(TV) Intensely Annoying Fans (no direct TV content)

["Steve Rovner" <serovner@mindspring.com>]

An interesting article from a British paper... Spare us the shameless
devotion of the Intensely Annoying Fans

Sean O'Hagan
Sunday June 1, 2003
The Observer

I have seen two rock legends play live in the past month. Both Neil Young
and Patti Smith have been around long enough to inspire utter devotion in
their followers.

Take Patti Smith's audience, many of whom had travelled from far and wide
to see her perform songs and poetry at Charleston House, where the
Bloomsbury set once did the same - though I doubt they'd have approved of
Patti's raucous 'Piss Factory'. A fine experiment, then, and one that, in
this intimate setting, worked wondrously. For the most part.

The problem was the drooling faithful, whose love of Patti, it seems, had
to be shared, loudly and embarrassingly, at every opportunity. Behind me
sat an American lady whose contribution to the evening was an initially
irritating, then immensely annoying, cry of 'We love you, Patti!',
delivered in the voice of a deranged six-year-old. Not just between
songs, either.

Miss Deranged America was outdone, though, by Mister Beyond
Embarrassment, a middle-aged guy, sitting stage front, who decided to
answer Smith's announcements as if he, and he alone, had a special
relationship with her. Example: Smith: 'It really is a great honour to be
here.' MBE: 'We're even more honoured Patti, come back anytime.' Smith
had the grace to smile gamely, but you could see that, like the rest of
us, she was wincing with embarrassment. Or maybe she recognised his
voice, and was thinking, 'Oh no! It's that guy who was sitting in the
front row in Denver. And Brussels. And Dublin.'

Performers have an antennae for this sort of thing; they know the most
fawning are often the most devouring. Ask John Lennon.

This was probably the same guy who clapped loudly at the beginning of
every song. One chord was all it took. I mean, no one can detect a song,
particularly one rearranged for acoustic performance by someone as
unpredictable as Patti Smith, on the strength of one chord. Can they? He
even clapped Smith's accompanist retuning his guitar.

What is it with people who clap at the start of a song anyway? It struck
me, during the surreal set of old favourites that Neil Young played at
the end of his interminable 'concept' show at the Hammersmith Apollo,
that the reason he tootles around on acoustic guitar for so long before
singing is in the vain hope that the clappers will not come in five
minutes into a song. It kind of worked. But, alas, it didn't deter the
shouters; it encouraged them. I used to think there was no bore like a
Bruce bore, but I am revising my opinion.

The guys behind me had been to six shows on the current tour, so they
must have absorbed the fact that Neil is a legendarily moody performer,
who doesn't suffer fools gladly. Why, then, get pissed up on lager before
an acoustic Neil Young show and then run back and forth to the lavatory
10 times? Why shout endless requests for old songs that he may do on a
whim but certainly won't if you keep howling the titles at him? His
silence throughout was withering, but that didn't stop the requests, nor
the inanities. The best bit was when someone shouted, 'When are you
coming back, Neil?' He cocked a bushy eyebrow like some backwoods Eeyore.
'I'm still here,' he scowled, 'I ain't left yet.'

Therein lies the rub. For the Neil and Patti bores, fandom is onanistic
and insatiable. A concert simply provides the context wherein the
eternally adolescent fan, having shed the adolescent's fear of
embarrassment, can now show off their trainspotty knowledge and parade
their pointless fandom for everyone else to see.

When they shout out a request, or applaud the first chords of a song,
they are shouting for themselves, and clapping themselves, oblivious to
the fact that this is disrespectful to the performer, and intensely
annoying to the rest of us. The Intensely Annoying Fan is not going away,
but I live in hope that they will one day wise up. And, more to the
point, shut up.

  Steve Rovnerserovner@mindspring.com 
--------------
To post: Mail tv@obbard.com
To unsubscribe: Mail majordomo@obbard.com with message "unsubscribe tv"