Seems like Ro0sh and I had the same thought in WordMan’s thread… there are some bands that have such insufferable fans that I end up projecting their baggage on the performer and I hate them as well. Dave Matthews Band is a good example. Every scammer dude I knew in college - you know the type, bought a Takamine guitar to pick up girls, pretended to be “down” because he had a Bell Biv DeVoe CD, wore Stussy “Love See No Color” hats - loved DMB. (Hootie was the other band they loved.)
Thing is, I actually went to a DMB concert and really appreciated hearing some of the songs, and the band was unquestionably tight. But sure enough, two rows back, there were these jackasses in Yankee gear (it was at Fenway Park) singing loud - almost aggressively, as if they wanted someone to tell them to shut up so they could start a fight.
Of course this is shallow and petty and you should like a band simply because you like their music, etc. but let’s be shallow and petty and list the prime offenders, shall we?
Having been a good little Christian girl when I was growing up, I pretty much missed out on this sort of thing and whose band devotees were a pain in the ass. However, as an adult minion to Alice Cooper, I’ve checked out quite a few message boards (like Metal Sludge) that seem to take a dim view of their annoying fans. The most preiminent, in my view from what I read, were Def Leppard’s. Apparently they called them “Leptards” for a reason.
I’ve also heard that the Kiss Army can be, um, quite interesting. Heh.
Insane Clown Posse, without a doubt. Every fan of their’s that I’ve ever met seemed to be flirting with psychosis. One of my best friends years ago was a huge ICP fan. We could be walking around the mall in plain clothing when another group of people looked our way and laughed. He’d always mutter something weird underneath his breath like “they’re not down with the clown - I’m a juggalo”. Other fans I’ve met are no less strange.
But yeah, DMB- I liked a song or two by him, so I stopped the Dave Hate, but man… I really dislike his extreme Fans.
PhishPhans were weird people, but they never bothered me (or my religious views) so I’ll let them be.The Dead… I used to like the Dead, then not, now I realized that I’ve been missing out, as I used to just have the Dead’s greatest hits on CDs- the SINGLES versions.
Listening to them Live has made me love them once again. But the fans- never really met any of those. So again, live and let live… But I do love me some Dead.
Oooh, another fun group- Creed Fans can get weird on you. But that was more during the 90s, I think now they too don’t really take it as seriously and have mellowed out.
A Venn diagram of the fans of all three of these bands would be pretty tightly spaced. All of them would be odorous underachievers who only like the music while deeply toasted.
I never hated Rush, but their Ayn Randian fans were so pompous, so superior, and took the band so seriously (far more seriously than Alex or Geddy ever took themselves) that I could never let myself become a BIG Rush fan. I was too afraid I’d become like one of… “them.”
Lepptards make the rest of us female Leppard fans look horrible. Yes, I do likey me some nice looking guys [esp that Irishman!] but damn it, not all of us women want to have their babies, or whatever weirdness those “ladies” are up to. I’ve been a fan of theirs since 1984, and when I first saw them I thought they were okay looking but their music was what drew me in and hooked me for life.
There’s one “fan” who is legendary for her batshittyness and having seen it in action, I can tell you that I was not only looking for the nearest exit, I was also noticing that the local police were slooowly edging up on her just in case. She’s supposedly got into serious trouble over many things, one including [but unknown how true] for sending the bass player a box of bullets with his wife and son’s names on them. :eek:
There’s a song on their new album called “Come Undone” which NONE of the lunatic fringe seems to have realized it’s about them [the song is for the band’s wives and the way they put up with their significant other’s life and ego]:
“Come on in, welcome, enter
We’ve got your front row center
For the freak-show parade,
Everybody wants to be you,
But I know you see right through their sad masquerade…”
Yes. Lepptards are a serious pain in my ass. Out of all the bands whose fans I’ve experienced, theirs and Bon Jovi’s are the worst. If anyone can figure out why, esp. in Leppard’s case, I want to know.
Billy Joel. I really liked his music when I was in high school (late '80s), but there was a group of kids who would insist on spontaneously singing his songs (badly) at any given moment, all freaking day long. If you said or did anything that matched a line from one of his songs, you were guaranteed a screech serenade. After a while, the sound of his voice made me cringe.
“We Didn’t Start the Fire” came out during my senior year, when a lot of lessons would drift into current issues or semi-recent history, so of course interruptions were a daily occurrence. My French teacher got fed up with having to go through this every time he mentioned De Gaulle, so he read the lyrics and started demanding that the singers explain exactly what was so noteworthy about Chou En-lai or Santayana. When they couldn’t (none of them could), they were assigned an essay on the subject.
The Beatles. Yes, they were a good band. Yes, they wrote some great tunes. Yes, they were very influential. Now, please stop going on about how the bloody Beatles walked on water and swam on land. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Beatles: it’s the fans who insist that they invented music that I can’t stand.
One of the major characters in a Norwegian comic strip called “Pondus” is a massive Kiss fan - and this fact is used as convenient shorthand to show that key parts of his personality never got past the age of 13.
Another strip, “Kollektivet”, features a major character who lives and breathes Bob Dylan, and refuses to listen to anything else. This also says a few things about that character…
Where do we classify the bands whose fans annoyed us back in adolescence? At my school and during my misspent youth, it was Duran Duran, who a large chunk of the girls hailed as God’s gift to mankind. The perfect specimens of masculinity! The best music in history! Those who would be remembered for centuries to come as the crowning achievement of our time! And as a result I grimaced every time one of their songs came on the radio. I still can’t bring myself to like 'em. But I’m also sure that’s a function of the age and place I found myself in during their heyday. Had I been born at another time, it might have been Elvis, or the Beatles, or (heaven forbid) the Bay City Rollers.
I agree with many of the above band mentions, but I would like to add just one:
Fall Out Boy.
Not only are they themselves offensive to every single sense (as well as on a few extrasensory levels), their fans are almost entirely of the whiny, emo, works-at-Hot-Topic variety. You know the kind of person I am talking about.
I’m not kidding. You want to get into a really, really, really stupid argument with somebody? Go to any Hot Topic, any Hot Topic in the United States, and say, “Fall Out Boy sucks.” You will get the whiniest, most one-sided debate you have ever experienced. I say one-sided because, really, I don’t give a damn what Mme. Tubs in the black-and-red t-shirt has to say.
Grrr. Fall Out Boy brings out the mean person inside me. :mad:
