Thinking back to my high school years 85-88 there were a few students that I knew little about personally however I associated that person with a particular band becuase they were completely obsessed by it. Obssesed in the way that their wardrobe consisted of mainly concert T’s of the band, their lockers had band posters in them, they dressed like them, they scribed the bands name on their books and notebooks, etc. And not just in a yearly fad way but were die-hards throughout high school.
I distinctly remember:
Scott- The U2 fan. Anything and everything U2 for him. Bootleg tapes galore.
Dale- The Rush fan. From seventh grade through high school graduation. Rush T’s, Rush jacket, on and on.
Jenny- The Cure fan. She was as goth as goth could be in the mid 80s. Loooooved the Cure. That’s all I knew about her and I didn’t even know her.
The INXS guy. I don’t even know his name. All I know is he was INXS 24/7. Even did his hair and clothes to look like the lead singer.
I was in high school at the same time as you and I know exactly what you’re talking about. In our group, Ted was the Led Zep guy and Andy was the Pink Floyd dude. I was the Iron Maiden chick (though I originally started out as Rattgirl.)
I went to high school and college with a chick that was fixated on John Taylor of Duran Duran. We’re talking psychotic, “Fatal Attraction” or Mark David Chapman kind of fixated. She had this plan to fly to NYC and kill him because she was 1] convinced he was an angel and 2] that he was too pure and beautiful to live on this “polluted plane of existence.”
:eek: doesn’t even BEGIN to cover it. Nopenopenopenope.
Last I heard she was in some psychiatric hospital because she’d totally lost all touch with reality and had gone babbling off into the ether.
My friend Brian was batshit crazy over Tina Turner. I think he took his job at Pizza Hut just so he could afford her concert tickets, autobiography, posters galore, and every version of every album she put out. Strangely enough, he was mostly into alternative music.
Kim was obsessed with Ozzy Osbourne. She even wore the little round sunglasses and parted her hair in the middle in order to look more like him. It was uncanny and I wish I had pictures.
Shirly was the Cure girl. Mattia was the Smiths girl (Johnny Marr OMG squee!). Yes, they were still scary Marys-- I’d forgotten the term. Darcy was the Van Halen guy. Cy was the Metallica guy. Christian was the Anthrax guy. Chris was (inexplicably) the Love and Rockets guy. Oh, Sonia the Madonna wannabe, and Iris and Katherine the Menudo people, and Puahi the Duran Duran girl. We also had Prince girls and LL Cool J guys and the MC Hammer guys (ethnically various school).
I was the Clash girl.
My friend Tina & I were the Depeche Mode girls. My brother called us Spook #1 & Spook #2.
Steve was the Fugazi guy, B.J. was the Cure guy, Josh was the U2 guy & Shannon was the Smiths chic. And there were many, many more. Everyone that I knew in high school was obsessed with some band.
A couple guys came to mind right away. I was in H.S. from 79-83 BTW.
Jim the Rush Fan. He was in my art class, and everything he did, from pottery, to oil paintings said “RUSH” on it! He was a good artist, but lost a lot of points(grades) for originality.
Also in that class was a guy named Chuck. He was a fan of himself. He did the same thing with all his art projects, but they all said, Chuck, Chaz, or Charles…:smack:
One of my High School friends would go violently apeshit bonkers about the vaguest suggestion that Linda McCartney was responsible for the breakup of the Beatles. Luckily, it didn’t come up very often. She was smart, sweet and funny until someone mentioned the Beatles.
Another, who fits better in the Casual Acquaintance as well as the Batshit Crazy (rather than merely Obsessive Fan) categories, would freak the fuck out at anything less than open hostility toward James Earl Jones, because he “stole” David Proust’s role in Star Wars. She also insisted she was the true heir to the Russian throne by way of being Anastasia’s illegitimate granddaughter, and wouldn’t fill out those stupid Federal ethnic background cards because <sic> “*reposed *Russian Nobility” didn’t have it’s own little box to check.
Then there was the girl who claimed she was pregnant by Ted Nugent for 5 years solid, starting in Junior High. She spent our senior year trying to slug people and crying in the restroom, because “Even elephants are pregnant for only two years” became the unofficial Class of '82 Motto.
In a class of 700+, there are bound to be a few nuts.
I was the Menudo girl in 8th grade. There was a particular clique that delighted in teasing me about it. I’m willing to bet that when I go to my 20-year reunion next year, those three people will sidle up to me and say, “So, Lucky, remember that Menudo concert you went to?” :smack:There was also a Duran Duran girl that year. She wore a fedora to school and styled her hair like John Taylor. They left her alone. :mad:
In high school, there was the Siouxsie girl, who had a mohawk, and the Sigue Sigue Sputnik guy. I don’t recall ever having seen them even speak to each other. I was friends, sort of, with Eric the Smiths fan. We would write Smiths lyrics in the margins of our French homework.
I was the U2 girl (and my friend Joe from youth group was the U2 guy, although he went to a different school). I didn’t wear the T-shirts or anything, but I was obsessed. I’m generally better now (although Bono still makes me go wibble a bit).
Tori was the Aerosmith girl. This was in grades 6-7, around 1996-7. She didn’t do any school work, because she was going to be Steven Tyler’s lover and didn’t require an education for that. I think she was actually kind of serious. (Last thing I heard about her, in high school, was that she had a baby with someone who wasn’t Steven Tyler.)
I went to school in the mid-nineties and the only example that comes to mind is a girl who I was friends with who was bizarrely obsessed with the Lawrence brothers, that guy who was the ditzy brother on the show Blossom, and his younger brother who did a couple of movies. It grew scary over a period of years, and then when she found something else to be obsessed with it went away. I head that she was institutionalized a few years ago, but I’m not sure why.
Was in high school in the late '80s and early '90s.
Jennie was a ‘Curehead’. She used to gel her hair up like Robert Smith on our occasional ‘civvies days’ i.e. days when we didn’t have to wear our uniforms
Kate was Nirvana girl. She wore sloppy cardigans with holes at the elbows.
Apart from that I don’t remember anyone else being too obsessive about any band in particular.
There was Larry the Elvis Nut, who by the way is now doing two consecutive life sentences for killing the owner of a beef stand back in '79. We’re not sure if it was the Elvis thing, or that every day for most of junior high a few of us grab him and hold him down while Randy would do the dribble-spit thing over him, then we would smack him a few times before he ran home. I blame Elvis.
I’m generally better now (although Bono still makes me go wibble a bit).