Several months back, I acquired some posters. I recently got a couple up on the walls, which meant removing other SM memorabilia off my walls to make them fit. Today those things were placed back up on the walls with some of the other posters making their debut on my bedroom walls.
Also my amazing prize that I won from the Echo Lab from buying raffle tickets to win a drumhead signed by Cherisse (with a signed photo also) arrived today. I’m yet to put that on the wall though, as I will need to get a suitable frame so I can display it.
A chat and a bit of a look-see at my new fangirl treasure…
I think this must be from 1982 – perhaps in Berlin – despite looking up Max Kohr and it showing him based in Cologne. There’s a caption on the back that Google Translate says translates as “soon in our city”, so it could have been taken anywhere in Germany…or elsewhere in Europe, even.
Over 21 years I’ve had this. It was one of the first things I bought when I arrived in the UK. A souvenir of my first ever visit to London, in the summer of 1999.
It has been the mug I have used first every day ever since. Either for tea (I wasn’t a coffee drinker when I moved over here) or latterly for my first cup of coffee of the day (unless away from home. Obvs).
I currently have five Simple Minds themed mugs, including the most recent wonderful birthday gift. Several others have been broken over the past few years, but this Bowie mug just keeps on keeping on. It even survived the move to Glasgow in tact.
It’s a little chipped around the lip. After 21 years it would be doing well to be in perfect nick!
David is part of my daily ritual. Coffee and banana. That’s “breakfast” for me – a frothy milky coffee and a banana.
The only thing about the mug that makes me sad is – like with a TON of other things – it’s right-hand centric and the the images of David are only visible to right-handed drinkers.
Being somewhat ambidextrous himself (Bowie was left-handed when writing) I’d like to think he’d be pissed off that I, as a fellow kack-hander, can’t see the images when I’m drinking my bevvie each morning.
I had been pondering doing this for some time, once I felt my collection had been big enough to deem it worthy. Probably the past 18 months or 2 years, but we were so crammed in our place in Luton, it never really seemed doable.
Then we moved to Glasgow, had much more space to display things, Coronavirus happened and Classic Pop took a break from publication.
When they returned after several months of lockdown and seeing them on their Facebook page appealing to readers to put their “superfan” stories forward, I thought I’d finally take the plunge. I emailed them, saying what a fan I was of Simple Minds and showed them a sample of my collection.
They were interested, asked me to fill out a little questionnaire about my fandom and to submit several more photos, including a head shot of myself. All lovingly submitted with care a day later.
It went quiet. Although they were back in action after lockdown, and having recently gone to publishing monthly prior to lockdown, they seemed to have return to a bi-monthly publication. One issue had only just come out, so I was hopeful I had timed it for inclusion for the next issue.
The next issue came out at the end of October and I thought “Oh, wouldn’t it be timely if it was printed in this issue for my birthday?! That would be ssoooo awesome!” Sadly, there wasn’t even a Super Fan article within the Nov/Dec 2020 issue. I was a bit gutted but thought they would publish it whenever they were ready.
In the meantime, the Heart of the Crowd book was just 5 weeks from publication and that hopefully I’d have that to be excited about.
In recent days I had been wondering when the next issue was due.
This morning, I see the postie make his way up the path to the front door. I wasn’t really expecting anything at all. Just some junk, or a bill or two. I heard what sounded like a magazine drop onto the doormat and went to collect it, hoping it was the new issue of Classic Pop (I’m also subscribed to a drumming magazine).
To my joy it was! But the big question was – well questions were: had there been a Super Fan article put in this issue AND more so, would it be MY story?
I went to the “Contents“ list at the beginning of the magazine…and there…
ERMAGEEEERRRRRRRD! A belated little Christmas bonus! And a lovely little extra to ring in the New Year with.
The icing on it is to see my Hunter And The Hunted piece printed in there as it didn’t get to be printed in the Heart Of The Crowd. I am so happy to see that in there.
I never wanted it to be seen as a boastful thing. It was why I grappled about even doing this for so long. But I am proud of my collection and why I am an avid enough fan to collect things. It’s much more than material possession for me. it is so much more about the band and the music and what it means to me and the importance it has in my life.
The whole “Super Fan” thing still doesn’t sit entirely well with me. All of us believe in some degree that we are ALL the “biggest fan” of our favourite bands and artists – and we all are. And there is the stigma of what happened in the summer of 2018 that makes me tread rather warily around the notion of the “super fan” – the “mega fan”, uber fan… diehard, “real” fan.
I’ll never really know what makes a fan a “real” fan – but whatever actually defines it…I am real enough. I live and breathe this band. And they make my existence a happier and more enjoyable one. I can’t remember life much pre-Simple Minds. But life since the summer of 2014 has been … wonderful – even in the darker periods amongst that. They bring light to darkness.
