Being a fan

I sometimes worry that I'm a bit to much of a "fan" - that I have no objectivity and that makes me no different from the hordes of screaming Busted and Britney fans. OK so I don't scream and I don't have a Snowstorm ringtone (yet!) but it does make me worry. I'm a 40 year old man and I have posters on my wall, I have an eBay saved search for '"Galaxie 500" -ford', I have at least two copies of everything, I still look in the G section in record shops just in case (and put Galaxie 500 records at the front were they deserve to be)

I don't worry too much - I reconcile myself with the fact that without my love for Galaxie 500 there'd be no love for Low, Bedhead/The New Year, Ballboy, The Zephyrs, The Decemberists, The Ponys, Tacoma Radar and about a billion other bands that I have been exposed to either directly or indirectly because of my being a "fan".

Actually maybe I shouldn't worry - if I wasn't a fan I'd be no better than the people who buy REM because they're "alternative" or who like the bands that appear on Later because Jools Holland tells them to, or the people who stop buying records and just go to iTunes (or Kazaa or Soulseek) for their music fix, the people who don't love bands but like songs, the people who don't own "albums" but own "tracks".

I think I feel a closer affinity with the Busted and Britney fans than with those people.

Hell I'm a fan and I'm proud. Actually I'm not worried at all.