Magnificently bonkers!
As Ms Bush is a burning topic on the AW today, it feels appropriate to mention Sham Bush. It was an event that took place at Stanmer Park in Brighton a couple of years ago. 300 Bushbabies gathered for amass re-enaction of the video for Wuthering Heights.
My gob was rather smacked. It’s Friskis och Svettis in the Babooshka Hitmaker style.
(Frisky and Sweaty is a well-known Swedish keep fit organisation. In the summer you can join them in the park free-of-charge and jump, skip, and make merry fun to the sound of Abba, Zappa, Metallica etc etc. Somehow that always makes me think of Moose. Lying in the grass on a sunny day surrounded by hundreds of beautiful, sweaty young women. No, silly me! He probably wouldn’t enjoy it at all.)
I do have a soft spot for the more loony acts of fan devotion.
Leaning the tuba and joining a marching band to play Depeche Mode hits
Dressing up in fancy dress and queuing for hours to be the first to buy the new J K Rowling novel
Naming children or pets after favourite artists
Throwing underwear at the stage as a sign of total dedication
Fess up! We’ve all had our moments of fervour.
Anybody got any favourite stories of fan madness? The more local, the more loony, the better
My thanks to the Dangerous Minds website and Nigel who posted their piece on the Afterworders on Facebook page. That made my weekend.
When I read Wuthering Heights, I never thought I’d one day get to see Heathcliff getting Frisky.
When did modern fan behaviour kick off?
Ken Rusell’s Lisztomania portrays the enthusiasts of Romantic music as being not too dissimilar to pop fans of the 60s. And Ivanhoe Hitmaker, Sir Walter Scott , when touring Europe was greeted with great enthusiasm.
More recently, the Bobby Soxers went bonkers about Sinatra, much to the bemusement of the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/century/1940-1949/Story/0,,127764,00.html
This is possibly my greatest contribution to humanity.
December 1991. Bjorn Again’s first Christmas show at the T&C, Kentish Town. Their first really big UK gig since arriving earlier that year.
Afternoon soundcheck. Tour manager gives me 50 quid cash to go and “get some goodies for the band to hand out to the audience”. I head off to Borough Market. Come back, having supplemented the budget from personal funds, with:
1. Santa outfit (I found this in the back of a cupboard this year when decorating my bedroom)
2. Elf outfit
3. Two huge red Santa sacks
4. Very large box full of party poppers
5. Very large box full of sparklers
6. Very large box full of silly string cans
7. Multiple multi-packs of size XXXXL Y-fronts (white)
8. Black marker pen
Come the gig, prior to the band’s set, Santa (me) and Santa’s Elf (my then-best-mate-later-best-man) walk through audience, handing out presents from the bags over our shoulders. We’re both sweating profusely, but people keep handing us pints to quench our thirsts.
Ladies in audience: “Santa, have you got a present for me?”
Santa: “Let me see if (a) I have something for you in my bulging sack (b) can slip something in your Christmas stockings.” Moosey would be proud.
The band come on stage. All hell breaks loose in the audience as party poppers, silly string and sparklers are let off. It continues for the duration of the set. Venue security are not happy but the audience keep us dead centre and shield us both.
Between songs, the pair of us start throwing the giant undercrackers at Frida and Agnetha, upon which we have written song requests and some NSFW messages for the girls. They regularly corpse and slip back into their native Oz accents.
Santa “dances” during ‘Dancing Queen’ by standing on his Elf’s shoulders, whilst the audience pelt him with party poppers and silly string. Mass audience sing-along. Band struggle to keep it together.
Gig ends. We go backstage and help drink the band’s rider of Champagne.
We were completely ratarsed by this point and decided to take the tube back home (through Oxford Circus) dressed in our outfits. We soon sobered up.
I had so much fun it was untrue.
Service above and beyond the fall of fan duty, Steve. I take off my Santa hat to you.
One of the earliest manifestation of fandom was probably fan mail. I suspect not many letters are written in 2016 and they have been replaced by emails and comments on an artist’s home page.
Here’s a page with letters that were written to Mark Twain.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/03/25/dear-mark-twain-fan-mail/
Might appeal to Bingo who is a big fan,
A few weeks ago, Black Celebration posted a clip from The Posters Came from the Walls, a documentary by Jeremy Deller and Nicholas Abrahams.
It’s an affectionate portrait of Depeche Mode fans from around the world and the wacky extremes they go to to express devotion to “their” band. And the global devotion to the Personal Jesus Hitmakers is impressive. Mexico, Iran, Brazil and a very large following in Eastern Europe. The film-makers seem to have got the balance right too. Telling the stories of this community rather than just making fun of them, which would be easy to do.
Tine for some DM brass band bonding.