As a nine-year-old, the Smashing Pumpkins' epic double-disc Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness made me feel so uncomfortable that I went back to Strawberries and returned it. But eventually I had enough angst to understand.
The melodrama of songs like "Thru the Eyes of Ruby" and "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans" is staggering. The singles - "Zero," "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" - rank among the best rock of the nineties. Chariots of melody and drumbeat stallions race across the crashing waves of the album's 28 tracks. The inertia of the rhythm section inhales you like a tornado. I taught myself how to play bass and guitar by listening to - and because of - this record. But the Pumpkins never captured their generation so effortlessly as on "1979." That new wave guitar riff, that drum loop patter, that shimmery sample defines "nostalgia," and made me miss my teenage years before I ever even was a teen.
