Smashing Pumpkins includes: Billy Corgan, James Iha.

Additional personnel includes: Nina Gordon (vocals); Billy Corgan, Sr. (guitar); Eric Remschneider (cello); Keith Brown, Adam Schlesinger, Chris Martin (piano); Jimmy Flemion, Dennis Flemion.

Producers include: Billy Corgan, Flood, Alan Moulder, James Iha.

Engineers include: Flood, Jeff Moleski, The Mole.

Includes liner notes by Billy Corgan and James Iha.

Elaborately packaged in the kind of box in which people used to store vinyl singles, THE AEROPLANE FLIES HIGH is a set of 5 CDs, each containing a single from the Pumpkins' 1995 album MELLON COLLIE AND THE INFINITE SADNESS along with several B-sides. The singles are "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," "1979," "Zero," "Tonight, Tonight" and "Thirty Three," and the B-sides number 28, some of them previously unavailable in the U.S. THE AEROPLANE FLIES HIGH celebrates the chart hits while fetishizing those B-sides; they run the gamut of Pumpkindom, from stadium anthems and classic-rock ballads to metal thrashings and GISH-era indie rock.

The "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" disc alone offers five covers: The Cars' "You're All I've Got Tonight," Alice Cooper's "Clones (We're All)," the Cure's "A Night Like This," Missing Persons' "Destination Unknown" and Blondie's "Dreaming." These covers reveal the true heart of the Pumpkins, a band whose love of pop music is so unabashed and wide as to disallow any attempts to pigeonhole the band's sound. Some might consider this singles box-set business a bit of a self-indulgent vanity. But it's a perfect forum for the Pumpkins, who have always followed their whims and not commercial strictures.

Rolling Stone (12/12/96, pp.81-82) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...a cutting-room floor companion piece to MELLON COLLIE that provides insight into [Billy] Corgan's extraordinary creative outbursts....There is no filler here. These supposedly second-string tracks are keepers..."

Entertainment Weekly (11/29/96, pp.88-89) - "...THE AEROPLANE FLIES HIGH is a musical post-script--the ultimate holiday treat for Corgan-heads--but other bands would smash more than pumpkins to have leftovers this savory."

- Rating: B+

Musician (2/97, p.121) - "...the Pumpkins have relatively sophisticated musical ideas....executed with irresistible power and grace....these are the things that small pop miracles are made of..."