myself against the fat pillows in decorative shams.
I was exhausted, but I needed to get online soon, or I’d be so far behind I’d never catch up. I trusted Ash to keep order, but there was usually something to attend to, so I booted up my laptop and turned on my phone’s hotspot.
The front page of my site held the blog—curated content where I could post recent tour videos, new album releases, links to reviews, or write my own personal commentary about anything, band related of course. Usually. Sometimes I posted on other topics, but I kept it at least tangentially related. I could, for example, post a recap of my day, along with a picture of Micah Sinclair’s guest room. Fans would eat it up, and the hit count would explode, which would bring me more money since I’d monetized the site.
But I had no intention of exposing myself to that level of scrutiny. Tonight, I only wanted to make sure nobody had disrespected my order to stop talking about invading the comments section of Gabriel Sanchez’s review. I wasn’t surprised to find an inordinate number of private messages from people responding to my edict. I already knew these would fall out into a Neopolitan of three predictable flavors.
The yummy chocolate would be the do-gooders who’d observed the dramatic review revolt thread with consternation. They’d pat my back and tell me Adam should send me free tickets to his shows in heartfelt gratitude for all the hard work I did. I’d never ascertained what these suck-ups thought they’d get for praising me to high heaven. I was a nobody with a website. It wasn’t like I could get them backstage passes.
The banal vanilla would be the remorse-filled hooligans who’d been reprimanded and wanted to let me know how truly sorry they felt for crossing the line. There was no need for prostrating themselves at my altar. I rarely banned anyone.
Then there was the rebel strawberry: cantankerous rabble-rousers who intentionally broke the rules. Mostly, when confronted, they simply stopped without any further communication. Some special snowflakes thought we were friendly enough to have a spirited debate about free speech on the Internet, or worse, disliked me enough to argue vociferously against my reign of terror.
It made me laugh a little. I was just a grownup kid who went a little fanatic about a band and wanted to chat with others who understood my obsession. I did like these people, but they could drain my energy. I responded briefly to each message, then went into the forums.
While nobody fanned the flames of the Gabriel Sanchez invasion, the conversation about that review had run hot all day. To be honest, the new album hadn’t impressed me as much as I’d hoped. I planned to give it some time, but it felt too studio, too polished. They’d necessarily gotten more commercial over time. I expected I’d come to love the album eventually, but I never believed I had an obligation to love everything Adam ever did, nor did I ask the fans to be blind or uncritical. I only asked them to be fair.
Still, I actually agreed with the rebellious posters who took issue with Gabriel’s review. He’d essentially shredded the album for sounding inherently different from the old music, as if the band wasn’t allowed to go in a new direction. Earlier in the year, he’d torn Theater of the Absurd apart for the exact opposite reason, which was completely unfair. Theater of the Absurd had pushed the envelope since their first album, both in their performances and in their song architecture. They’d pulled from bands like Of Montreal, The Shins, Radiohead, and others to make melodies that sometimes took me a while to appreciate. It pissed me off a bit that Gabriel wrote them off so easily. Like he cared more about his reputation than about their career.
Especially after meeting the guys and realizing they really were just people.
Obviously, I came at things as a fan, not a critic, but I always thought one should be a little bit of both. Fandom without criticism was idiotic worship. Criticism without fandom was pointless and miserable.
I added my own opinion to that effect to the thread. I loved that I could be an administrative jerk to my posters in the morning, but by evening, I could count on them to argue with me on philosophical questions without hesitation. That’s what kept it fun for me to engage with them.