Tuesday Tunes - 6/15/10

Tunes:

If you could experience one band/artist in their hey day, who would it be and why would you choose them?

As Andrea said in her post, the Beatles are an easy choice here.  I'd love to see them not in the Beatlemania days, but in Hamburg when they really kicked some ass. 

However, the above is not my answer to the question.  I'd like to see the Smashing Pumpkins right around the time of Siamese Dream.  Why?  Because it was a more innocent time for them, when the band was mostly functioning with all its original members and was largely free of Swollen-Ego Billy.  They still had a lot to prove, but had already made some great music and weren't yet to the point where they'd screw it all up.  Whenever I listen to their first four albums, I feel nostalgia for a band I didn't fully experience until years later.  Part of me wishes Billy and his former bandmates could patch things up and make music as magical as they made in those first years, but another part of me realizes that you can't go back.  So I just listen to those wonderful early albums and enjoy the music they did make instead of wishing for more.