Prick Tunes: the Smashing Pumpkins "Jupiter's Lament"

fashion victims chew their charcoal teeth

Most of the t-shirts were bad. Not the Zero one, but nearly all the others. I don't recall if I realized that at the time but it wouldn't have mattered. We were true believers. A poorly drawn group of swirling barcoded heads. "The World is a Vampire." But, like I said, it didn't matter then. In the year of '96 Billy Corgan was our rawk'n'roll Hero and we hung on to every note and lyric of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and we wore our bad t-shirts with pride. We tracked down the CD singles and the import singles and searched record stores for overpriced bootlegs. These were the days before Napster, kids, and you couldn't just hop on to your computer and get this stuff free with a click of the mouse. We wandered around strip malls in towns like Winona, MN hoping for Billy's home demos or a soundboard concert recording, but left satisfied with even a shoddy audience recorded boot. And it still wasn't enough until The Aeroplane Flies High hit store shelves around Xmas that year. The box set collected all the singles from MCIS and contained a number of previously unreleased demos, outtakes, and newly recorded songs. One song in particular ended up on many a mix tape back then, "Jupiter's Lament." It was the sort of song you hoped would impress girls but more likely left them wondering if you needed antidepressants and a sense of humor. In a track-by-track breakdown in Guitar World magazine, Corgan noted the AFH version of "Jupiter's Lament" was actually a demo and a full band recording was done with all the band members singing on it.

Even after I got old and mostly lost interest in the Pumpkins, I'd occasionally break out MCIS and sometimes wondered what the full band version of "Jupiter's Lament" would have sounded like.  Teenage me's dreams were finally fulfilled last year when Corgan and Co. released a massive six disc MCIS box set which included the song.  It's hard to explain the effect a song can have on you but for a moment I felt like I was 16 years old again and that's probably good enough.  Now if I can only find this Nicolas Cage t-shirt for Old Man Duggan's birthday...