How believe came to be.

Read about me meeting James here :D
I saw James & TSP in concert!

So why do a site on a rockstar? A rockstar that could be easily interchanged with any other boring guitar-wielding man who drinks and swears too much and changes women as fast as he changes hairstyles . . . . The fact that Iha ISN'T easily interchanged with others in his profession is what made it happen. I was fascinated with him from the start, not just because of that hair, or because of his other physical attributes he was graced with, but because he seemed different from all of those others. I knew that without knowing a thing about him.

My outlook on rock music in May of 1997 was kind of . . . damp, dripping, smoky, and terminally depressed. Bush- and Breeder-like. Men wailed garishly, women shrieked. No one brushed their hair and no one cared. So I opened up the Mellon Collie liner for the second time in my relatively short life and looked at James. Hmm, he brushes his hair. He matches. I had also been somewhat interested in Asian culture (being a bit bored with my usual melting-pot European background, I know, I know, it's bad) before stumbling upon the Smashing Pumpkins, and finding out that they had an Asian man in their midst was nice, too. When asked in A. Magazine about his view on the importance of being Asian, James says it shouldn't be about race and it should be about the music, which I agree with. But I couldn't help the fact that I was drawn to him because of that. I wouldn't really call it an Asian fetish. Let's go for the word respect, or interest. James has basically opened my eyes to the Asian culture in general (whether or not he'd be pleased about that I can't speculate on for sure)

Soo...it all started in May of 1997. My best friend Catherine came to spend the night and brought only her copy of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The Smashing Pumpkins, my first taste. Besides the Simpsons, anyway :) I spent the whole night listening and basically staring at James on the liner. I had that picture memorized, I tell you. Down to the little dark line on the bride of his nose. So why do I like James...

I love to look at him...I wouldn't have thought 3 years ago I would have found a man like James attractive, but it just hit me one night :) Now he seems to me to be one of the most beautiful people in the world. Not second best to his looks, James's music is great. Yeah, yeah, some of his stuff can get a tad repeptitive, and there are some people that despise him, but they aren't fans and in the end they don't matter. James is talented, I love his songs. He's definitely got the love thing down, not to mention his collaborations with Billy on the rock songs (i.e. "Plume", "Soma," and "Mayonaise," among others). Another attractive thing about James: he's as utterly normal US citizen as he can be for his profession and lifestyle. He's even dorky at times, and you gotta love that.

I spent most of 1997 finding out whatever I could about James and the Pumpkins. They weren't really doing much back then, just touring for The Aeroplane Flies High and doing that Batman & Robin stuff. I even stooped to cutting things out of Bop just for info. :) "The Cult of the Iha Obessed" was around back then, but I wasn't online yet. I looked at it a few times, just amazed! Finally I got online and starting pattering around with websites. The first ones were bad; let's not go there. I finally got around to making the now-defunct Under the Table & Siamese Dreaming in early 1999. My original idea was to make it my homepage (which it was) & to also have a fairly large Smashing Pumpkins section on there. Not attempting to compete with the biguns (Siva, SP Collection) but just a little personal view of my SP obsession :) Adding to this were seperate member pages. I started on James's first, and I soon realized that it was going to be the biggest. The other three (Billy, D'arcy, Jimmy) didn't even compare. So I gave James's page a title, Boy. Eventually I started getting many hits on that page, almost as much as the homepage did. So I decided to move to another GeoCities address in February 2000. When I did, I changed the title because Boy was taken. In late August of 2000, due to space constraints, I made the decision to move to my own domain, so I purchased jamesiha.org for a very decent price :) I'm in active competition with www.jamesiha.com now, which is always down ;D Hope you enjoy visiting this site as much as I enjoy making it!