The Smashing Pumpkins - Rage against the Machina

I thought this was a bit off when I read it tbf

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I mean, is that not the classic bully tactic of calling someone they’re bullying a crybaby? To me (and many others) the situation reads as Sonic Youth being the cool kids looking down on and laughing at Billy for not being cool enough.

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Nah fair point, you’ve won me over. The critics, the other bands, the artists, the people-who-listened-to-Machina-and-thought-dear-god-is-this-the-same-band-that-made-Siamese-dream-I-thought-i-used-to-like-those-guys, they’re all wrong in mindset and behaviour. You’ve done it, you’ve vindicated him; he’s a misunderstood genius cruelly mistreated by those around him.

I really don’t know why I’m persisting with this pointless argument as you’re never going to convince me to see things from my point of view and I’m clearly never going to convince you. Seems entirely pointless.

One thing I would say though is how much this reminds me of a recurring argument with my wife’s uncle who is a climate change denier. He worked for 40 years in the oil industry and is VERY certain of how much of a conspiracy the whole thing is and how if you really look at what’s going on with the numbers and the polar ice-sheets and the cyclical nature of mini ice ages etc that humans can’t be to blame for global warming.

And it doesn’t matter how many times you point to all the other 10000s of scientists who contradict him: it’s a conspiracy. It’s unfair. They’re biased and prejudiced and they just can’t see the data like he can. And nothing will convince him otherwise. They’re all blinkered and he’s the only one who can see the truth. No idea what he thinks of Gish mind you.

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were they bullying him though? she just says they didn’t like him for that reason. i don’t think it’s bullying to think someone is an arsehole.

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I don’t think anything I’m saying is really that controversial, but yeah, we’re going in circles. (He probably doesn’t like Gish, it’s too electrifying for the conservative crowd.)

I’m not sure. I mean, it’s fine if they didn’t like him (he probably didn’t like them either), I just think they come across pretty badly in the situation and worse than he does.

dunno about this, lots of musicians have been combative with the press in the past and didn’t inspire some kind of ‘vendetta’ - Mark E Smith, Nick Cave etc. - so not sure why that would be a reason for them to ‘turn’ on Corgi specifically.

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I dunno, as a fairly avid reader of the UK music press in the early/mid-90s, I don’t really remember them being given that rough a ride. Everett True hated them, obviously, and the Pavement thing, but in general, they got quite good reviews, and so on - kind of think Pearl Jam got slagged off/were the butt of jokes much more. Maybe things changed in the late nineties once he was bald, I wasn’t paying as much attention then. I just think when yer man up there kicks off about press vendettas I can’t really equate that with my memories, which were that they were occasionally praised, occasionally slagged off, but ultimately not given much of a toss about, because post-1993 that sort of thing just wasn’t something that was given that much of a toss about (media-wise I mean, obviously lots of people liked them)

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Why did big press keep playing all their videos in constant rotation?

Also the cool punk kids sonic youth :laughing:

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The chip on the shoulder about the line in ‘Range Life’ is fucking hilarious. One throwaway line on a song from a much smaller band and Billy and fans freak out for twenty five years. Perfectly normal behaviour.

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Maybe the stone temple pilots really are gentlemen cause you don’t hear them or their fans kicking off (no idea, don’t think I’ve ever met a STP fan).

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I don’t think Stone Temple Pilots even exist to be honest!

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Only their album Purple exists. As crazy as it sounds I’ll still go to bat for Purple in 2019.

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Tune tbh

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Billy didn’t too bad press wise until after the split as I recall, apart from Adore and Machina getting largely lukewarm reviews. He was seen as a massive dork but then he was in fact a massive dork - that was part of his charm, this strange misfit with his soaring rock epics. Things only turned a bit sour around the time of Zwan when he made a series of bad decisions: forming a supergroup with a bunch of drug addicts who hated him, doing a terrible electronic solo album, deciding he was the next Vince McMahon, eventually reforming the Pumpkins without the original members in a move that screamed, “I want to be relevant again.” The press turned on him because he seemed artistically spent, desperate for attention/credibility and basically a parody of himself, culminating in an 8 hour concept electronic performance on equipment he blatantly didn’t really know how to use.

Tl:Dr, you played yourself, Billy.

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I’ve got a soft spot for Zwan but the whole project was a bit of a shambles. And I’m not gonna argue TFE with you again but imho it was just plain bloody awful. And I was well excited for it on release.

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Imho I think he handled Zwan in a good way to start with - heading off on all those tours to work up songs before recording an album. Really felt like he wanted to re-capture how the Pumpkins started out, and I remember (thanks to filesharing making it easier to circulate them) how much excitement there was about the bootlegs coming out of those shows.

Shame the album was a bit flat, really.

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Yeah that’s true tbf. The trouble was the stuff on the bootlegs didn’t sound much like the shiny happy throwback pop rock that made up most of the album. Not sure if there was a last minute change of heart or what but they never quite seemed sure of what they wanted Zwan to be, which is especially weird after the lengthy gestation period that got so much positive buzz going.

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Yeah that’s a good point - there were a load of bands who grew up with Siamese Dream/Mellon Collie forming bands then. He made some poor decisions did t’old Bill - I’d like to take a peak into the timeline where he makes something dark and weird instead. Reckon that may have been the turning point.

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I’ve never been able to perceive how Billy even thought it was that much of a slight

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