Twentieth

So...looking back at my old blogs I see that my younger daughter got me to watch the My Chemical Romance video for I'm Not Okay (I Promise) on September 20th 2012, with my obsession for the band starting the very next day.
Gerard Way tweeted on 20th December:-

"was hoping FearlessVampireKillers was going to sound like StiffsINC. 

They don't but still sound great and could have toured with them"

Followed by a second tweet of the same date:-

"Wow..@fvkillers...greatEP. Anyone remember The Gories? Sounds a little like them"

That was where one chapter of my life bled into another.  I went and looked up Fearless Vampire Killers, thought they were awesome and got hooked!
Fearless Vampire Killers are a British band which makes a pleasant change for me; they're from a place called Beccles but are based in London.  Abbreviated to FVK they're a "theatrical alternative rock" band - their self-released 1st album is a rock opera / concept album.  Fabulous stuff.
Fearless Vampire Killers are five lads - Kier (vocals & rhythm guitar), Laurence (vocals & rhythm guitar; author of the concept stories), Shane / Barrone (lead guitar; does the artwork and merchandise design), Drew (bass guitar; co-wrote all the 1st album songs with Laurence) and Luke (drums; he's also the band's happy-pill) - aged currently 23-25...but they've been at this for YEARS!  FVK formed in 2008 but the other members (not including Luke who joined in 2011 following a string of other drummers) had been in various configurations of other bands for years previously.  For a bunch of young guys these are lads who are really working hard for this.  They are entirely self-funded working full time jobs (until this week) and sharing a 2 bedroom flat to channel everything into the band.

L-R: Shane AKA Barrone, Laurence, Kier, Luke, Drew

So from late December I started getting into FVK...a much slower development than with MCR but all the same, by the time tickets for the Diamonds and Disgrace tour went on sale on February 20th I'd bought the album as well as pre-ordered the next EP and an FVK pin badge.  On 20th February I bought tickets to see them in Oxford on April 14th.
Are you seeing the connection regarding my blog title?

• September 20th - discovered MCR...then three months until...
• December 20th - discovered FVK, thanks to Gerard Way...then two months until...
• February 20th - bought tickets to FVK; the whole MCR thing having eased up and developing a crush on Laurence...then one month until...
• March 20th - Laurence started following me on Tumblr after seeing and reblogging THIS:

This being a "portrait" I painted of FVK inspired by their appearances in 

Kerrang! magazine's Pandora Strip

My birthday is March 22nd...Kier tweeted a photo I'd posted on Tumblr (which Laurence had also liked on Tumblr, commented "fucking awesome!" and reblogged.  Here it is:

I also got a tweet from Drew and two from Laurence...all, I might add, without any kind of "Please Tweet me, it's my birthday!!!" crap.  I love that I'm into a band that are still small enough to really interact with fans.  It was a pretty cool day.
But for many March 22nd 2013 is going down as a bloody awful day.  It's the day My Chemical Romance broke up.  In the UK it was some time in the wee small hours of the 23rd...I heard via Tumblr.  Gerard and Frank had both tweeted but in such vague terms you had to be clued in to get the connection.  All there was by way of an official announcement was the following post on their official website:

Being in this band for the past 12 years has been a true blessing. 

We've gotten to go places we never knew we would. 

We've been able to see and experience things we never imagined possible. 

We've shared the stage with people we admire, people we look up to, and best of all, our friends. And now, like all great things, it has come time for it to end. 

Thanks for all of your support, and for being part of the adventure.

My Chemical Romance

Well!  I didn't feel it as keenly as other fans, some of whom had been following the band for over eleven years, or others who as emotionally charged teenagers took it very hard indeed.  But it was a shock and to be honest, I was disgusted!  One crappy paragraph? No explanation, no apology, no we still love our fans dearly???  And then there was silence.  The fan base reeled, the music world reeled.  Brian Schecter, MCRs former manager who they had sacked some years earlier was comforting fans via Twitter.  Kerrang! magazine was trying to find answers. The editor, James McMahon tweeted:

Kerrang! did ask MCR's PR (who's one of my favourite people in the music industry) 

what was going on and they said "nothing to add, sorry"

I got the decided impression they were bloody appalled with the lack of MCR attempting to handle the situation; it was as if once having decided to quit they just walked out without working out their notice and leaving everyone else to clear up their mess.  I thought MCR had integrity and I felt bitterly disappointed in them and it was days before Gerard posted a blog via Twitlonger with any kind of explanation.
I get it.  I really do.  I did from the outset - people change, grow, move on.  if your heart isn't in it you shouldn't be doing it.  They'd started out as quite a dark group and when they released Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys - a happy, colourful album - their die hard fans didn't like it.  But the band were now in their 30s, and things had changed; all four were married, two had kids - just before the split Mikey's marriage broke down so some fans have blamed his new girlfriend for being splitting them up, like she's a Yoko Ono figure.  But that's all nonsense.  If  a band is strong, no single person is going to split it up; the cracks already have to be there.  True of MCR, true of The Beatles.  Something was wrong, and probably had been for quite some time.
No matter how well I, or anyone else, understands their motivations it doesn't excuse their actions.  You spend over a decade building a devoted fan-base and then just abandon them with a short, cold, impersonal paragraph?  Sorry, but in my book that's wrong.  It's akin to dumping a lover after more than a decade, with no warning, by text and refusing to take their calls.  It'll be a while before I can properly *forgive* that.  Perhaps you shouldn't judge people... but it's hard not to when they've hurt a lot of people.
Hopefully other bands have taken note and will do better in due course.

My Acronym Romance

I've been a BH (Blockhead), i.e. a NKOTB (New Kids On The Block) fan, since 1990.  Naturally I've listened to a lot of other music over the years and liked a lot of other bands, NKOTB aren't even representative of what I like.  I have an eclectic a bizarre taste in music...I think nothing of loading up my MP3 with everything from Matt Monro to Metallica, Hula to Classical.

But I have never experienced anything like the last fortnight.

I've liked songs and played them over and over.  I've had songs stuck in my head for days at a time.  But I've never had THIS.  For the last fortnight I've woken up with an MCR (My Chemical Romance) song stuck in my head - a different track every day and sometimes it'll change to another song after a few hours - blasting full volume!

Admittedly I love it but even "Helena" will drive you BSC (Bat-Shit Crazy) when it's on loop in your head for 5+ hours.  This last week I'm supposed to have been studying A297 (Reading Classical Latin) for my OU (Open University) studies.  I tell you, I've spent way more time studying MCR instead...

I bought the 2007 single "Teenagers", I'd seen several other videos but I somehow never got into MCR back then.  My daughters came across them quite recently and, on September 20th my youngest got me to watch the video for "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" on YouTube...and it was that simple.  Addicted.  My name is Heggie and I have an MCR addiction.

MCR get described as an Emo band a lot, which they dislike cos (a) who wants to be labelled as anything and (b) Emo has some nasty-ass negative connotations but this has been a crazy emotional fortnight for me.  I've been reading up on 11 years of the band's history, their highs and lows and it's been pretty intense.  For example, I found a story from 2008 where a British coroner blamed a 13 year old girl's suicide on her "obsession" with MCR, calling it a suicide cult band.  For a seriously screwy story from four years ago I am flippin' furious!

1. No one commits suicide because of music...unless they're really, really dumb.
2. The CDs all come with parental advisory stickers; it may not be easy to control what your kids listen to but if I were worried I'd confiscate it all!
3. Did the coroner know anything about MCR?  If he only looked at the lyrics he'd get a pretty warped idea of what it was about (e.g. "Dead!" has the lines: Wouldn't it be great to take a pistol by the hand / and wouldn't it be great if we were dead.  The song itself however is IRONIC, it's UPBEAT and it is FUNNY.  I want it played at my funeral!)

I think it's especially nasty as lead singer Gerard Way has had some pretty bad problems with depression and addiction, he credits MCR with saving his life and he wants to help kids...and it would be daft to encourage  your fans to kill themselves - not a good way to sell records or concert tickets!!!

Then there's all the Danger Days crap.  Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (2010) is MCR's 4th studio album and, until Conventional Weapons comes out any day now, their most recent.  Unfortunately a lot of fans have a problem with it for sounding too different and too 'poppy' which I think is just nuts!  I mean NKOTB have been around since 1984* and if you're still making the same songs nearly 30 years later what's the point?  What have you achieved, how have you developed?  People don't (generally) stay the same all their lives; they grow and change and mature.  Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004) is where they were then as twenty-somethings; Danger Days is where they are as thirty-somethings, all married and two have kids.  You'd think the fans would grow up and change too.

* - Final line-up 1985; 1st single and album 1986

But mostly it's a lot of fun.  I am so glad I recently got unlimited Broadband or this would be costing me a fortune...not that it isn't, buying an established band's entire back catalogue takes a while when you're on a tight budget even if HMV (His Master's Voice...but no one's called it that in a gazillion years) had anything in stock (grrrrr!).