Links roundup for 14 March 2012

[otw-staff.livejournal.com]

Here's a roundup of stories on music fandom that might be of interest to fans:

• Beatles fan Scott Freiman created several presentations on the band, and the latest "Looking Through a Glass Onion: Deconstructing The Beatles' White Album" was recently shown in Schenectady, NY. Looking "is a multimedia exploration of the influential band's eponymous 1968 album" and the presentations began "for my friends, but I've since discovered there's a huge audience hungry to know about this stuff, from 5-year-old kids to 80-year-old grandparents."


• While Freiman's work focused on the band, Do It Again is a film about the fandom of the Beatles' contemporaries, The Kinks. The fan documentary explores the journey of Geoff Edgers, a major Kinks fan and the film’s screenwriter, and what fandom is about. Edgers funded the film from various sources including fans. David Plunkert, an award-winning illustrator and graphic designer, volunteered his services for the “Do It Again” poster wholly because he wanted to draw The Kinks. The film's focus was originally the band, but after the frontman, Ray Davies, avoided participation, the focus shifted to the band's fandom. "In the end, it became the great Kinks fan movie. Here’s my approach — Michael Moore might attack a resistant subject. I stepped away and have respect," Plunkert said. "Ambush Ray? No way. I’m a fan, not a stalker or Mike Wallace."


• The Korea Herald focused on fans as well, in this case classical music fandom. "Such fandom is changing the country’s classical music scene, creating a new audience base and also boosting CD sales" making Korea a draw for international artists. Classical music sales are largely in trouble "not only because of falling interests in the genre but also the rapidly growing online music market." Yet the reception in Korea is different. "This kind of fandom culture does not exist in other countries. And this is why they want to come back to Korea to feel the energy from the Korean audience."


• Lastly, crossover fans of comics and musicals have something to look forward to: Holy Musical Batman!, "a fan-made musical featuring everyone’s favorite Dark Knight".

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Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

The documentary on the Kinks fandom looks really interesting, though I don't think it's showing near me.

Two years ago I actually sang with Ray Davies--he was doing a Choral Collection, a set of old favorites with arrangements for a choir, and my choir was hired to sing with him in New York. I noticed the same group of people in the front of the theater each night. And after the concerts, I went on the fan websites to try to find reactions to our performances. I found very detailed descriptions of the concerts, and analyses of the songs with and without choir, in addition to contrasting our performance with the choirs he had in other cities. I also found extensive photos of the concerts, which were fantastic. I wasn't able to get any photos myself, but thanks to some fans, I have professional looking photos of me onstage at a rock concert. I also saw that these fans had a meet-up before the concert, and that a lot of them travel around, following the band.

Having been a fan myself for so long, it was an unusual experience to, for a moment, be on the other side of fandom.

[yourlibrarian]

That's very cool! As many different fandoms as I've seen it's always intriguing to see how organized they can be.