Replace "Smashing Pumpkins" with "Kill Hannah" and you can virtually see history repeating itself.

Replace "Smashing Pumpkins" with "Kill Hannah" and you can virtually see history repeating itself.

From that Steve Albini thread (and for God's sake, feel free to read the posts, but don't join just to pester him with a question):

In Chicago in the late 1980s, there began to develop a kind of budding professionalism that struck us in the punk/underground scene as distasteful: Bands with managers, publicists and other agents were encroaching on a self-made scene that had previously been by, for and about the bands themselves.

The Smashing Pumpkins personified this creeping professionalism, having a management relationship with a creepy local music business player who was also responsible for booking the biggest venue in town. As a result, any decent touring band that came through town would have the Smashing Pumpkins added to the bill as a support act. This was rightfully seen as an imposition, and patrons learned to arrive at the Metro an hour later than usual in order to miss them. It isn't overstating things to say they were something of a joke in Chicago -- a band imposed on an existing audience by the music business rather than a band building its natural audience through accretion.