I'm sure you all have strong opinions on this.

Pavement.

And it isn't even close.

The funny thing about this is that probably more pumpkins have been smashed on pavement than any other type of surface. These bands should be best friends.

I've never listened to Pavement.

Pavement is great, but I like Smashing Pumpkins a lot. I don't want to choose.

Smashing Pumpkins are good band. I'm not sure I'd call them great. Pavement, to me, is a great band.

I don't enjoy either very much.

(Pavement are clearly better, however.)

whoever unequivocally picks the smashing pumpkins is fucking dead to me

This. They're both great, in very different ways.

yeah, one is great and the other is the fucking smashing pumpkins

Siamese Dream is probably better than Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain but not by very much.

I would respectfully disagree.

I guess SD is a sentimental favourite of mine, a loud rock record that landed in my lap at the age of 18. The first nine songs from that album remain largely unfuckwithable.

CR, CR, on the other hand, is an album I got into relatively late and consequently I don't have quite as much history with it. That is tempered by my view that Cut Your Hair and Gold Soundz are both in the top 25 songs of that decade.

It's pretty much a split decision, I guess.

Wowee Zowee is my favorite.

Two pretty pretentious lead singers; Billy wins that one. Definitely Pavement for me, though, as I've neared adulthood. Though as a kid I loved the few Pumpkins songs I had, and quite a few have held up, too.

Smashing Pumpkins are a pretty big part of my musical history. Their music means a fraction of what it once did to me, but I listened to them so much from 1995-2000 that their first decade of music will be forever etched on my mind. Pavement I tried to get into time and time again and never could, until last year when I was reviewing Malkmus's "Mirror Traffic" for a magazine and picked up "Quarantine The Past" as field research. These days I'd be much more inclined to reach for that than I would anything by the Pumpkins, but if we're talking "for all time" here I probably have to give the Pumpkins the nod.

That said, I'd like to see Stephen Malkmus kick Billy Corgan's ass.

You guys obviously have an attachment to the Pumpkins, which I never had. I can totally understand why you'd hold them in favor on that score. Again, I think SP have some really great songs, but the band has a whole never landed on me the way they did for you guys, and for many others.

And I found Pavement later - like, within the last five years. And they hit me instantly. The first time I heard Crooked Rain I knew I was hearing something special. I never had that with SP.

I just downloaded Slanted and Enchanted.