Ten years ago today, Ozphoria started with...
Well this is the obligatory first news post.
This is a site for all Australian, Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan fans. We will try to give you as much information on the happenings of Zwan as we can. To everybody from the O-Board who helped support this idea, I say thankyou!
A letter to the friends and enemies of modern music
That was the first update posted on Ozphoria way back in June 2002, and of course at that stage I had no idea how important this website would be in shaping various aspects of my life. I launched Ozphoria as a means to trade Pumpkins/Zwan bootlegs and official releases with friends from the Smashing Pumpkins O-Board within Australia. It was the perfect way to have a little community and share those hidden treasures amongst ourselves and of course the community grew from that idea.
A few weeks after launching Ozphoria, I met a certain girl from the Smashing Pumpkins O-Board. It’s a simple story: we fell in love, got married, listen to music, work together etc. and this year are (of course) celebrating 10 years of being together. So while the idea of starting Ozphoria was my idea it was only a one man show for about 6 weeks. As a duo we were set on creating a great little world for all Smashing Pumpkins fans, but mainly our fellow Australians.
When I started working on Ozphoria I was just finishing design school and it provided a vehicle to learn more about website design and how people interact online. Over time, using my skills in this way has led me to a career I adore. I look back with fondness at a time when Ozphoria started and websites were just created for fun without any serious plan behind them. I knew how to code a basic website and set up a forum - so I did it. There was no Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace... (there was LiveJournal which everybody seemed to have in those days) and most of Australia were still on dial-up Internet. It feels like a century ago when you start to compare it to how the Pumpkins community runs these days; constant updates from fans and the band - it's easy to forget how little information we'd get back then (I'd better stop there before I start to sound like an old man).
So to continue on the nostalgia trip, I can never forget the adventures we’ve had while running Ozphoria and the amazing friends we've made. Over the years we've pretty much done it all, including;
Three tribute night concerts (2003, 2005, 2009), giving away prizes from our own collection and gifts from the band, following Billy and the Smashing Pumpkins on multiple tours around Australia (2005, 2008, 2010), making life long friends in Australia and around the world, working with various distributors/record companies to promote releases since 2002, working with the Smashing Pumpkins web teams, numerous interviews about the band for print media and also on Triple J radio (mostly with the amazing Rosie Beaton - thank you for your support Rosie!), working for the Smashing Pumpkins as part of the SP Media Militia, helping with the promotion of ‘If All Goes Wrong’ in cinemas across Australia and of course a special moment of buying Billy and his brother Jesse lunch in Melbourne during the 2008 tour (long story that one). With all of that rattled off, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things!
It's looking back at this list of accomplishments, and it makes me just want to say:
"I fucking love the Smashing Pumpkins community, offline and online."
We are a special breed that have a healthy obsession with the band. It's what I've always tried to explain to people outside the community; the depth of music, media, collectibles, live shows, knowledge shared by fans and the band too. Sure we’ve all had a few heated 'discussions' with one another, but when it comes down to it there is always that one thing that brought us together - this band and there have been so many great times. The music and members over the last 24 years have given us all something special that (for me, for us) no other band has come close to capturing in my heart.
So as we set sail for another decade (or more), the idea of Ozphoria hasn’t changed in 10 years: news and music first… actually, the only thing that has changed are my coding and design abilities.
Thank you to everybody for your support, help and long chats over the last 10 years - with plenty more to come. We'll be setting off soon for all the dates on the Oceania Australian/New Zealand tour and we are looking forward to catching up with some of you in person and also bringing the news to you around the world as the tour unfolds. We're sure it’s going to be something special.
Finally, we'd like to thank the amazing Smashing Pumpkins themselves for all the support and opportunities we've had over the last 10 years. Keep making incredible music and we'll be here...
Simon & Bree
( @sunky & @BreeMateljan )
