Tonight, Tonight

Matt Bruce

"Tonight, Tonight"
Smashing Pumpkins
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, 1996

Everyone my age should own a copy of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Better bands may have made better albums in the 1990s, but this is the album our kids will listen to when they want a sense of what our music was like. It's plausibly grunge and plausibly Goth, yet not over the edge enough to offend anyone. The songs are finely crafted (some might say overdone) and have mass-market appeal.

The title track is an instrumental ballad featuring a recurring piano riff. Before fall 2001 this wouldn't have occurred to me but it sounds exactly like the sort of Muzak-inspired theme heard on most sporting events televised by NBC.

Then come the strings blaring in with that theme. You know the one, if you've seen or heard any TV or radio ads lately. The first time I caught it I almost died laughing. Fox was showing its usual Saturday Game of the Week and decided to make a post-season promo, using that song?!? How can this be the music by which men seek championships if it's already what makes me all teary-eyed over some girl?

My copy is in double-cassette format, bought used from a music store just a stone's throw away from Fenway Park. I listened to both tapes enough to wear them out and I even decorated my walls with the cover art. In case you've forgotten, some of the highlights involve two cats getting married (the best man is a dog), various barnyard animals playing sandlot baseball, and a very frightened looking chicken flying an airplane.

Five years ago, Smashing Pumpkins played a Tuesday night concert in Boston, on election night of all nights. I had thoroughly mocked the people who got all giddy when tickets went on sale, then blithely turned down my chance to actually go see it. Instead I went home and watched the presidential returns. I even remember who I hung out with that night because I had hoped in vain that time spent with him would be nearly as fun as time spent with her.

The Yankees had just captured the first title in their current run. The night of Game 6 I had hosted a party. Some New Yorkers who lived upstairs from me dropped by but we roundly and rudely drowned out their celebration. Just so you know, diehard Red Sox fans can be hell on October parties.

That was the first of two or three straight series wherein I spent most of the evenings of Games 3-5 on the phone. It just isn't right for a baseball junkie to spend the World Series on the phone, to say nothing of an introverted guy who never actually gets calls, yet no matter who you are, the time comes when you get the phone calls and you chatter away oblivious to the world around you. In my case, when I finally got off the phone I'd smile when I saw the score and then promptly jinx everything. Game 4 of the 1996 World Series was my fault; you only thought it was Mark Wohlers.

You don't need all the inane detail I could give you. Every guy could tell these stories, always thinking he was the first to experience an unrequited crush. Maybe that's the point. "Time is never time at all" might as well refer to those interminable four-hour broadcasts, rather than to some fantasy world. Can "crucify the insincere" plausibly refer to the day that we fans finally rise up and hogtie certain posers in the Fox broadcast booth?

I knew a guy who hated--just abhorred--the Smashing Pumpkins. More to the point, he couldn't stand Billy Corgan. Every college setting needs the radio fanatic, the guy who buys indie-label records by the pound and looks down his nose on mass culture. I think this guy saw through a lot of the "alternative" acts that, whatever their sound, weren't actually outside the mainstream.

Fox has, of course, appropriated Smashing Pumpkins music before. Longtime Simpsons fans will remember Homerpalooza, the cameo appearance of the song "Zero," and Homer's reference to his kids' lost hope for a future he couldn't possibly provide. Hearing Smashing Pumpkins as post-season background music is jarring because most of their music is so dark. People think of thrashing guitars, of negative lyrics, of nihilism.

But unlike, say, any given Trent Reznor album, Smashing Pumpkins produce their share of optimism. It's a mentally imbalanced sort of blind hope, as found in pretentiously titled songs like "Cupid De Locke" or "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans." There's a lot of artifice here, and a lot of angst. Clearly it's perfect music to celebrate the clash between an infamous juggernaut and some guys in purple whose entire franchise still feels fake to me.

So many people who hate the Yankees hate them for buying pennants, yet how else can you describe what Jerry Colangelo has done? He bought his way into the league, won the bidding war for Randy Johnson, then threw money at a veteran supporting cast. Johnson will always be a Mariner to me, just as Curt Schilling will always be a Phillie and Mark Grace will always be a Cub.

Obviously an expansion team has to get its players from somewhere--the Diamondbacks didn't even exist until the Yankees began their run. Then again, Florida's ownership bought its way to a title, then sold the team off piece by piece and had the temerity to blame fans or economics for their having to do so. Rumors persist that Arizona bankrupted itself to get this far. I refuse to even mention our friend the commissioner or the timing of his brilliant marketing plan.

For a while I thought that the only reason I wasn't dating a certain woman was just bad timing. I was always just one perfect line or one well-timed breakup away from winning her heart, just as baseball is apparently just two problem franchises away from economic bliss. For a long time I thought Mark Grace was the most underrated player in baseball (I knew he had a high on-base percentage but conveniently ignored his lack of power) and blamed the media for not appreciating him enough.

Grace became a Diamondback in exactly the right season (as did Bob Brenly, come to think of it). Buried deep within the album is another of those songs that mean more to me than they ought to. An understated ballad called "Thirty-Three," it contains haunting but meaningless lines like "graceful swans of never topple to the Earth." For some reason I keep expecting Tim McCarver to mention this line whenever Grace hits a home run or makes a great defensive play.

He won't, though, because he doesn't know a thing about the album. It's just a song someone in the A/V department picked out. The Yankees and Diamondbacks are just two groups of players that make a lot of money to throw and hit a ball. For our own reasons we happen to enjoy watching them (maybe not specifically them). "Tonight, Tonight" is reasonable as a piece of decorative music for this, and now you know what the song is if you didn't already.

Saturday night I tried to find Game 1 on the radio. A brief delusion led me to the A's flagship station, where I defiantly listened to Sinatra tunes for a while before finding those familiar voices of baseball, Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. And of course that song--not that song, just the usual ESPN baseball theme. Miller called the plays and Morgan gave mildly interesting commentary and life went on.

about the author

Matt Bruce doesn't harbor the same love for James Iha's solo album, loudly declaring "if I wanted to listen to hippie crap, I'd listen to that woman from Alaska who looks like a huskier Leelee Sobieski." Jewel's publicist might want to assure future name recognition at mb@strikethree.com.