to let the Beaujolais breathe and sip from the cup of Billy Corgan et al. Sophisticated music for the older crowd but, like wine, my tastes changed over the years, and I discovered that I liked the Pumpkins fine and an expensive Merlot can make you fall over just as well as cider. To me, who had only heard Rhinoceros in 1991, the Pumpkins were wine. I liked the brash, the loud, the fast and had no time for things that me feel or, god forbid, think and this is why it took me years until I got into Smashing Pumpkins. I say this because it kind of explains my musical life at the time. Wine was just the stuff old people drank, I liked fall down juice. I drank snakebite, and Pernod, and I drank until I fell over and then got up and drank some more. I left school, built rally cars and played drums in a band.
ġ991 was the year I discovered that alcohol was going to be my friend for the next few years.
So many well-known albums turn 30 this year and Steve Taylor-Bryant and Susan Omand travel back to 1991 to revisit some of the sounds of their youth that made parents shout "Turn that noise down!" This week, Steve is goes giddy with Gish.