Insufferable Fans?

[31HZ]

Meatspace? Was that an early hook-up site, like ‘Casual Encounters’ on Craigslist, before they had to get rid of it?

It's a term for the real world (as opposed to the being wrapped up in an online forum), usually used with positive connotation such as, "we get a little too wrapped up in arguments about Jaco on TB, but every member I've met in meatspace has been totally cool."

First coined in the '00s on advrider.com (probably in the JoMomma subforum), unless I'm mistaken.

 

[fhm555]

I grew up in a household dominated by all manner of country/rockabilly from my dad, and classical/big band from my mom. We watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, but I was still a few years away from the idea of music as a consumable so they just looked like yet another novelty act to me. My first exposure to anything but the above was my older sister and her friends with their Dave Clark 5 and Paul Revere and the Raiders. Early into that evolution my friend down the street had a cousin from Chicago come spend the summer with his family. He brought Are You Experienced on LP; and the die was cast….

 

[Dlew919]

Slayer. Ever since a significant number of white supremacist fans started adopting Slayer's music as their thing, it's difficult for me to listen to them. I get that bands cannot choose their fans and the irony is that Tom Araya is Chilean, but it's too cognitively conflicting for me to listen to a band that's lately become so strongly associated with attracting a white supremacist fanbase.

Apparently the KKK used to play the music of Bill Monroe at their meetings. Given Bill was progressive in his views to race (He’d make sure his harmonica player got served in diners for example and if they really refused bill would eat with him in the car) this was a bit incongruous.

I love the Beatles but Taxman doesn’t invent funk and Helter skelter doesn’t invent heavy metal. Neither does birthday.

 

[Dincrest]

@Dlew919

That reminds me back in the 90s when someone started a rumor (during the early days of the Internet) that 311 was a racist band because K is the 11th letter of the alphabet and the 3 before it meant 3 K's. It spread to the point where schools were banning kids from wearing 311 T-shirts.

Obviously it was ridiculous because:
1) 311 took their name from the police code for indecent exposure after band members got arrested for skinny-dipping
2) The band and their music are as anti-racist as can be.

But enough people bought into that narrative that fans were labeled racist for liking the band regardless of who/what they were. And the people who shout, "How can you listen to that racist garbage!?!?!?!" are just parroting the crowd, not fact-checking that the band is NOT racist, and an average person who likes the band (and their diverse group of friends) is labeled something they're not.

So it's like... you like a thing for the right reasons, but are quiet about it because you don't want to be labeled as one of "those" fans everyone hears about.

 

[Just Wrong]

I should have read the entire thread. Nevermind. This is the correct answer. However, I listen to the albums that came out before I met "that Radiohead fan." Great guy. Chill roommate. But he would stay up all night to buy tickets when they dropped and whenever the music came up (In Rainbows had just come out), I would get answers like "because they have pop sensibilities." Completely reasonable human in every other regard.

Sorry, but someone called Tool460002 saying "Radiohead" is the correct answer to insufferable fans made me laugh out loud. I'm with @Swerve on this one. I've not met an insufferable Radiohead fan, but I have no doubt they exist. On the other hand, I've never met a Tool fan who was tolerable

 

[higain617]

Any popular band has annoying fans, but it's definitely between Phish and Tool from personal experience.

 

[dougjwray]

My theory is that people who are annoyed by supposedly "cultish" behavior of fans of, say, the Beatles and Hendrix are actually annoyed because it gives them the nagging feeling that they, themselves, are missing something.
I know this because it's what Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd fans do to me. I always think, "What's wrong with me? I don't get it. These bands do nothing for me."

 

[dougjwray]

Context matters. '67 to early '70 is the time frame needed to compare other guitarist to him. I have read that the great guitarists of that time frame thought he was the greatest.

You still hear it from Satriani, Vai, and lots of others. As time goes on, his stature grows.

 

[dougjwray]

I'm not worried about fans of historic music ruining anything for me, since I don't have to worry about sharing arena space with them

"I used to love Bach, but I can't now with all these music school poindexters fawning over him" makes no sense

You beat me to it with Bach! I was going to invoke him, too, but with a slightly different angle.
I think people who complain that rabid fans just won't let go and are perpetuating the overexposure of an artist, might need to step back and consider that maybe that artist... really *is* that good, and significant.

 

[Gopherbassist]

The Greatful Dead. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't listen to TGD beacause of their fans. I don't listen to them because they suck. But imagine being as obsessed as their fans are about such crappy music.

 

[Gopherbassist]

and the fact that they can’t stop arguing about what is or isn’t metal or punk.

These people have no credibility with me. The worst ones are the ones who try to claim that bands that are clearly metal are punk because there happens to be punk that sounds a lot like metal.

Someone tried to tell me that Babymetal isn't a metal band. I should have asked them why they're not called Babypunk if they're a punk band.

 

[Gopherbassist]

Slayer. Ever since a significant number of white supremacist fans started adopting Slayer's music as their thing, it's difficult for me to listen to them. I get that bands cannot choose their fans and the irony is that Tom Araya is Chilean, but it's too cognitively conflicting for me to listen to a band that's lately become so strongly associated with attracting a white supremacist fanbase.

Didn't Kerry King quit Slayer because of this? Tom courting fascists is the reason King started his own band from what I've read.

 

[Dlew919]

The Greatful Dead. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't listen to TGD beacause of their fans. I don't listen to them because they suck. But imagine being as obsessed as their fans are about such crappy music.

What did the sober dead head say to the other sober dead head?

‘What’s this awful music?’

 

[Dincrest]

Didn't Kerry King quit Slayer because of this? Tom courting fascists is the reason King started his own band from what I've read.

There is a LOT of speculation out there as to why King left Slayer. Some sources say it's because Tom was sick of touring and ready to call it a night, but King wasn't so he put a new band together. Others say it's because Tom and King have been diverging in their ideologies for years and it finally got to the point where they couldn't be in a band together. Then there's sources saying that King has had tension with Dave Lombardo and Jeff Hanneman as well, so any discord was band-wide.

But, yeah, in the spirit of the thread (and my contribution to it), it's complicated liking/listening to Slayer. They are an iconic band who've put out some of the most incredible music out there, but it's hard for me to like a band that's somehow attracted a noticeable fanbase of white supremacists. I'm a person-of-color from an immigrant family. If Slayer put on a hypothetical show, I would not go because I would fear for my safety, well-being, and life because those fascist fans could be there. They would use the moshpit as an excuse to beat me up and shrug like Ivan Drago saying, "If he dies, he dies" and use the BS "that's how moshpits are" defense. So, yeah, a particular subset of Slayer fans ruined it for people like me.

 

[bobba66]

Oscillating fans are the best.

 

[turf3]

I like the Grateful Dead, but you can't hardly mention it or everyone assumes you're a Deadhead, that's seen 184 concerts and spent their twenties living in a van following them around.

Nope, can't a guy just enjoy an album now and then without being obsessed?

 

[FRoss6788]

The Greatful Dead. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't listen to TGD beacause of their fans. I don't listen to them because they suck. But imagine being as obsessed as their fans are about such crappy music.

Lame.

 

[dougjwray]

I like the Grateful Dead, but you can't hardly mention it or everyone assumes you're a Deadhead, that's seen 184 concerts and spent their twenties living in a van following them around.

Nope, can't a guy just enjoy an album now and then without being obsessed?

I was once invited to jam with some Dead fans. I figured, "I've heard some of their songs, and I could probably fake it." At the jam, one guy would say to another, "Wanna do 'Lovelight?'" and the other guy would say something like, "OK, sure. The August 3, 1972 Madison Square Garden version, the April 25, 1968 Fillmore late show version or the January 16, 1984 Middlebury College version?" I actually thought this was fantastic.

 

[J Wilson]

Living here in Nashville, I'm surrounded by the fan/tourist industry.

Take a bus tour of the Stars' Homes. Various Meet and Greet with your favorite star. The CMA week, the licensing organization week. NAMM, to some extent. The Opry. And a lot more.

It's a tricky balance at times as without the fans, you're nowhere, and honestly, great sums of money are often spent to draw them in and keep them. Gonna need that merch money, gotta make a killing with that fourth reissue of those same Greatest Hits as The ---- Anniversary Box Set.

But we live in a deep culture of Celebrity Worship, and those fans can and do get obsessed. Stalkers, diesel sniffers, some that just get way in over their head; Welcome to Music City, USA.

IF you think about it, your favorite albums were a few weeks or months out of the musicians' lives, and we are listening completely ignorant of that short period of time in their lives or the people that they were or are. In short, you don't know them.

So I leave it to simply listening to the music I hear on its own. Paul obviously isn't dead, Elvis still is, and I have better things to do than sweat a bunch of fandom that's most likely PR-generated to keep me reeled in like a carp.

 

[turf3]

I was once invited to jam with some Dead fans. I figured, "I've heard some of their songs, and I could probably fake it." At the jam, one guy would say to another, "Wanna do 'Lovelight?'" and the other guy would say something like, "OK, sure. The August 3, 1972 Madison Square Garden version, the April 25, 1968 Fillmore late show version or the January 16, 1984 Middlebury College version?" I actually thought this was fantastic.

That's pretty much antithetical to the whole concept of how the Grateful Dead performed, which was to improvise, improvise, improvise. That's why their many performances vary quite a bit. To just copy one particular performance implies that the Dead had some idea of fixing performances, which of course they didn't.

I'd rather try to do something that's my own than just copy something that was someone else's own, at least within the format of African-American improvised music and a jam setting.