From the editor: Good vibrations

This week I met some lovely people. I know, we all know lovely people, big whoop. These were people I’d never crossed paths with before, who had come into town to see the opening night of former Mansun frontman Paul Draper’s new tour. An old friend of mine (also lovely, but I already knew that) had invited me to go along with him to the show and to meet some of his fellow-fans in the pub beforehand.

Now, I’m not sure what I was expecting, with nothing in common but a single musical artist, but I had already heard tell of close friendships being formed in online fan chat rooms for Jared Letos’ band Thirty Seconds To Mars, so colour me curious here.

When people are bonded by something that they love it’s special. I’ve never really thought it before, but when I do it’s clear that cancelled commuter trains and being a seagull bomb casualty is easy conversation to strike up to make a new friendship, but it’s certainly not positive. There’s a connection between a whole group of people over a complaint. Compare that to the one person who ‘gets’ you because they can name the same number of Doctor Who assistants as you can, and really we’re missing out on an awful lot of positive bonding.

I wasn’t as familiar with the music as this new posse who had kindly welcomed me were, but I wasn’t greeted with judgement. I caught the odd sidelong look as the show continued, seeing if I was catching and realising the magic that had bonded them all together from their different paths in life and train stations in the south east. And I did. But not least because they did. It’s brilliant when you are allowed to share a precious magic, and super generous of them too.

So I’m a fan of fans. I think there should be more of them. They’re fantastic.

Victoria Nangle
editorial@thelatest.co.uk