Artist	Song
Black Sabbath	War Pigs
Billy Corgan & Tony Iommi	Black Oblivion
Thin Lizzy	Gonna Creep Up on You
The Smashing Pumpkins	Bury Me
My Bloody Valentine	Soon
The Smashing Pumpkins	Spaced
Pink Floyd	Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
The Smashing Pumpkins	Set the Ray to Jerry
David Bowie	Warszawa
The Smashing Pumpkins & Red, Red Meat	Sad Peter Pan
The Smashing Pumpkins	Drown
The Smashing Pumpkins	Love
Bauhaus	Double Dare
Iggy Pop	Mass Production

Comment:

The Smashing Pumpkins left an indelible mark on the world in their 12 years as a band. They helped change the rock landscape multiple times, won critical and popular acclaim, challenged themselves and their listeners, and inspired legions of fans. Their impact will be felt all the more greatly in the coming years, as kids who grew up listening to them make music of their own. No other band embodied the '90s the way the Pumpkins did, partly because the arc of their career coincided with the decade. They dominated the decade creatively and comercially, and unlike other '90s vanguards, they were around for all of it.

This box set aims to encompass their legacy while putting it in the structure of the mixtape. Thusly, the included songs do not simply sidle up to one another on the basis of being tangentially related; in addition working together thematically, they must work together musically. Each mix must flow.

Shying away from the Pumpkins material the public already knows --- that of the mega-selling studio albums --- this box set focuses on the lesser-known reaches of their oeuvre: early demos rich with promise; glittering obscurities; visceral live shows; their influences; their peers; their post-breakup output. In many cases, these cuts are as good as --- if not better than --- ones on their lauded studio albums, proving how strong a band the Pumpkins were.

Of course, when I began work on this set back in February 2005, I hadn't counted on a reformation. I figured Billy Corgan's relationship with James Iha and D'Arcy Wretzky had broken down to the point that it would take at least a decade for them to reach any sort of reconciliation. But, then, Corgan decided he didn't need them.

Today marks a new era for the Pumpkins. With the release of "Zeitgeist," they're back in conversation, back in reviewers' columns, back on the new-releases shelf. Whatever your feelings about Corgan's tactics or the new album, it doesn't change the fact that the Pumpkins owned the '90s. How long they'll last in this incarnation is anybody's guess, but that really doesn't matter. The mark has been made.
The Greatest Band of the '90s, Vol. I: At the Vortex


"War Pigs" by Black Sabbath and "Black Oblivion" by Billy Corgan and Tony

Iommi

Emperor Palpatine knew it. Darth Vader knew it. Ozzy Osbourne knew it: Do not

underestimate the power of the dark side. And when Billy Corgan heard Black

Sabbath's "Paranoid," surely he knew it, too.

Those heavy riffs wormed their way around his brain, inflaming and inspiring. You

can hear their echo in "Gish" and other Pumpkins material, but "Black Oblivion"

conflates time, putting Corgan in Osbourne's place. It's essentially Corgan's song,

considering he was the principal writer and provides the vocals. "Black Oblivion"

traverses the mythical middle ground between Black Sabbath and the Pumpkins.

Lyrically, it's clearly in the vein of Sabbath, and yet the music and Corgan's voice

effortlessly transform it to a Pumpkins song.

Sometimes misidentified as "Firewall," "Black Oblivion" can be found on "Iommi," the

Black Sabbath guitarist's first official solo album. Released in 2000, it features a

swarm of guest stars, many of whom likely grew up on Sabbath.
To read the rest of the liner notes for Volume I, please follow this link to the miscellaneous forum.

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