I’ll start.
Rage Against the Machine. Enough said.
Hate is a pretty strong word. But, I’ve always dug “The Sisters of Mercy” and “Fields of the Nephilim,” but many goths…hoo boy.
Every band I’ve ever played in.
And your problem with “goths” would be?
Seriously, I know some of the folks out there are just too out there, but I was wondering if we all get under your nerves or just some of us.
Rush.
I mean, I’ve liked Rush since I was in high school, but I HATED the kind of snobbish dweebs who always seemed to gravitate to Rush. The Rush fans I knew in high school acted as if their choice of rock groups made them better than everybody else.
Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson seem like genuinely nice, down-to-earth guys. I get the feeling they don’t take Rush quite as seriously as many fans do.
I’d say you just answered your own question.
astorian’s irritation at some Rush fans applies pretty well here.
“Many” and “all” are different words for a reason. Which one did I use?
Any band whose fans get all bent out of shape when new fans discover them. If I hear one more person self-righteously proclaim “I liked Band X back before any of you had heard of them!” I’m going to strangle them. Who really gives a rat’s ass. Did the band credit you as the sole inspiration for all their albums? No? Well then, lay off the false sense of ownership, you dweeb.
I’ve gotta agree with CrankyAsAnOldMan 100%. I remember once when I was in high school talking to some older person about Pink Floyd and being made to feel that it was somehow my fault that I (a) liked Animals best and (b) wasn’t around back when Syd was in the group. Hell, I was around, but I was in diapers. Give me a freaking break, OK?
CrankyAsAnOldMan, I think it depends slightly on the context. You did say “self-righteously,” so I suppose that you’re drawing a distinction between people who say it that way, and people who say it for other reasons.
As a f’rinstance, imagine someone who did indeed like Band X when they were still playing in small clubs, and had a very small following. Next thing they know, the band makes it big, and everyone has a copy of their album, and Band X T-shirts are everywhere. I can see how someone might feel a little odd when that happens. It’s not an issue of ownership, or of having been the inspiration for Band X, it’s a matter of having been privy to something of a “best kept secret” when it was still a secret. It doesn’t make them special, or anything else, but it can feel like they lost a little something along the way. It’s like going from being a part of a very small group of people, to just being another soul on the bandwagon.
OK, maybe I’m just reacting this way because I liked Tori Amos when she was just playing tiny little clubs. When she made it big, I felt like I’d lost a little something. Though of course, I was happier to see that she was getting such success and recognition. And no, that doesn’t make me better than the person who discovered her stuff yesterday.
That said, anyone who acts all superior because of something like that should be kicked in the teeth.
Where to begin? Many fans of They Might be Giants seem to feel that if you started listening with “Flood” then you are somehow unworthy of calling yourself a fan. They even have a name for this: “Floodites”. Ha ha that’s very clever, I don’t think.
Any chance I may have ever had of really liking Radiohead has been completely destroyed by the ceaseless wave of fans who must broadcast the truth of their genius 24/7 and must inform you that if you don’t agree they are absolute godhead then you are clearly some moron who simply isn’t intelligent enough to appreciate the wonder of Radiohead.
But in general, Cranky hit the nail on the head. The whole “More obscure than thou” crowd takes the prize.
I’m shocked nobody’s mentioned The Grateful Dead and Deadheads yet; for that matter, tack on the fans of any band where the fans actually TOUR with the band, a la Phish. Jesus, guys, it’s a rock band, not a religion. Get a job.
I didn’t mention the Dead, because of the thread’s title, “Bands You Love With Fans You Hate.” Given that The Grateful Dead, musically speaking, annoy me almost as much as their fans, it didn’t seem fitting.
Oooops… Dylan, if you still read these boards, this doesn’t apply to you. You’re one of those really rare cool Deadheads.
The Who.
The Who.
Man oh man, The Who.
Any of those poncy art school bands eh Roxy Music, David Bowie. The music’s good, the fans are plungers.
Also the Smiths. Oh dear.
Actually any band that students like eg James
I went to a public enemy gig once. That wasn’t nice. Not nice at all.
I gotta mention the Grateful Dead and the Talking Heads. I lump them together not because they had any real connection, but because, in my college radio days, we had a large contingent of people who worshipped these two bands to extremes (oddly, they were generally the same people). If they had a radio show, it was 50% Dead, 50% Heads. My friends and I took to calling them the Head Heads.
I can’t say that I really loved either band (though I owned a bunch of Dead LPs and T-shirts back in my high school days, and cut my teeth on early Heads stuff. I liked both of them well enough until I had them rammed down my throat at every opportunity for four years. I made a real effort to find and play interesting, unknown stuff on my own show, spending a lot of my own money on imports and obscure idependent releases, partly for my own enjoyment and partly for use on my show (record companies hadn’t started taking college radio seriously yet in the early eighties, and ours was only a 10 watt station, so we rarely got promo copies). Most of my colleagues just hung out in the station, threw a Dead or Heads LP or a Dead bootleg tape on, got stoned and drew on the station walls.
By my senior year, when some like-minded friends and I put together a band and played a lunchtime gig in the campus center, it was such a standing joke with us that we closed with our “Take Me to the Ripple” medley – the lyrics to every Dead song we could remember sung over the bass line and chords to the Heads’ version of “Take Me to the River”; it was a thing of beauty to watch as the crowd initially nodded their heads and got ready to sing along, then grew confused, and then hostile as they figured out what we were about. Our finest hour (yes, I realize that says more about the quality of our other hours than anything else).
I cannot stand all those annoying teenage white boys from upper-middle class homes that listen to gangsta rap and affect 'hood ways in a lame as attempt to appear “dangerous.”
Admittedly, I’m not exactly a big fan of gangsta rap, but I believe from an artistic and cultural standpoints it’s a lot more interesting than its fans would lead you to believe.
The Cure. I hated the band in high school because the fans I came into contct with were the most insufferble, spoiled, whiney brats I ever met. After I graduated I decided to base my judgment of the band on the music, and came to like them a lot. So I can tolerate some fans now, if it’s only on the internet, though. In person I have this urge to grab hold of their undies’ waistbands and yank like there’s no tomorrow. As you can guess, concerts are interesting.
Tool. I really like Undertow. When the original bassist left I thought the band took a significant step down in quality. And yet yap yap yap Tool this Tool that. Yeah, I understand, not everyone shares my veiw that they aren’t what they once were, but jeez. C’mon, they’re has-beens! <-- Uh, IMHO.
I had the same experience with Tori, Zaphod (may I call you Zaphod?). I’ve sort of glommed onto Dar Williams these days, who is still playing tiny venues and talking to everyone after the shows. Some of Dar’s fans were annoying; they are so painfully sincere, with their hiking boots/Birks and doe eyes.
I am a big fan of Morrissey/The Smiths, but I am not a Morrissey/Smiths “fan”. You know the type, swearing by every sound the man puts throught the microphone. The guy could fart Dixie and they would say it was the deepest, most intellectual exmple of artistic expression that they have ever heard.
That being said, he is still my favorite artist. Well, him and Robert Smith from The Cure. Don’t get me started on Cure fans…
This obviously doesn’t apply to the ones I’ve met on the board, who don’t fit this category, but fans of old Einsturzende Neubauten annoy me, mostly because they seem to have missed the point of the band by criticising their new music. As well as the fact I’m glad it looks like the band members have chosen life, over the perpetual ‘war against sleep’ which they lived through in the early eighties, their last few records have been close to perfect, as against their earlier work, which was often hit or miss, or at best, interesting rather than brilliant.
I also tend towards the heavier side of punk (eg Onyas, Von Zippers, Mach Pelican), however, a lot of their fans (and I hate to say it, most of their young fans) don’t seem to have any concept of respect for fellow fans at shows. At one punk show, a kid was having fun (which is fine) spinning around and jumping all over the place, when he slammed into my mouth with his shoulder. No problem, I thought, he didn’t mean it, so I’ll just tell him to cool it down and watch out for people. When I did, he gave a dirty look and virtually told me to get f**ked.