Is it intellectually mature to hate a band's fans?

no! not at all. when i lay into - say - bob MOTHERFUCKING dylan, i'm thinking about how much i hate him and his nasal hectoring, not his fans.

although, of course, they're a bunch of brainwashed ass-hatters too.

oh, damn.

rather than the fans tho i think it's 'critics' who make me hate a band i.e. their incessant and grossly overdone repping of them over other things

But if it's, say, I dunno, Godspeed! or someone - or, come to think of it, Busted - then that point is harder to argue since there's not necessarily a dyed-in-the-wool link between the band's mindset and the fan's reaction and ergo fandom.

I recall getting very cross and feeling *personally* affronted when someone didn't "get" Pulp in a review once, and concluding that judging a band by its fans is in fact rather unfair. That said, with tunnel vision Libertines fans, it gets pretty tiresome pretty bloody quickly and the knee-jerk hate of band and fans alike is hard to fight.

Interesting question. Think on...

what about something like hip-hop tho? so much cultural baggage and so many cliches of it's own, incorporating ideas of what you should wear and how you should behave as much as indie, metal or perhaps even psy-trance! the cliched speak that so many people adopt veers from dynamic and amusing to just irritating and moronic.

Jeez!!! What a scary bunch, they are truly disturbed! Whilst watching it I was kinda reminded of this time I met this girl who went on and on about the Libertines, Pete this Pete that and Carl this and Carl that!!! Truly disturbing!!

not just subcultural but sometimes subconscious too? do people really wake up one day and say, right, i'm gonna grow my hair into a silly franz ferdinand style and wear a tight cardigan? or is it a subtle change of style motivated by imperceptible peer pressure?

anyway, that's by the by. alex is right: i wear my "fandom" on my sleeve these days, and i'm not ashamed to fly the flag for achingly unhip acts: carter USM being a far better example than the weddoes. but i wouldn't consider myself to have anything in common with other fans of these bands, or to ally myself with a group mindset.

i mean. i love carter, think they fucking rock, am still moved greatly by the way they did "the impossible dream" (and "gi blues", and "look mum no hands", and fucking "the only living boy in new cross", for crissakes) but in no way was i ever a typical carter "fan", in that i always washed my hair and have never, EVER worn shorts. except on holiday. even as a callow youth, i fought to dissociate myself from the sad masses of post-grebo wanks in the identikit T-shirts.

so if someone slags off carter i'll get pissed off because they're an easy target and they're something i love, but will i take it as an attack on me and my cultural values? not at all. i think that if you *do* take things so personally, you've got some serious priority problems going on ;)

just my tuppenceworth, anyway.

Dave Matthews is for beer-swilling frat boys; Jimmy Buffett for paunchy ex-hippies with gray ponytails. One hears it less often about, say, Belle and Sebastian, whose fans can be as easily stereotyped (messenger bag, chunky eyeglass frames, ironic T-shirt) but that's a subcategory of the same kind of thinking.

It's hard to separate, because it's rarely an accident that a particular music reaches and resonates with a particular audience. Music really is a niche-marketed product, just as surely as shoes or soda. It has to be. (Even avoiding the marketplace is itself a market-driven act, in the same way as not voting is a political act.)

Life's short. There's just too much music for everybody to listen to everything and reach their own conclusions, so you find yourself going by markers of trust and group membership (That cool chick on Pitchfork praised this so I probably will like it; Rolling Stone praises this so I probably won't like it; it's on Matador and I like other things on Matador, etc.). Examining one's feelings about a band's fan base seems to be one of those markers that help us do a "fast sort."

So I guess my answer is no, it's probably not intellectually mature. But I can understand why people use it as a shortcut. And it's generally pretty reliable: if you're the type of person who hates Dave Matthews's fans, you probably wouldn't like his music, no matter how open-mindedly you try to listen to it.

Also, I like it whenever people manage to temporarily rise above this tendency and see through to the inherent virtues of the music. Cf. Richard Thompson's praise for/covering of "Oops I Did it Again."

I loved the Smiths, but when I started at Edinburgh Uni, we used to play games of "spot the Morrissey", cause so many students got done up as fancy dress Morrisseys. I think the Stone Roses' fans reflect badly on the band. I would say the Manics, but then they're a fucking terrible band, so the reflection is probably accurate.

Never knew you were a Carter fan Grimly; I'm telling everyone.

i mean, i twitched involuntarily when i read the phrase "belle and sebastian fans", which is so lazy of me. my problem with B&S is in fact deeply cultural (i live in the south side of glasgow while they're west-end post-student wankery incarnate; and ... ach, other things i can't be arsed going into here, none of which have anything to do with either their music or their fans).

it's not just about what music you like, either. just before christmas i gave alext enormous (friendly) grief when i saw his neatly boxed library of copies of the wire. but i know he doesn't conform to what i'd (lazily) categorise as the wire-reader mentality (ie the more "difficult"/obscure the music, the better), so ... why did i bother?

answer: BECAUSE IT'S FUN. you can't beat having a pop at someone over their musical taste. it's like the "smiths are the poor man's wedding present" shite i spouted on another thread: it's all a bit tongue-in-cheek, like "spot the morrissey" at potterrow. (which, keith, we were still doing in 1993, remember? and surely you started university in about 1934?)

The most OTM thing of all OTM things ever declared OTM.

Haha... You lived in Arden Street and that doesn't stop you liking the Fall!

Haha yes! And the one conclusion I and my flatmates couldn't avoid drawing, despite our best intentions, was the one that screamed "perhaps Jacko would get a tiny smidgen more sympathy from the world/media/whoever if his fans weren't "special" lunatic obsessive oblivious tunnel-vision freeeeks". For shame.

It amazed us all that just because a fair portion of Jacko's output is *musically* unimpeachable, these crazies can't get their heads around the *possibility* that he might nonetheless be a grubby (albeit deeply troubled) kiddy-fiddling liability.

Well, if you really think a band is horrible, then imagine them as a shit sandwich. If people willing eat the shit sandwich and keep wanting more, then you're not going to have a lot of respect, are you?

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This is exactly how I feel about The Cure and Prince (with an added dash of extreme narcissism that whispers "It's self-evident that they're godly so anyone denigrating them MUST be defective" to my subconscious; thanks for feeding my superiority complex, Prince-haters and Cure-haters!).

Denigrating someone is probably an immature act by definition so it seems to me that the question is more "At what point does mean-spirited immaturity become unacceptable?" than anything else.

This is well put, GoDP.

As for Kasabian, I thought Stevie's diss was OTM. It's always entertaining when he says something that riles Jupitus and co.
I think he said something about Kasabian rotting your brain and the poor taste of a fan in the NME a few weeks back illustrates that perfectly. This misguided lad said that their lyrics were surreal genius, they were bringing the weirdness back to British music etc. Criticising this sort of thinking isn't the same as having a go at a group. Trying to understand why somebody likes a certain band can sharpen up your own critical skills.

I don't want to sound too pious about it though. Some hardcore fans take on all the worst aspects of the bands they like and become massive wankers. There was this obsessive Doors fan at my school who would inflict his numerous live bootlegs on you at parties, would recite Jimbo's awful poetry and do lots of drugs like he was some romantic rock 'n roll hero. He now works in bank.

(I'm quite pleased my random comment prompted this thread, rah for Stevie!)

The most OTM thing of all OTM things ever declared OTM.
This thread's moneyness is growing exponentially.

He now works in bank.
Hey, I work in a bank! Are you saying I like the Doors?!? Them's fighting words!

But I love Iggy Pop. Well, the Stooges. No Compute, No Compute, No Compute!

Conversely, if there is a particular worldview or mindset to which you've put yourself in opposition and you've identified that a good portion of the people in that lifestyle listen to a certain type of music, it's going to be difficult to detach the music from the mindset. I'm rediscovering this issue with the entire country genre; I'd been growing more and more friendly towards it throughout my 20s but after this past election and the rising popularity of Toby Keith mixed in with the blacklisting of The Dixie Chicks, it's zipped right back into my "music for assholes who want to lynch me" pile.

You like Iggy Pop? I fucking hate you.
Well, Penn and Teller like him and they are great magicians!

xpost to me:
Reminds of the story of when Rock Action got into Funkadelic and started playing all funky at the show and Iggy turned to him and said: "Scott, where are the toms on '1969'? Gotta have to toms on '1969'!"

Every time someone blasts latter-era Cure or latter-era Prince I have this thought.

Yes.

I recently got the "Stop Listening to Bad Music" t-shirt from http://www.youhavebadtasteinmusic.com, just because I like its cheekiness. But then on second thought, you know, it's not like Christina Aguilera fans run around heckling, I dunno, Long Winters concerts.

On third thought, I doubt that Christina Aguilera fans occupy themselves with deciding precisely why they don't like Joy Division, or Joy Division fans (for example).

On fourth thought, doesn't that make them more serene and self-possessed than me?

not really. I make an effort to try to like your shitty music for my sake, not yours.

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Yeah, that's probably why they all got their drivers licenses at an appropriate age and many of us didn't, as was discussed last night on a thread I shall not name.

oddly enough, I can only hear out of one ear (never trust my reviews of "headphone albums" or Zaireeka).

Was it Dominique Leone?

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To our credit, we waited a long time before somebody posted that. Let the handwringing cease!

FWIW, the thing about that shirt is that just about everyone (including folks who don't know me or my sense of humor/music) thinks it's hilarious. The number of comments I get from random strangers when wearing it in public is absurd and unmatched by any other shirt-with-something-written-on-it that I own.

Has anyone ever succumbed to this immature thought:" at least I once in a while make an effort to try to like your shitty music, but do you ever try to like mine"?

No, not really. My freshman year roommate was obsessed with Emerson, Lake & Palmer in a way that nobody I've known before or since has ever been. As such I figured the chances that he would like They Might Be Giants, have as much reverence for a single sustained note from The Axe of Joey Santiago or give half a shit about Disintegration or Seventeen Seconds (let alone Wish) were extremely low.

Serious fandom is disconcerting regardless of the object. Obsessive Cure fans are just as fucked up to me as Deadheads, and I love the Cure.

(Also grimley I too have love for Carter USM, though I'm quite certain that as an American I probably only "get" about 20% of it.)

Reminds me of being round at a friend's flat (Dave Harford; Simon, Alex; you may know him) and he opened his cupboard up to reveal... A secret stash of post-Dick Marillion albums! Ha Ha! I was a real Alan Partridge/tatooes moment.

Anyway, I like '70s and '80s Genesis. Maybe I should create my own special cupboard.

For me the thought is more like "You're dead, fucker." Or, if I think they are a little more open, it's like "Oh, you're getting a mix CD, and I'm making it right now."

Yes and no.

There's a middle course to be charted. You can (for starters) say that different people go to music for different reasons and get different things out of it (chin-stroking or booty-shaking, etc.). And the test of whether it's good or not isn't something you can measure against one absolute universal standard in the sky, but rather against whether it accomplishes what it sets out to do: How well or poorly does it give its thing to the people who want that thing?

Put another way, who am I to judge Justin Timberlake's fans, because obviously Timberlake succeeds at giving them what they seek in music? I don't need them to suddenly prefer what Colin Meloy or Captain Beefheart offers. So you could extrapolate from this that dance music can be usefully compared with other dance, punk with punk, pop with pop, polkas with polkas.

That's different from saying that there are no such thing as standards and the Monkees are as good as Mozart is as good as Barney the frickin dinosaur is as good as William Hung is as good as the Beatles.

Iggy Vs The Corrs

I'm so glad to see Penn & Teller confirming other peoples' tastes too. Great magicians, those guys.

(Having said that, OF COURSE Mozart is better than The Monkees but there are way more Monkees songs I would play before I hit a Mozart song because Mozart never did anything like "Porpoise Song" or "Randy Scouse Git".)

I guess I'm just sayin that a statement like "That's not my bag but it's okay for other people to like it" does not necessarily lead to a slippery slope where there is no such thing as good or bad in art, and my 5-year-old daughter's fingerpainting equals Leonardo.

For example, Dylan fans who never listen to anything other than Dylan and go on and on about him like they're trying to persuade you to join their cult.

Cure fans (sorry) who think Robert Smith is a visionary poet because, as Goths, their own emotional and intellectual development stopped at 15.

Doors fans, obviously.

The list is very long, but in almost every case I can think of the artists' music is actually good and enjoyable once I separate it from the spectre of their idiot fans/idiot frontmen.

And whilst it isn't intellectually mature to hate semi-fictitious stereotypes, whoever made the point about world-view earlier is right, certain kinds of fandom connote a world-view that is, to me at least, morally repugnant. It's the same reason that people feel so strongly about R**kism: not so much because somebody's musical preference is especially important, but because it often says something about their philosophy. And although arguing about philosophy might be just as pointless in the great scheme of things, I'd say that being passionate about what we believe existence should be is a good thing.

*Sob*

I'm sorry to be intellectually immature, but this is causing me multiple hurt.

You're not sorry, Ken, but that's okay. Cause see, I've heard so many of my favorite bands ragged on so many times that it no longer bothers me much if at all.

Though I have to admit that when it does hurt, it hurts less hearing someone takes a potshot at Too Much Joy than when they tear into TMBG.

Cure fans (sorry) who think Robert Smith is a visionary poet because, as Goths, their own emotional and intellectual development stopped at 15.

Ha ha ha. I haven't met one of those in a long, long time. Most of the Cure fans I know are like Dan. i.e. Not goth, just Cure fans (and usually big fans of music in general).

The best Cure fan I ever knew was a woman named April who only spoke of "Bob" Smith when she was criticizing Mary for "feeding him too many Ho-hos." Her theory was that his wife had made him put on the extra weight so he wouldn't be so attractive to other women. This, to April, was unforgivable.

Man, now that I think of it, I really miss hanging out with her. I've no idea where she is now.

Haha, what about Nick Drake?

I'm going to take tiny issue with this for a second. Yeah, dirt/hair-stealing is crazy and bizarre, but I (obviously) fail to see how following a tour makes someone "horrible". Obsessive, yes, but ultimately it's about how someone chooses to spend their money and leisure time.

I argued this in court, but the judge still granted the injunction.

No. Nobody who matters, anyway.

Fuck that. I ONLY LIKE PEOPLE WHO ARE EXACTLY LIKE ME!

Strangely enough, I don't appreciate that joke.

At Reading Festival some Kasabian fans were really quite rude to The Shins.

Sadly, I blame them and others like them for fans being rude to bands.

* Yes, I'm not making that up. Somehow we were lame for not wanting to dance to Alice in fucking Chains.

Christ.