Day 60: "Siamese Dream" - The Smashing Pumpkins (1993)
Yes, yes, I know. Things are crazy right now, as I mentioned a few posts ago. As well as closing out the fiscal year at work, a process which is always an excruciating amount of work at the best of times, I've also been planning and organising a Charity Netrunner tournament which takes place in 9 days time (and looks to have raised about £1,200 so far), organising myself and preparing for a trip to the US to play in the Netrunner World Championships in 18 days time, and trying book and organise my partners 40th Birthday Party in 39 days time. Every time I've looked at The Pile in the last few days, I've felt guilty that I'm neglecting something that I started, I'm enjoying, and I want to see through. Which is a convenient segue into what I am going to talk about with this album...
Listen to me here
I should get the "talking about the album" bit out of the way up front, because I don't have any complex or deep thoughts about it really. "Siamese Dream" and its companion piece "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" are really, really great alternative rock albums. I'd probably recommend listening to "Mellon Collie..." if you've never heard any Pumpkins stuff before, as its a bit more accessible, but both of them are amongst some of the best alternative music to come out of the 90's. Billie Corgan, the lead singer, is a bit of a walking hipster joke, but that shouldn't take away from how good these records are. OK, that said, onto story time.
I've mentioned before that I come from a musical family (and I don't mean like the Von Trapps). My Dad is a talented guitarist and singer and can play about 20 different instruments and has a natural ear for music. My sister has the same level of natural talent for music that our father does, sings beautifully and plays guitar very well also. I, on the other hand, am not so gifted. Not that I didn't want to be, you understand, but what flows naturally for them is something I have to work and struggle to accomplish.
When I was a teen, my Dad was keen for me to learn to play guitar. It was what he had done as a teenager, and had obviously brought him great pleasure (as well as a distinct aire of cool) over the years. There was a period of about a month when I was 16 or so where we tried to do weekly lessons. It didn't go well. I was a slow study, and a lazy study, because I was 16 and spending time working towards a long term goal instead of seeking immediate gratification elsewhere hadn't entered into my mind. My Dad was, in turn, not the best teacher in that he would get immediately frustrated with my lack of progression. After a month, we called the whole thing off.
For Christmas in 2006, just after my 30th Birthday, I was living in a fairly grotty upstairs bedsit, having moved out of my over-expensive flat which I'd moved to after me and The Girl Who Broke My Heart broke up. I'd been told by the landlord that the downstairs flat (which was an actual flat instead of a single room) would be ready within 3 weeks of me moving in, and I could stash all my furniture down there and live in the bedsit until it was ready. I didn't even move my bedframe upstairs because I thought "eh, I can just sleep on the mattress on the floor for a couple of weeks, it will be fine". Come Christmas it had been nearly 3 months and the flat was still not ready. I'd disassembled my bedframe from downstairs and assembled it in a fit of pique just before Christmas. I was broke, without internet (because, again, I hadn't set up my phone line because I was about to move into the flat), and everyone I knew was away for the holidays. My parents were living in Spain, and I couldn't afford to visit them. So I had resigned myself to a Christmas alone, without TV or internet, and kind of leaned into it. Some good friends burned and sent me some DVDs full of pirated TV shows I could watch on my PC, and when my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas that year, I told them I wanted a guitar.
And so, a week or so before Christmas, a long and suspiciously shaped package had been delivered to me. I finished work on the 23rd of December that year, went back to my bedsit (calling in at the corner shop nearby for some cheap beer), and contemplated my existence for a second. Then, violating every standard of Christmas tradition our family had stood for for 30 years, I opened my present early.
It was a fairly basic imitation Fender, a Washburn X in matte black, some picks, some spare strings, and an electronic tuner, and some basic tablature, and a "simple guitar lessons" DVD. With nothing better to do, and some kind of insane resolve driving me on, I played through the guitar lessons until my fingers hurt too much to continue that night. I did the same the following day. And the day after that.
One of the first recognisable pieces of guitar music I was able to produce during that bleak Christmas period was the guitar intro to "Today" by The Smashing Pumpkins.
It was such a revelation to me; that instantly recognisable guitar intro that I'd heard a million times in my teens and twenties (I should point out here that, like a lot of the grunge/alternative bands at the time, I'd loved Smashing Pumpkins after seeing the video for "Today" and "1979" on MTV at D's house at 2am) was something that I could reproduce. Maybe it wasn't as insurmountable a task as I thought to sit down and learn an instrument.
If you are expecting some kind of "Come to Jesus" moment of revelation and reformation from this tale though, you've not been paying much attention to every other time I've demonstrated that I make bad decisions more often than not.
What actually happened was that for two months or so, I played guitar fairly regularly. I wasn't good or even remotely competent, but I knew the basics. If you handed me a guitar, I could strum a few chords, and play some partial sequences from some songs. But then, in February, my Landlord finally finished the downstairs flat and I moved in, I got my internet access back and access to my TV, and the guitar sat on it's stand and gathered dust for a few years.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, dear reader. It just, like a lot of things, took me a long time to get there. Last year I turned 40 years old, and as part of my preparation for dealing with that momentous event, I decided to make a list of things I was going to do, and commit to. My then 9 year old Washburn X came out of retirement, got restrung, and in October of 2015, I committed to starting to learn again, an hour a day, with the help of the excellent Rocksmith teaching tool on my PC.
Just 9, 435 hours to go before Mastery
Since then, I've logged 565 hours of practice time, roughly an hour a day for 2 years (with some notable holiday gaps and the like). I'm still not remotely good, or talented, nor would I have the confidence to play in front of anyone right now, but I feel like I've progressed, like I've accomplished something. I can play whole songs through without needing to read the tab. I have a real proper grown up guitar and some effects pedals (courtesy of my good friend Rachel) and an amp. I still can't play "Today" all the way through (it's got an unusual middle 8 which I need to practice to understand what I should be doing), but I can produce a reasonable facsimile of it if I fudge my way through the bits I don't know very well.
But you'll notice I last played in September, 14 days ago. Like this blog, recent events have left me with little time for practice, and like The Pile, looking at my guitar continues to make me feel guilty that its not getting the attention it deserves right now.
