What caused Billy's disdain for Netphoria?

[Butt Pope]

Originally Posted by eviltimeban

Billy always played the "sorry I'm not your typical rock star" or "sorry I'm not the rock star you wanted". He's been saying that since 1993. He had short hair, he dressed goofy - now he's bald and dresses goofy.

Where this falls short, IMO, is he had no sense of humor or ability for serious self-reflection, so in that sense he’s a typical rockstar to the core. Billy should take a hint from Michael Stipe, Rivers Cuomo, or even Fat Mike and not take himself so seriously all the time. You can be a frontman who is an absolute king without having to be a humorless dick all the time.

[themadcaplaughs]

Originally Posted by AveryLoren

This is another spot on take of events as I remember them too. Hell, I still have the original 30 second Tarantula clip. lol

What a Smashing Pumpkins type thing to do; teasing thirty seconds of a single that will be released in a week. I remember it was the chorus to "Tarantula", a part that I think actually works well in the song, but sounds astoundingly corny out of context. The band's management at the time actually sent that snippet to radio stations as promotional material. The local alternative station in Atlanta played it for the week or so before the single dropped, and I remember one of the DJs saying they might have gotten more calls about that snippet than anything else in the station's history, and the reaction was almost entirely negative.

Wow, looking back, I suppose "Tarantula" might have been one of the last times a Smashing Pumpkins song got any long-term radio play. I actually heard it quite a bit in 2007/2008.

[dustrocck]

Sorry guys, got busy yesterday and I had to actually work for once.

"Feelalol" is my name for "F.O.L." ("come on and feelalol")

[Shadaloo]

Originally Posted by eviltimeban

Any "normal" rock star has understood what legacy means, what fans want, and many (Ride, Slowdive) have come back and given fans what they wanted (original line ups, classic hits)

Just going to point out that this is exactly what the SAOSB tour was but everyone chose to focus on the guy from Sugar Ray and the Stairway cover instead.

The only thing really missing was D'Arcy, and it really seems like either she didn't want to come back, isn't in a state to come back, or her and Billy couldn't agree on terms.

[New Art Rioter]

Originally Posted by themadcaplaughs

What a Smashing Pumpkins type thing to do; teasing thirty seconds of a single that will be released in a week. I remember it was the chorus to "Tarantula", a part that I think actually works well in the song, but sounds astoundingly corny out of context. The band's management at the time actually sent that snippet to radio stations as promotional material. The local alternative station in Atlanta played it for the week or so before the single dropped, and I remember one of the DJs saying they might have gotten more calls about that snippet than anything else in the station's history, and the reaction was almost entirely negative.

Wow, looking back, I suppose "Tarantula" might have been one of the last times a Smashing Pumpkins song got any long-term radio play. I actually heard it quite a bit in 2007/2008.

Always thought the chorus was quite a cynical attempt to sound a bit like My Chemical Romance who were massive at the time

[GreenDogGlynis]

Originally Posted by TheAlter

Yeah i agree, things started to fall apart around ‘98. I remember seeing them on the Adore tour, they were playing the new album, which wasn’t even out yet, plus like 3-4 songs off MCIS. One was a terrible rendition of Bullet with one of those nu-metal 7-string guitars. And that was it.

It's like he wanted to walk away from a legacy that was only 3-5 years old at that point, absolutely preposterous move.

I actually think you're right about this. While it's great that this board has a real appreciation for Adore, it simply lacks the energy and fun the band had going for itself. Yes, it is artistically accomplished, yes there are beautiful songs, but at the same time it sucks the life out of the room. SP was never afraid to go into fragile emotional terrain, but they never sounded beaten down and defeated until Adore. If it's what the band wants to do then that's great, but it is hard to take Billy's disappointment that the fanbase had a diminished response to the album seriously.

[AveryLoren]

Originally Posted by reprise85

omg it was 10 years ago: http://forums.netphoria.org/showthre...ighlight=jesse

Hard to believe this is already ten years ago.

[AveryLoren]

Originally Posted by GreenDogGlynis

I actually think you're right about this. While it's great that this board has a real appreciation for Adore, it simply lacks the energy and fun the band had going for itself. Yes, it is artistically accomplished, yes there are beautiful songs, but at the same time it sucks the life out of the room. SP was never afraid to go into fragile emotional terrain, but they never sounded beaten down and defeated until Adore. If it's what the band wants to do then that's great, but it is hard to take Billy's disappointment that the fanbase had a diminished response to the album seriously.

Adore totally should have been Billy's first solo album. While Adore is constantly at war with Machina for my #1 it is not a fun, exciting album. TEITBITE and Eye should have been the sound of the new pumpkins.

Without hijacking the thread I think the very first thing that brought me to Netphoria was a leak or radio rip of something from Adore. I really don't think it was Ava or Perfect. It feels like it was Tear or something. Maybe it was a live track? Definitely April/May 1998. Anyone remember this?

[Rider]

His hatred started in the Adore era. Listen to the Howard Stern interview.

At some point something happened with the traders that pissed him off and I think that's when his focus shifted to here. Might be the Machina Acoustic Demos.

Enter Quinto and The Hub.

Dead took over the Zwan forums about the clipping on MSOTS. Billy actually took the time while on tour to make the infamous LOUD AT ANY VOLUME post.

A little bit later that Into the Woods clip leaked and I posted on the traders forum here and when Quinto had it pulled down I posted it on the Hub forum. Various fights between me and Quinto about the Traders Den and other shit he didn't want leaked.

Us trolling Strawberry.

Us making fun of the Church session mess.

I regret this one but one of the big ones was us trolling him when his brothers iPod got stolen.

Him trying to manipulate us and us tearing the Pumpkin Queen to shreds.

He hated those flash cartoons and the eventual infamous "thinking about my dead mother on Christmas" Billy quits Facebook Christmas Eve spectacular.

[AveryLoren]

Originally Posted by Rider

His hatred started in the Adore era. Listen to the Howard Stern interview.

At some point something happened with the traders that pissed him off and I think that's when his focus shifted to here. Might be the Machina Acoustic Demos.

Enter Quinto and The Hub.

Dead took over the Zwan forums about the clipping on MSOTS. Billy actually took the time while on tour to make the infamous LOUD AT ANY VOLUME post.

A little bit later that Into the Woods clip leaked and I posted on the traders forum here and when Quinto had it pulled down I posted it on the Hub forum. Various fights between me and Quinto about the Traders Den and other shit he didn't want leaked.

Us trolling Strawberry.

Us making fun of the Church session mess.

I regret this one but one of the big ones was us trolling him when his brothers iPod got stolen.

Him trying to manipulate us and us tearing the Pumpkin Queen to shreds.

He hated those flash cartoons and the eventual infamous "thinking about my dead mother on Christmas" Billy quits Facebook Christmas Eve spectacular.

We really have had quite the ride here on Netphoria. The Church sessions still to this day sticks out in my mind as the first time I saw the modern wounded Billy. Even through Adore and the break up of the band I didn't see him as a wounded figure like I do now.

I wonder what TPQ is up to now?

[TheAlter]

Originally Posted by GreenDogGlynis

I actually think you're right about this. While it's great that this board has a real appreciation for Adore, it simply lacks the energy and fun the band had going for itself. Yes, it is artistically accomplished, yes there are beautiful songs, but at the same time it sucks the life out of the room. SP was never afraid to go into fragile emotional terrain, but they never sounded beaten down and defeated until Adore. If it's what the band wants to do then that's great, but it is hard to take Billy's disappointment that the fanbase had a diminished response to the album seriously.

Yeah beaten down and defeated. Year 1996, his annus horribilis by all accounts, may be responsible for it. Adore was supposed to be on a 1979 level, we got second-rate Depeche Mode instead.

Still a good record but much of its newfound fame may have to do more with the general disappointment over everything Billiam has done since then.

[MyKeyZ]

I loved Adore since the first moment I heard it on release day. Machina, on the other hand, was a 50/50 experience, and it's been a downward trajectory ever since.

[eviltimeban]

Originally Posted by Shadaloo

Just going to point out that this is exactly what the SAOSB tour was but everyone chose to focus on the guy from Sugar Ray and the Stairway cover instead.

The only thing really missing was D'Arcy, and it really seems like either she didn't want to come back, isn't in a state to come back, or her and Billy couldn't agree on terms.

Ah yes but it took a long time to get to that point. 2007 reunion SP was NOT classic hits and original line up. Far from it.

He couldn't even get his "original line up" reunion right.

[T&T]

it's basically been a half zwan reunion playing SP covers.

[dustrocck]

Oh my god I forgot all about the Pumpkin Queen.

Machina Acoustic Demos for sure.

[Shadaloo]

Originally Posted by eviltimeban

Ah yes but it took a long time to get to that point. 2007 reunion SP was NOT classic hits and original line up. Far from it.

He couldn't even get his "original line up" reunion right.

Well, in 2007, yeah. The entire ZG period I was halfway checked-in because it seemed so weird and messed up reforming the band with half of it gone.

I tend to think that reforming without James and D'Arcy probably caused the most backlash out of anything he ever said or did.

Most bands, a person leaves, they get replaced, it sucks but it's whatever. SP had such an image in the fanbase of being an irreplaceable "family", each person being so memorable, and the breakup was such a major event, that it felt way more wrong than any other given band swapping out longstanding members.

[Rider]

Originally Posted by dustrocck

Oh my god I forgot all about the Pumpkin Queen.

Machina Acoustic Demos for sure.

Everyone remember Juliana that totally insane girl that stalked him and was mad he didn't hire her to run his social media. I was legit afraid of her at one point.

So much stuff that just kinda faded from the collective memory.

[Shallowed]

Originally Posted by Rider

Enter Quinto and The Hub.

Dead took over the Zwan forums about the clipping on MSOTS. Billy actually took the time while on tour to make the infamous LOUD AT ANY VOLUME post.

A little bit later that Into the Woods clip leaked and I posted on the traders forum here and when Quinto had it pulled down I posted it on the Hub forum. Various fights between me and Quinto about the Traders Den and other shit he didn't want leaked.

What was Quinto's relationship to Billy at this time?

[Spaldz]

Originally Posted by Rider

His hatred started in the Adore era. Listen to the Howard Stern interview.

At some point something happened with the traders that pissed him off and I think that's when his focus shifted to here. Might be the Machina Acoustic Demos.

Enter Quinto and The Hub.

Dead took over the Zwan forums about the clipping on MSOTS. Billy actually took the time while on tour to make the infamous LOUD AT ANY VOLUME post.

A little bit later that Into the Woods clip leaked and I posted on the traders forum here and when Quinto had it pulled down I posted it on the Hub forum. Various fights between me and Quinto about the Traders Den and other shit he didn't want leaked.

Us trolling Strawberry.

Us making fun of the Church session mess.

I regret this one but one of the big ones was us trolling him when his brothers iPod got stolen.

Him trying to manipulate us and us tearing the Pumpkin Queen to shreds.

He hated those flash cartoons and the eventual infamous "thinking about my dead mother on Christmas" Billy quits Facebook Christmas Eve spectacular.

Rider remembers! Some good memories here.

[Rider]

Originally Posted by Shallowed

What was Quinto's relationship to Billy at this time?

He was his link to the taper community. He was also a mod on the Z board and was allowed to tape basically everything.

He got a large portion of the taper community pissed off at me because I drew hard line in the sand that the Traders Den was not going to be their police force. I don't give a shit about tapers wishes. If you put it out there it's out there, people are going to turn it into mp3s and do whatever the fuck they want and I was no longer willing to stop it.

Someone had used some audio to replace the crappy audio in some videos and Quinto wanted me to pull it down.

I was burnt out on tapers egos. These where all like 5th wave tapers recording on easy obtained consumer equipment taping shows that allowed taping. It's not like they were really doing much. They weren't doing years worth of detective work and trading to get some rare bit of tape from a RHCP taper who happened to record the Pumpkins opening set.

The hoarding and the egos were totally out of fucking control and I was tired of it. Not my job to keep track of your recordings and and make sure no one hurts your feelings.

At that point for some reason Dead of all people had all the leet shit and was leaking it. I had a feeling he had Avalon and I just spent months casually bringing up how stupid it was that it was still hoarded and eventually he gave it to me to leak. This is the first time I've ever named who gave me it, but fuck it, none of this shit maters.

[smashingjj]

barely aware of half the shit listed here; but then I barely posted on the sp forum

[VoxUpDoc]

Baffling to me Billy would be more invested in policing the trader community than just releasing live shows officially as albums, like every other band of the era. His decision making about what performances are good enough is total shit too. A good window into why his studio work has been a mess since 2003 - his own filter is completely out of whack and dictated by the kind of stuff no listener would care about.

[Cool As Ice Cream]

billy wasn't policing the trader community.

[Spaldz]

Yeah I'm not sure Billy was policing anything. I ran the Smashing Pumpkins DC++ trading hub for a number of years and never had one issue. We made sure no one was sharing anything official but it wasn't like anyone was coming in checking up on us.

[Funbags]

Originally Posted by Rider

Everyone remember Juliana that totally insane girl that stalked him and was mad he didn't hire her to run his social media. I was legit afraid of her at one point.

So much stuff that just kinda faded from the collective memory.

Who was Pumpkin Queen?

[Cool As Ice Cream]

Originally Posted by Funbags

Who was Pumpkin Queen?

i think she was sp's social media person for a while? around early 2008, something like that?
i can't really remember what social media was at that time. myspace?

[Cool As Ice Cream]

https://myspace.com/thespqueen/
http://forums.netphoria.org/showthread.php?t=158745

maybe it was more 2007. or earlier?

[themadcaplaughs]

Yup. She was the "moderator" of sorts on the Smashing Pumpkins' MySpace, which was were Billy and Jimmy would occasionally dole out little bits about recording Zeitgeist. She started this whole "movement" to have SP celebration events in every major city. There ended up being one in Chicago were six or seven people showed up. Later, she had some event in the UK were a few fans showed up, and bombarded her with questions she couldn't answer: mainly whether James or D'arcy were in the band.

[AveryLoren]

She also posted on Netphoria as well.

[themadcaplaughs]

Holy shit. I had no idea.Any fun stories from those encounters?