From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V19 #82 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Saturday, October 8 2011 Volume 19 : Number 082 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: How do you work this thing? [lep ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2011 13:00:49 -0400 From: lep Subject: Re: How do you work this thing? Miles Goosens says: > I get 'not judging a band by its fans,' and I belong to a couple of > subsets myself (the Cure, the Smiths/Morrissey) where I wouldn't > identify myself to a new acquaintance as a fan right away lest they > think they're going to be subjected to my dire death-dirge poetry, > which I'll be reading to them from my ER bed as I recover from my > fourth botched suicide attempt. But I have never had a particular > negative association with the R.E.M. fanbase, at least before the new > wave of shallow strummy yuppies who came into the fold after OOT and > Automatic. So this caught me a bit off guard. > > On 10/8/11, lep wrote: >> Hi List, >> >> I've been meaning to chime in on R.E.M., basically just to say that, >> since "Monster" is my favourite R.E.M. album, I've recused myself from >> the discussion (I had a long-standing problem with R.E.M. fans, as I >> did with Smiths fans, and kind of stayed away from the band until I >> saw the wonderful black & white documentary of the "Monster" tour. >> Just a ten-second clip of Stipe (who I mistakenly called Stripe for >> years) singing "Wichita Lineman" was enough to swing the mistake I had >> made of judging a band by its fans. The feeling I got from R.E.M. fans was distinct from the feeling I got from Smiths fans -- with R.E.M., it had to do with a cliquish vibe that I got from fans, and that you had to enter into to some tacit agreement that R.E.M. was The Greatest Band That Ever Existed to get along with them, and then you'd probably have to go into some mysterious underworld where you transcribed and bickered about the lyrics of their early albums (the earlier, the more bickering.) I know they have a fan club, and while I have nothing against fan clubs (in fact, I respect R.E.M. for giving a lot to their fans), it wouldn't surprise me if R.E.M. didn't have one of the most active fan clubs. They were just that kind of band, it seemed, and, I'm just not very agreeable by nature. The Smiths fans were more of the vibe that they loved the The Smiths SO much that they actually didn't want YOU to listen to them, because you're certainly not that cool (I didn't find it all that surprising that once bootleg stuff became fairly easy to get online, Smiths stuff was among the most rare and difficult to obtain because fans weren't very share-y.) It took SPIN magazine's voting The Queen is Dead the best record ever made (or something) (this was probably the early to mid-'90s?) for me to give the band a chance (it's still my favourite Smiths album, and probably would be if only for Cemetry Gates...but there's the other songs on there as well -- not a clunker in the bunch.) Smith fans seem just not very agreeable by nature, and, hell, I had enough of that going on already. Of course I'm generalizing, but only because generalizing is so fun and useful. as ever, Lauren - -- "people with opinions just go around bothering one another." -- the buddha ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V19 #82 *******************************