How odd that the last member of the Smashing Pumpkins to make any significant impact on the music world was also the last member to join the group; Melissa Auf Der Maur is making cash money pretending she’s a stoned-out rock goddess. In the meantime, Billy Corgan has his own weblog (awwww), D’arcy has disappeared off the face of the planet and Jimmy Chamberlain is presumably still waiting for his last paycheck from Zwan. But let’s not forget the person one reviewer, somewhere, may have once called the second shining light of the Smashing Pumpkins, if only for a very brief period of time: James Iha.

I think somewhere in the mass of reviews given to the post-Mellon Collie box set The Aeroplane Flies High, there might be one that noticed the number of Iha contributions that never made it to the album. And by golly, some of them were pretty good, too! The duet he sang with Nina Gordon on the Bullet With Butterfly Wings single beats out half the covers Virgin added to the box set version, and “The Boy” is a slick little gem of a throwaway pop song, complete with synth washes and some upright drums propelling the whole thing forward. And then there’s Iha, whose breathy voice must’ve instilled a sort of warm, cuddly feeling in a teenage alterna-rock girl somewhere.

Why can I make this claim? Because obviously someone thought it’d be a good idea to tell him how great he was, and why did Billy always have to ruin everything by being the band despot anyways, and how about you put out your own album? So he did—Let It Come Down—and everyone suddenly realized that hey, maybe James Iha can’t write an entire album of songs like “The Boy,” or songs even close to it. Actually, the album dissolved upon contact with the atmosphere, leaving a misty haze of balladry and love letters. Needless to say, no one ever bought the album.

Except me. And this is why you should never trust any music recommendations I make: because I bought an album by James Iha.