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

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

High Llamas

Steve Rovner
serovner@mindspring.com


> [Original Message]
> From: eric gregory <crackcity_2000@yahoo.com>
> To: <tv@obbard.com>
> Date: 06/05/2003 6:39:01 PM
> Subject: Re: (TV) Intensely Annoying Fans (no direct TV content)
>
> is this writer the same cat who was in microdisney & that beach boys
meets can group hep a few yrs back? (can't recall the name)
>
> Steve Rovner <serovner@mindspring.com> wrote: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 
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