Oh, What a Mangled Web We Leave

Nobody in the band knew quite what to say. "It was just too much," Ferrari says. "No dude is gonna admit they like this band after seeing that."

As planned by Geffen, the video made an auspicious debut on MTV's hit show TRL (Total Request Live) in April 2006, where its fate would be determined by viewer votes. It peaked at No. 12—just two places away from staying in rotation on the show. The alternative music video channel Fuse kept the video in heavy rotation, and the song reached No. 1 on Los Angeles' influential radio station KROQ.

By most standards, The Pink Spiders were moving along nicely. But Jordan Schur and Geffen expected more for their money.

"Their idea was, we were gonna be some kind of, like, Backstreet Boys band or something," says Decious. "And we were just like, 'That's not really what we are.' "

Determined to make the best of the situation, the band charged on to the Warped Tour that summer, where they peculiarly found themselves both over- and underexposed. Arguably one of the most bizarre annual events in American music, the traveling festival is a youth-oriented punk-rock bonanza that drowns itself in corporate sponsorship to keep the ticket prices affordable to teens. Most of the bands have paid their dues the traditional way—building a solid hometown fan base, releasing a few records on smaller independent labels, opening for a bigger headlining act, and finally, if they've even made it that far, releasing a major-label debut and video.

The Pink Spiders had skipped half of those steps—they were never embraced as a hometown band, and they had gone from playing basements and dive bars to signing with a major label and releasing a polished single on MTV. As far as the other bands knew, they were fabricated by the label to cash in on the youth market.

"Everyone was kinda like, 'Why are these guys on TV? I've never heard of them,' " says Ferrari. "And they thought we were put together [by the label], too, because of the marketing. It's like, 'Oh, there's the drummer with glasses—he's the goofy one. Then there's the handsome bass player and the lead singer that's quiet.' "

At a festival heavily stacked with punk bands who pride themselves on their DIY ethos, the Spiders were prime targets for some good old-fashioned mockery.

"It's kind of enraging," says Dave Paulson, who played second guitar with the band on Warped and several other tours, "because those bands had been touring for years with other bands who were kinda big in that punk-Epitaph [Records] realm. The reason they hadn't heard of The Pink Spiders was because they were playing basements. And when they skipped that level, people just acted like they came out of nowhere, when they were playing far shittier shows than a lot of those guys did."

Further complicating matters for the band was the fact that their highly touted major-label debut, Teenage Graffiti, scheduled for an April 1 release, had somehow still failed to appear.

"We were on TRL in April, and the fuckin' record comes out in August, so this song's being played on the radio like a motherfucker," says Decious, "and there was no product. You couldn't go anywhere and get it.... We did the whole fucking Warped Tour with a single and no product.... We'd sell some copies of Hot Pink, but we kept thinking we were gonna have Teenage Graffiti, but...do you sell this album with all these [original recordings of the] songs on it? It's gonna confuse people."

Paulson was similarly shocked. "I think it's baffling," he says. "Maybe they were really expecting that song to take TRL by storm and create a buzz for two months. It just seems like you wouldn't take that chance with a video that was clearly so expensive."

"I fought with anyone and everyone [at the label] until I was out of breath," says Friction, "but ultimately there's nothing you can do."

The album finally hit stores on Aug. 1, in the waning days of the band's Warped Tour dates, with little fanfare and no talk of a second single. Nobody has ever been able to offer the band a satisfactory explanation for the delay, but, as Paulson notes, "That seems to be what happens to major labels—it's an inefficient business where things don't happen on time.... You'll see that on any band's MySpace page. It'll say ['Coming in Fall!'] for a while, and then it'll be like, 'Coming in Spring!' 'Coming in Summer!' And maybe they hope to get it out that soon. But they just can't."

Teenage Graffiti was well-received by many critics—Rolling Stone raved that it had "...enough catchy charm and ass-kicking propulsion to suggest a ballsier Weezer or a punk-schooled Cheap Trick," and prophesized that "...the Spiders are ready to spin a power-pop revolution." For a new rock act making its major-label debut, the album sold reasonably well—it reached No. 84 on the Billboard top 100 and ultimately sold roughly 80,000 copies. But by the label's standards, it was a dismal return on Geffen's monumental investment.