Xanga-Septemper 7, 2005-Of True Fans And Pocket Bands

A couple of years ago, my friend, Martha, discovered a new band. She wouldn’t tell us who they were or really anything about them. Martha’s secrecy shouldn’t have been a surprise to use. We, as well as the rest of the country, were beginning to embrace Martha’s long beloved punk music. And this secret band was Martha’s ‘pocket band’.

            ‘Pocket band’ quite literally meant a band that had not gained major popularity yet and that was kept a secret (because you ‘put it in your pocket’.)

            We allowed Martha to have her rapidly changing ‘pocket bands’; they (at least to me) allowed her to maintain a thread of her originality above the mainstream.

            The other thing that made Martha special in this area was the people she knew. Sum 41, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan-all with videos on MTV and numbers hidden away in her phone. How I wished to know someone remotely famous!

            My friend, Sarah, had this wish too it seemed. One spring evening, she told me of her ‘pocket band’; she had seen the two guys play at a Battle of the Bands competition and had since been e-mailing the singer, Andrew. It was her hope to befriend them and watch their rise to stardom. To have this band be her friends from nearly the beginning as Martha had Good Charlotte. She alone would know them.

            However, in mentioning the singer’s name to Martha all hope of knowing them exclusively first was put at risk. Martha had gone to high school with some someone three years ahead of her with that name. Could they be the same?

            And they were! The John Burroughs alum and lead singer of Ludo was the same Andrew Volpe. We all became pretty dedicated Ludo fans early on which leads us to my next topic: true fans.

            The idea of what and who is a ‘true fan’ is one that probably plagued the ages. It’s like Stonehenge- no one is exactly sure what or who. I’m not sure myself but I can probably give an idea of what is (or not) a true fan.

            Personally, it doesn’t matter how many t-shirts of said band you own or how many things you have autographed. Yes, you are now a fan. Nor does it really matter tat you went to 18 shows in 20 days. Now you’re just obsessive!! It shouldn’t matter either the number of times you bugged the DJs to request a song, how many CDs you burned, how many handbills you passed our or how many sticks of chalk died in your hands in the name of promoting. Yes, true fans doggedly do this type of things but you won’t see them gloating about it in one of a 1000 posts on the message board. Nor, typically, will they be found gloating about running merch or that intimate glance shared by them and the singer/guitarist/bassist/whatever…True fans are the ones scowling on the sidelines mumbling things about being ‘old school’ and ‘not whoring themselves out’. When called to it, a true fan will do whatever it takes but otherwise let the groupies do it.

            True fans are like band aids in ‘Almost Famous’-they are in it for the music. They have hid the band in their pocket long enough. Don’t worry though; they have a band in reserve.

“And they don’t even know what it is to be a fan. And how to truly love some silly little piece of music or some band so much that it hurts.”-Sapphire from ‘Almost Famous’
[EDIT-Originally published to Blogger on 9/24/11.]