#563

Also siamese dream is pretty universally liked here, outside of people who find his voice grating which is fair enough

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#564

I have been trying (and failing) to say exactly this for months and months and you’ve put it better than I’ve managed by orders of magnitude. I want to get this printed on a T shirt. Preach!

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#565

never had any issue with anyone just not liking the pumpkins, they’re not for everyone, but on the aggregate level their definitely is a weird attitude towards them, and the amount of resistance on here to a couple of people being enthusiastically championing them does just seem to be that playing out a lot of the time, the very things me and TAFH get mocked for pointing out happen time and time again, it is just like it is an unacceptable to think they are that good, the very idea the music press could be unfair, or that coolness plays a part in the realm of indie rock is unthinkable, we need to accept they are nothing more than a sub par band who happened to release 1 and a half good albums

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#566

It’s just so grating to read something that implies you’re misinformed or being disingenuous for expressing a dislike of band x.

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#567

people do like to reinforce the cannon position, it is a thing

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#568

46faxk

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#569

no one has ever said that, people need to distinguish between making an argument about the general aggregate perception of something, and whether it applies to every single person

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#570

Fair enough, but rightly or not, it’s a very easy thing to read into some posts (not just about the pumpkins)

#571

yeah but whenever it comes up I have explained, I have explained time and time again to Scadgen that I believe he just doesnt like the pumpkins that much, and if our arguments dont apply to him then they dont apply to him, doesnt mean it can’t apply to others.

Sometimes when talking about things it is necessary to make generalisations, it is never going to apply to absolutely everyone, making the case for a band being underrated it is totally appropriate to do so. me and TAFH have always put forward reasoning and evidence for our position, not everyone has to agree with it, but its not like we are saying this band are underrated because people dont like them as much as we do.

the fact that the pumpkins have become such a joke/reference on here, isn’t just because of me and TAFH are obsessives, it was also because people put them down in a way that exactly demonstrates the things we were talking about, vicious circle

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#572

can’t think of any other artist mentioned on here besides perhaps Kozelek where people will not countenance serious discussion or respect for people enjoying their music. We’ve had more respectful discussions about the music of Travis and Feeder than Koz and Corgan.

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#573

basically if what we are saying doesn’t have some truth to it, no one would have bat an eyelid at out enthusiasm, who cares if people think a band were underrated

#574

I guess at a fundamental level I don’t care whether something I enjoy is underrated or not. It doesn’t bother me in the least what other people think of the bands I love.

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#575

Personally, if somebody says they don’t like something, I’m not going to try to persuade them otherwise. It’s no bad thing to do the opposite, it just might not have the desired effect.

#576

I think there is a marked difference between the way that you push your fandom and others though.

  1. your pushing of SP (as @Ella_Megablast has put so much better than me, although I’ve tried over the months) seems to come across that there’s a ‘right amount’ that they should be liked or enjoyed and we’ve (as a community) got it wrong. I think that this is summed up in the key word from the super-long screed above: ‘their disproportionately low score’. Their score wasn’t disproportionate. A lot of people on here love them (5) (and not just you two either - there’s loads of SP adulation on here); a lot of people hate 'em (1) and a lot of people think (myself included) they made some great records in the 90s but have fallen a long way off since and the chap has a marmite voice at best (3). Given these three camps it seems entirely proportinate that they should get a 3. You might think 3 is too low from the most significant and amazing musical band ever to grace the world; others might think 3 is far too high for a mid-tempo rocker who sings like a cat undergoing testicular removal without anesthetic. 3 seems fair enough.

  2. another perpetual annoyance is that your championing of the SP almost always comes with sneering and putting down of other bands (e.g. the comments months ago about ‘I can’t wait to smash the 1 on sonic youth’ and the quote below

  1. Again, as @Ella_Megablast put much better than me that your insistence that the reason people don’t like them enough is to do with cool, the media, yadayadayada. I’m 42, I’m FAR too old to worry about what some people on the internet might think about the music I like. I’ve posted on here about Ned’s Atomic Dustbin for God’s sake. People who don’t like 'em, don’t like 'em and that’s fine and it doesn’t matter and don’t tell us we would all love them if only we/the internet/the media would be fair on them. Some people love peanut butter. Some people hate it. Some people only like the crunchy stuff. Whatever, different tastes and all that.
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#577

I honestly dont think i’ve tried to persuade people who dont like them otherwise, I have championed the machina album because it is a common thing amongst fans of the band to appreciate a lot more now then at the time of release, and I have encouraged people who have not really heard of them but have the grunge/alt-rock perception to give them ago as they might not realise the other sides to the band, but if someone has given them a shot, genuinely doesnt like them then I dont care and wouldn’t want to change their mind, that doesnt mean I can’t address things that I think are unfair when it comes to the perception, narratives and coverage around the band, or express my subjective opinion that they are quite underrated

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#578

My perception could well be wrong, but like @Scagden has alluded to, I do sometimes feel like I’m being proselytized when reading some of the Pumpkins posts, like if only we’d see the light we’d understand their true genius. I don’t mean that as a personal attack on anybody, it’s just the way it feels sometimes and I can understand why folk get irked.

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#579

Feels like people spend more time talking about anything other than the smashing pumpkins :laughing:

#580

  1. This basically comes down to me thinking the band are underrated, anyone who thinks a band they like are underrated has this kind of assumption it, are we saying people cannot think bands are underrated. Again this puts me and TAFH at the origin, rather than our defence being a response

  2. My negativity towards Sigur Ros and Sonic Youth is both because they have been quite rudely dismissive of the pumpkins (demonstrating the indie cool factor), why shouldn’t I be negative towards them in return. Anyway I have no problem with people being negative about bands, I relish strong opinions in either direction, its fine all personal subjective opinion, I will argue against it if I think it is unfair, just as anyone can argue against me if they think anything i’ve said about Sigur Ros is unfair

  3. As I have said repeatedly I believe you, you dont like them that much. Are you saying the music press, the indie scene, is an entirely fair meritocracy where the concept of things being cool or not doesnt factor in. I find that completely absurd. Yes a lot of people dont like them, some because they just dont like them, others I think because they got a rough ride for not fitting in with what the zeitgeist deemed right. That doesnt have to apply to you, you dont have to agree with it applying to anyone else, but what is so wrong that I have that as a hypothesis based on my own perception of the band, having followed them, read coverage, seen how people discuss them over decades, why do you think that your perception that there was no unfairness or misconceptions of any non-musical factors should override mine

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#581

So influential on Mogwai that they didn’t even make Stuart’s 100 most influential songs.

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#582

like I said it is a vicious cycle, I dont know if you have followed how this developed from the original thread but seems like there was a lot of resistence to our enthusiasm, then we became the butt of jokes, then we get blamed anytime anyone mentions them, even when we go along with the joke we get treated as if we are being deadly serious, can’t win, people put them down all the time just to get a rise out of us, most of the time ignored but occasionally not, does kind of leave us wanting to make the case for it again sometimes. I think me and TAFH show a lot of restraint if anything against the constant bombardment of the reference

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