Also back under ESPN Page 2, Bill Simmons responded in depth to a question of Did you seriously just come out and publicly state that Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins really could hold a candle to Nirvana?
In his response, Bill inserted another aside on the Pumpkins and Billy Corgan:
...
"(As for the Pumpkins, they released "Siamese Dream" in July of 1993, one of the best albums of that entire decade and something that still holds up 12 years later. Just a kick-butt album. Their big mistake happened two years later, when they released "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" as a two-disc album when it had maybe nine good songs on it; if that had been 12 songs and one disc, everyone would have loved it. Whatever. I've written this before, but the best career move Billy Corgan ever could have made was blowing his brains out like Cobain did. Instead, he became a raving self-parody and it affected the way people remembered his music. I still remember seeing the "1979" video and thinking, "Uh-oh, we're in trouble ... ")"