Overall, it still sounds pretty fresh today! It seemed like a few bands in particular were embracing the whole ‘synths and power chord’ aspect of it in recent decades too, like Fountains of Wayne or The Strokes for example. So it makes sense that it was a little ahead of its time. Or at least inspired it to some…

So... it is a Scientology production after all?

When I was in Toronto two years ago, someone ran up from behind me on the street because they saw me drop a dime a block or so back. A dime!

They it showed around the same grade for me... and that was about 25 years ago.

Well, like I said, forums tend to drift that way anyway. I’m actually pleasantly surprised by a lot of these places though, particularly today with the supportive threads re: depression and suicide in light of the Bourdain news today.

Yeah, those are Internet message boards or forums for bands in general, haha. Seems like it’s a bit strong in the Corgan fandom though, from what I’ve seen.

Mixing, i.e., is just putting the individual recordings together and making it sound as good as possible. Not only adjusting volume levels, but adding stuff like effects, panning certain tracks to a side of a stereo mix, compressing them, etc.

A quick look on the Reddit and message boards for the band show a lot of people actually disgusted by it. Not sure if that’s just a natural reaction to his personality over the years or actual indifference to the song, but yeah.

To that, I will say this… if I were the child of someone that took their own life, it’d be pretty hard for me to look past the fact that they’re gone forever. And I might even be pretty mad or angry about it at times. That might be typical for any child that loses a parent somehow, but suicide... it’s still a tough…

Could that be some automatic thing, like how when I scan “AV Club” with my mouse pointer over the top banner, it shows popular articles from recent months and not the most recent ones?

It was a health condition that had a terrible result. We need to start looking at it this way as opposed to a snap decision about being frustrated with life in general. We don’t look at people who die of cancer or something else and think it was because they didn’t appreciate life. Mental illness is a serious…

Respectfully, this is part of why the stigma of mental illness still exists today. And why further work needs to be done. If these accounts are true here, then people like him or Kate Spade didn’t do this to hurt their children, family, friends or anyone else... they did it because they were in a tremendous amount of…

That’s never really been confirmed. The coroner down there ruled it a suicide... and if you read up enough on the situation, you get the vibe that Michael Hutchence was in a really bad place mentally in the lead-up to it anyway. We’ll never know the exact circumstances, but it’s a sad situation either way.

One of my best friends from high school took his own life several years ago by a particularly violent method (which I won’t disclose here, out of respect to those suffering from mental illness or affected by it). I wouldn’t say it was unexpected, but still a tremendous shock both by how he did it and the fact that it…

Yeah, I can understand the curiousity of a “how” or “why” question to an extent. But publishing a note without the family’s permission is all sorts of low. Nobody should be making that decision without any of them on board.

Yeah, he’s said some pretty sweet things online about everyone from Farley to his daughter. Some people probably just assume the worst because of his Hollywood Minute persona or other perceptions.

Yeah, I figure that’s a large reason why. Some people who probably can’t get past him being snarkey about celebrities 24/7... or thinking he’s always like that.

It kind of wanders at the end, but I enjoyed the book too. And to be fair, I think it’s because the book guys said “We need you write so-and-so more pages” when he turned it in the fist time!

I can sort of see where his sense of humor might not be up someone’s alley, but he always struck me as a pretty decent guy overall too. There’s plenty of comedians or celebrities to genuinely hate out there for a good reason.

Exactly. And hopefully it’ll stay that way!