History of BandFic, an overview
From Fan History Wiki
I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not motivated to try to get this published. Rather than let it sit on my hard drive, I've decided to share it in case some one finds it helpful. This represents probably two years of research and three months of trying to write it. The article addresses BandFic as a cultural movement, as fans interacting with fans. The issues of legalities are not really addressed, nor is there much done addressing how fans look at canon. There are many people who I owe a debt of gratitude for doing research, for providing me contacts to ask people additional questions, for editing and for discussing personal perspectives of certain events. In writing this, it challenged a number of assumptions I had regarding the history of BandFic and of fan fiction in general. My own understanding of fandom history is better for that and I owe a debt of gratitude for those in fandom who helped me along that path.
History of BandFic, an overview
by Michela Ecks/Laura Hale/Partly_Bouncy on LiveJournal
What fandom is seems to be changing and what music fandom is never seems to have matched with traditional conceptualizations of media fandom. The material is different, the audience is different, and the interaction with creative material is different. Also, the function of a narrative in both of those communities is different. They both have distinct histories. The two are not the same and should be treated differently, with neither subservient to the other.
Music fandom encompasses the musicians, their artistic creations, the distribution of their creations, both commercial and non-commercial, the interaction with their fans including media appearances, concerts and fansites. Music fandom includes the process by which fans familiarize themselves with an artist, fan related activities such as fansite creations, remixes, fan fiction, etc. It includes the musicians, the press, the fans, recording companies, and technology facilitators.
The purpose of this chapter is to tell a history of music fandom. The problem is the vastness of the topic. For this history, music fandom will be defined as bandfic and focus primarily on fan related activities. This focus is even further narrowed by focusing on music fandom actively engaged in producing fan fiction. It is not intended to be all comprehensive, but rather to narrate various themes present in bandfic by looking at histories of several different specific fandoms, noting how they function independently and co-dependently. It will point out how these bandfic communities are not just part of a broader bandfic community but are part of smaller, more specific fandom types within bandfic. Hopefully, in walking through the history of these communities, readers can better understand what was probably going on in other bandfic communities.
The Start of BandFic history
When do you start telling the history of bandfic? Music, in western cultures, dates back further than the Greeks. Fandom, in the traditional sense, isn't dated until much later. The term fandom isn't used until around a period around 1896, with one early reference occurring in the Washington Post on October 10, 1896 (Sheidlower). This seems to be a logical starting point.
The radio was invented in 1893 (Sarkar 272). The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. (Deangelis 17) The Edison Phonograph Company was started on October 8, 1887 (Tosches 219) in order to sell and market the machine to the masses. While the first real radio stations wouldn't come about until the 1920s ("Brief History of the Radio Industry"), these two events would culminate to help create popular music in the United States. Other recording technology advances and the introduction of recording companies probably helped too. These include the introduction of the first juke box type device in 1890 (Schoenherr), and the beginning of mass distribution of popular artists in 1902 (Schoenherr). By 1917, there were several recording companies in existence, including Gennett Record Company, Edison Records, Columbia, Okeh and Paramount.
Despite the emergence of fandom and the ability to share music more easily with a mass audience, that early starting point, some people BandFic writers would object to marking1896 as the starting point for BandFic. There is more to music fandom than the acknowledgment of fandom existing and technology. Music fandom, as previously defined, includes more than those two components. It includes a certain level of fan related creation activities, interactions between the various people involved with music, and greater press attention. These pieces are not yet part of the puzzle.
The 1920s
It is during the beginning parts of the 1920s that some important print related technology came into play. The mimeograph was invented by Thomas Edison in 1876. (Schlereth, 162) It wasn't until the 1920s that the device had became accessible to people outside a non-corporate environment. Prior to this, it had just been too costly for most people to use. This meant that people could now, easily and cheaply, produce and distribute their own materials. It marked the start of an evolution. Fanzines produced in this era were created by sports fans, both in the United States and the United Kingdom. They also included genre literature including science fiction and zines focusing on movies and celebrities. While there doesn't seem to be much evidence of music fanzines in this era, it seems logical and likely that there were a few out there.
Notable creations from this era include Amazing Stories which first appeared in 1926 and was published by Hugo Gernsback. (Clareson, 17) The science fiction fandom would be tremendously influential in the coming years in the development of fandom and in publishing practices. People involved in the science fiction community and its zine production would later go on and be influential in the formation of rock and other music related zines. (Invisiblefriend, et al.)
The 1920s really began to change the shape of American music, changed its accessibility and the way people interacted with it. Recording companies became more influential. The focus shifted from sheet music, veneration of the composer to support and celebrity status for the artists, the performers. It was then that all the pieces are finally in place that music has a fandom that could be recognizable to its modern participants. It was also here that modern music fandom probably started, and a point where BandFic communities cannot be predated.
The 1930s and 1940s
During the 1930s and 1940s, blues, jazz, gospel, honky-tonk swing and country were the music styles of America (Koskoff, 216). This period also marked the growth of popular music as technology gave greater access to music in the form of recordings and live performances over the radio. Famous musicians from this era included Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra (Goodwin)("Music history of the United States (1900-1940)"). Newspapers and radio covered these singers and entertainers as news stories. They helped make them into celebrities, similar to those celebrities gracing the screens at local movie theatres. Fred Astaire and Judy Garland were examples of the recording industry and the movie industry beginning a closer relationship (Bishop, et al.).
The increase of attention meant increased dialog about those musicians. People would write in to magazines and newspapers to share their opinions of musicians, discuss who they were involved with, write reviews of their concerts and more. Official and unofficial celebrity fan clubs had begun to sprout up. (Invisiblefriend, et al.)
The increased interest in celebrities and musicians was helped by the expansion of radio and television. In the period between 1945 and 1952, one hundred and eight television stations were created. (Bensman) Much of this was supported by the revenue that television and radio stations had tapped into. There was a seventy-one percent increase in that revenue in the period between 1941 and 1945.
The rise of celebrity culture was also helped by the emergence of “teenagers” as a market force in the United States. Magazine and newspaper editors began to cater to this group with the creation of such publications as Seventeen, created in 1944. (Mintz, 268) Over the course of the next sixty plus years, Seventeen would run a number of writing contests in its pages. Some of these contests would involve readers submitting fictional stories about musicians and other celebrities and winning stories were occasionally published in the magazine. This type of writing encouraged teenage girls to continue to produce this type of material.
The development of technology which benefited the music industry and fandom continued to happen during the period between the 1930s and the 1940s. In 1933, Edwin Howard Armstrong invented frequency-modulated. This is more commonly known as FM radio. It helped dramatically improve the quality of sound on the radio. (Barnouw, 40) In 1931, Adolph Rickenbacker invented the electric guitar. (Tawa, 111-112) In 1934, Joseph Begun invented the first tape recorder. It was intended for use by broadcasters and was a magnetic device. (Bellis) On October 22, 1938, Chester Carlton invented the first proto-copier. (Shavinina, 129) By 1939, there were regularly scheduled broadcast television programs. (Bellis) In 1948, the long playing record was invented. That same year, the transistor was invented. This meant that physical size of a radio could be reduced. (Bellis) By 1949, the vinyl record had been improved and was now able to play with a rotation of forty-five times per minute. (Bellis) That same year, Xerox developed the first photo copier. (Shavinina, 131)
The period involving the 1930s and 1940s included a major depression and a war. These had affected both music consumers and music related producers. The war most importantly had limited the development of radio and television, and production associated with both. They were not viewed as not essential to the war effort. It reduced some of the revenue available to both. The post war era during the 1950s removed those challenges. At the same time, the post war era started a cultural shift that would ultimately manifest during the 1960s.
The 1950s
The 1950s continued with earlier trends. Technology innovations continued. Fans continued to produce fanzines. The size of the broadcasting industry grew, which helped bring in more listeners and give more bands opportunities they had not been previously afforded.
There were several important technology innovations during this period. In 1954, Sony invented the transistor radio in Japan. (Bellis) Radios were thus smaller, cheaper and more readily accessible. They could more easily be put in to cars. Listening to the radio did not need to be a family affair as families could afford more than one. This would help remove teen music listeners from their parents, helping with the rise of teen fan girls. That same year, built the first transistor based computer for the commercial market. (Schoenherr) The computer would later become fundamental in the production of publishing of fanzines and serving as a tool, once networked, to connect BandFic writers and readers. In 1958, Advance Research Projects Agency was created. (National Research 60) This organization would later create the ARPA Computer Network (ARPANET) in December of 1966, an event that would help set the stage for bringing the BandFic community on-line. (Norman 41) In 1959, according to Shavinina, the first true commercial copier was created by Xerox; it quickly gained acceptance in the business world. Copies like this would later make it possible for copying technology to be available to the masses. While initial costs to purchase and make photocopies were high, much higher than the mimeograph. Still, as it became more commercial, the photocopier would help make fanzine production easier.
This era also saw a massive growth in fanzine production. More and more of these were focused on music. A number of them were being produced by women. Growth for zines was also taking place on college campuses. This growth was helped by changing cultural attitudes, the rise of popular culture and the fall of production costs.
The broadcasting industry continued to grow, providing a bigger platform for artists. The 1950s brought about a viable system of cable television. Media companies just viewed it as an extension of their broadcasting over the air. Color television was introduced in 1953. In the period between 1952 and 1960, ownership of AM radio increased by sixty-two percent, going from ten million radios sold in 1952 to sixteen million radios sold in 1960. There were 2,400 AM stations and 612 FM stations in 1952. By 1965, there were 4,000 and 1,400 respectively. In 1952, after a freeze was lifted that allowed for new television stations to come on the air, 450 did in that year alone. By 1960, there were a total of 550 television stations. (Bensman)
Technology, the growth of media and the continuance of fanzine culture were all important developments going on during the 1950s. Without them, bandfic as we know it would likely not have come into existence. Still, these things were eclipsed by the most important change in the 1950s. This event was the emergence of rock and roll music.
Rock and roll traces its roots to 1947. (McKeen, 108) It didn't become truly popular, viewed as revolutionary and a challenge to the dominant popular culture of that time until around 1954, the year that Elvis made it big. This genre of music was helped along by artists such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, and the Everly Brothers. (Gass) It signalled the start of American counter culture, with rock being a genre helping to lead the charge. Rock was beginning to challenge traditional American understanding of masculinity.
By this time, female fans of Elvis Presley were clearly beginning to write stories about themselves and Elvis. They were beginning to share them with friends. The age of teen fangirls had arrived. Some fanzines catered explicitly to their tastes, publishing their stories. At the same time, other parts of the rock fandom that were developing were developing an edgier, more formalized fandom and creating their own fanworks. This edgy material found itself manifested in its own fanzines.
The 1960s
By this time, the 1960s were upon us. The stage was finally set for modern BandFic fandom. There would be more cohesive fan groups, better distribution and the technology to help fans and producers of music.
Like in earlier periods, music related technology advances helped growth in the BandFic community during the 1960s. In 1963, compact stereo tape cassettes and players were developed by Phillips. (Daniel 102) The following year, in 1964, the eight track was "developed for automobile use by Lear." ("TimeLine of Music and Media Technology.") Both were advances on the previous available formats, and allowed for greater play time.
The advent of more consumer available recording devices led to the creation of bootlegged music. Bootlegged music theoretically helped musicians. It filled a need in the community, fostered dedicated fan bases and helped introduced musicians to new fans. This material made early appearances during the 1960s with The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. (Heylin 40)
The technology framework for allowing BandFic to eventually get on-line was developing. The effects would not be seen immediately but the consequences would be far reaching. As previously mentioned, ARPA Computer Network (ARPANET) was launched in December of 1966. (National Research 60) The ARPA Computer Network allowed for packet switching between computers, for data to be transmitted from one computer to another over great distances and over a network.
Fanzine distribution in the United States was affected during the 1960s because of two things. One was the introduction of zip codes in 1963. (Congressional Quarterly, inc. 98) The other was an increase in postage rates. (Congressional Quarterly, inc. 84) The first increase was in 1962, raising the rate from $0.04 to $0.05. The second rate increase was in 1967, raising the rate from $0.05 to $0.06. (Congressional Quarterly, inc. 84) The zip code caused some problems while fanzine distributors and fanclubs figured out how to adapt to the change. It took a while for distribution to normalize. The postal rate increase helped raise the cost of fanzine distribution, making it a bit more cost prohibitive. It resulted in a drop in distribution for some fanzines. (Lynch)
This era in BandFic is best defined by two different groups, doowop and rock. The communities drew from different fan bases, had different cultural perspectives. (Pruter) Doowop was perceived as being more folksy and amateurish. Rock was considered more popular and counter culture.
The rock and roll period, the fandom related component, began in earnest around the same time The Beatles arrived. The fans of this music had evolved, had changed. They were no longer associated with working classes but began to be seen as being connected to the middle class, to people who put more value in education. (Pruter)
The rock and roll part of the greater bandfic community, during the 1960s, read professional publications like Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, and Fusion. Prior to the late 1960s, these publications focused more on “personalities and superficialities than with their history, influences, and styles.” Their doowop counterparts relied more on fan created fanzines. They did not rely on professional publications though some of the fan created materials matched them in quality. (Pruter)
The most visible rock based BandFic community during this era is The Beatles. On August 18, 1960, The Beatles started playing under that name for the first time at an event in Hamburg, Germany. (Whelan) It would be four more long years before the band would make their American debut, an event that occurred on February 7, 1964 when they arrived in New York City for their first American tour. (Whelan) According to Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs in their essay "Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun," this event marked "the first mass outburst of the sixties to feature women – in this case girls, who would not reach full adulthood until the seventies and the emergence of a genuinely political movement for women’s liberation." This group, composed primarily of middle class, white teenagers, would form one of the core groups in the nascent bandfic community. In their adulation of the band, they would create many of their own fan related products including stories, zines and art. The fannish oral tradition that is alive today is implicit in the existence and circulation of fictional stories about band members during the early years of the band's history. Because the audience was young and not connected into a professional or underground movement, much of the material created by this group of fan girls never was published. The production, in most cases, likely consisted of one to five copies of a story being circulated only among the fan’s immediate peer group.
The emergence of The Beatles, their popularity and their fans dedication to creating fan works was helped because of the era in which they appeared. The Beatles were at the forefront for many white, middle class teenage girls in helping them redefine their own definition of sexuality and their own definitions of what it meant to be female. (Ehrenreich) This was taking place in an era where there was that increased debate on subjects like "birth, a woman's obligation to society, and conception, bringing with it all of the bitterness and acrimony that have long surrounded these issues, beginning with perhaps the most obvious one of them all -- Sexism." (Rowland) Legal gender differences between men and women were beginning to fall. (Rowland) For young, white, middle class female Beatles fans, writing stories about the band was an opportunity to challenge their parents, to revel in the new ideas regarding male sexuality, to explore their own and more. They could write about marrying Ringo or having children with Paul McCartney. They could write about being noticed by the George Harrison at a concert and all that followed afterward. Most fans knew that none of those scenarios were likely to happen. Some deeply resented the idea of a member of the band becoming involved with any woman because it destroyed their own fantasies. They did not want to see that happen. It is highly probable, that given this and the fact that they were writing fictional stories featuring the Beatles, that some of the Beatles were written as homosexual if only as a way to ensure that the object of the fan's lust, since they could not be hers, would never belong to another female fan. The idea of writing male on male pairings to cut out other female fans is one that would reappear again and again during the next forty years as new bands were discovered and attracted new groups of young female fans.
While The Beatles and other popular music got much attention, doowop felt ignored by rock and roll fans. Lots of potential American listeners were enamoured with bands from across the ocean. The some doowop fans went back and looked at their own musical history, their musical roots. They found it in harmonies and their working class roots. (Pruter) The materials they created reflected this. Accordingly, it is likely that any fictional works being produced by this group reflected similar issues. The quantity of the material they created was likely small in comparison to their counterparts, as the tradition they came from was a throwback to that earlier era of the 1920s, where the focus was on the music, the quality of the voices and the lyrics; doowop, unlike rock and roll, was not a style obsessed with the performers. The alliance with elitist intellectuals, the inferior quality of fanzines, the lack of a commercial market and the demographics of the fan base would lead to a decline of this community by the mid-1970s and their influence would be severely degraded amongst potential BandFic writers. The split between doowop and rock would mirror the one that would exist in the BandFic community when punk entered the scene in the 1970s.
The fiction that BandFic writers were writing during the 1960s included similar themes found in the 1950s. Some of it was edgy and some of it was not. Stories were distributed by hand amongst a small circle of like minded fans. Some fictional stories featuring band members stories were printed in fanzines, both official and unofficial, professional and non-professional publications. The stories were found largely amongst mixed content material. If there were fiction only zines, they were few and far between. What is traditionally defined as BandFic was also being supplemented in this era by comic strips featuring band members and original fiction stories about fictional bands.
The 1970s
This era saw the decline of the doowop community and the growth of the punk and metal communities. The end of the day, rock and pop music fandoms would be the ones that would exert the greatest influence on move from stories integrated into fanzines and other fandom products into their own publications with their own niche communities. This pattern began to develop during this decade as fandom activities on the whole began to grow and gain acceptance as a form of counter culture. The growth of the BandFic community would continue to be helped by technological advances. The number of influential bands increased during the 1970s, attracting fan bases that would follow them for years. This was the era that BandFic community would begin to step out of the shadow of the larger music fandom and begin to be defined on its own terms.
The 1970s involved a period of competition between technology companies over new formats for consumer recording and playback technology. (Schoenherr) This battle included companies such as Toshiba, Sony, Ampex, JVC, and Pioneer. JVC’s VHS VCR format would eventually win this battle, beating Sony’s BetaMax format. These technologies would help expand market presence for musicians. Antics on stage, previously available only to members of a live audience, could be saved forever and shared at a later date. Videos from concerts and music videos would provide a lot of potential fodder for fans to write stories about.
Computing and networking tools had a number of important innovations during this decade. In 1971, IBM developed the first portable data system: the 8 inch floppy disk. (Schoenherr) As publishing and word processing software were created, it meant that fanzine creators were not forced to use the same computer terminal if they wanted to print materials they had created. In 1973, the first desktop computer was developed, “leading to the PC revolution.” (Shavinina, 131) That same year, the first network based chat program was created. (Reid and Gray) In 1975, the first mailing lists were created by the Department of Defense. (Reid and Gray) In 1979, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis created Usenet. (Kirch and Kirch, 372) This formed some of the earliest social Internet based communities.
As with the 1960s, during the 1970s, various publications like 16 and Tiger Beat continued to run writing contests, some of which involved writing stories based on pop music stars. The rules for and expectations of entries was that they would be clean and non-pornographic in nature. (Nash, 145) This led some fans, like Ilnah Nash, the author of “Hysterical Scream or Rebel Yell? The Politics of Teen-Idol Fandom,” to be in conflict with the pop fans as they were fans of rock groups like The Who, Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent over the issue of sex, sexuality and group conformity. (146) Like the situation with The Beatles during the late 1960s, rock bands continued to challenge definitions of masculinity. Pop groups created by recording companies did not. As a result of feeling like outsiders because of their taste in music and acceptance of ideas outside the norm, some of these teen fans, like Nash, responded by writing sexually explicit stories featuring those band members and sharing them with their friends who had similar tastes. (145)
The term punk entered the music vernacular in 1975. (Colegrave and Sullivan, 18) Colegrave and Sullivan defined the movement as being almost indefinable, defined only by the “free spirit” who made up the movement. (12-14) In many ways, during the early part of the movement during the 1970s, it was anti-pop, with people in the punk movement throwing off the cloak of commercialism that had become rock and roll and rejecting pop music which ignored the individual identity. Unlike those other music communities, punk appealed more to the working classes in both the United Kingdom and the United States. It also was more clearly oriented towards heterosexuality, with males in a power position, both in terms of musical groups and the creation of punk based publications. Punk communities tended to be more conservative in terms of understanding of gender roles and expectations towards monogamy than their counter parts in other music based fandoms. (Leblanc, 167)
The core identity for punk fans of that era almost demanded participation in some form. If you were not in a band, one of the ways to get involved with the movement was to create fanzines. The greater availability of Xerox machines made publishing zines of varying qualities easier than it had before. Business like Kinkos, established in 1970, (“FedEx History”) catered not just to business customers but to zine publishers of all types. Punk fans happily took advantage of both. The zines they published contained all sorts of materials, from political statements, to pictures from concerts, to interviews with various artists. Occasionally, interspersed amongst the pages of fanzines were comics and original stories featuring actual bands. Most of these likely played off the heterosexual norm found elsewhere in the community. The stories that were being published did not dominate and define the punk scene and punk zines. The other content, like interviews, reviews, pictures, discussions about the punk scene and political statements, did and it was this other content that artists generally reacted to. The fan created material that was being created was frequently done with some knowledge of the people being featured. The artists’ reactions were mixed, generally falling between slight annoyance and condescension to amusement and encouraging more of this material.
During the 1970s, a number of musical groups formed that would later generate sizable BandFic communities. They include Aerosmith, founded in 1970 (Olson, 11), and AC/DC, founded in 1973. (Olson, 6) Some rock groups that were founded during the 1960s, like Pink Floyd which was founded in 1965 (Olson, 285) and Led Zeppelin which was founded in 1968, (Olson, 230) would continue to grow their fan base that would write fan fiction based on them.
The 1980s
The development of music technology during the 1980s continued. New technologies emerged and changing buying habits and how fans interacted with the materials created by the bands they were fans of. In 1980, “Sony introduced first consumer video camcorder.” (Schoenherr) In 1982, five inch compact disc technology was introduced. According to Schoenherr, this event marked the “merging the consumer music industry with the computer revolution.” By 1985, the introduction of the compact disc had led to a twenty-five percent drop in LP sales. By the following year, in 1986, the sale of compact discs was bigger than that of the LP. (“TimeLine of Music and Media Technology”) MTV went on the air on August 1, 1981. (“TimeLine of Music and Media Technology”) While not a technological innovation, it was certainly a media one which made it easier to get more information about bands and to become a fangirl with out ever seeing the band live.
Computing and Internet based technologies continued to evolve during the 1980s. These tools would form the backbone of tools that would later be utilized by the BandFic communities. One such innovation the creation of Fido bulletin boards in 1984. (Reid and Gray) Another was the creation of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in 1988. (Reid and Gray)
The first true large BandFic community to exist began in the early 1980s. This community was Duran Duran. It traces its roots to 1981, when the band gained a huge fandom in Japan. (alathebala) Pop magazines started featuring them in art and photospreads in what would later be called a slashy manner. This eventually led to the band’s likenesses, both physically and character wise, to end up as the subject of manga in Japan. (alathebala) By 1982, this enthusiasm had migrated to the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. A number of members of the DDFic, a Duran Duran mailing list, report writing fan fiction by this time. Most of it was written in isolation, not shared and not done with an understanding that a larger community of fans of that type of material existed and would have been receptive to reading it. (alathebala) Authors would continue to write mostly in isolation until the end of the 1980s.
By 1984, the Led Zeppelin community began to develop. Unlike Duran Duran and Yes fans operating during this period, many writers followed the tradition created by one early distributor of Led Zeppelin fan fiction and chose not to use the names of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in their fan fiction. Instead, they used names Tris and Alex, original names which had no overt connection to any other band or media property like From Eorica with Love. This tradition of using Tris and Alex instead of Jimmy and Robert became ingrained in the community, even as they started more actively publishing fanzines in the mid to late 1990s. It would not begin to die away until the start of the new millennium as the material and its homoerotic content began to gain wider acceptance.
By the mid-1980s, fans from television and comic book fan fiction fandoms had begun to exert a greater presence in music fandom as they began to migrate to them. The Led Zeppelin and Duran Duran communities were the more visible communities to benefit from their involvement. Some of these fans were well known in media fandom and included the likes of Jean Lorrah from the Star Trek fan fiction community. Most were less well known. Their reasons for entering these communities varied. Some had lost interest in the television, comic and movie source material they were previously fannish about. Others were looking to expand their fandom boundaries. A few had grown tired of media fandom, seeing it as stifling and were looking for an alternative that lacked the fan based establishment which they had problems with. As music fandom already had established practices, the fen migrating to BandFic communities could not superimpose their previous fandom practices on to their new fandoms. Their major influence would thus be to gather fan fiction based on a band, put it in to a single publication and encourage these fan fiction writers to separate themselves from the rest of a band’s fandom.
The 1990s
DVDs were invented in 1994, with media companies agreeing upon the standards for them in September of 1995. (Schoenherr) They reached the market place in 1997. (Krasilovsky, 352) The format would end up having an impact on BandFic communities as it meant that more video would be accessible to various fan communities. This technology would help spur additional interest in communities that were older by introducing new fans not just to the music but to the artists.
The practice of writing stories in isolation, of sharing them in paper form with a few friends continued on in to the 1990s. Some of the bands people were writing this material based on included Kiss, Def Leppard and Black Flag. (“Band Fiction Stranger Than Truth”) Some of this was a result of being unable to plug in to the local fandom due to age, gender or geographic location. For others, it was a because of a lack of acceptance in their local fandom for that type of material, with local fandom members seeing it as disrespectful towards the band. Part of it was also because of a general lack of knowledge that other fans like them existed and might be interested in reading their works. The latter would not begin to be addressed until the Internet became more accessible and search engine technology improved.
The Duran Duran community, which began in the early 1980s, had become much more organized by the early 1990s. Duran Duran fan fiction writers had begun to connect through Usenet, through bulletin board services, through general Duran Duran fandom fanzines, on AOL, at conventions and on tiger-list, a Duran Duran mailing list. (alathebala) Through these connections, they began to share stories through the mail, in paper form and by exchanging computer disks. (alathebala) By 1993, the BandFic community would be organized enough that they would start publishing their material in fanzines dedicated to fan fiction, one of the first BandFic communities to do this. (alathebala) They would continue to publish fanzines well into the 2000s.
By the early 1990s, most BandFic only fanzines being published included some sort of statement that made clear that the stories were fictional. These statements were not always labelled as a disclaimer but were generally found near the front of the publication. As BandFic communities began to move on-line and interact more with media based fan fiction communities, they found a community which opposed their work, which found their stories to be an invasion of privacy, to be libellous in nature, to not be fan fiction. The BandFic community retreated to locations far away from media based fan fiction communities and by being more insistent on the usage of disclaimers in story header information for their works.
Media fan fiction communities’ rejection and derision of BandFic during the mid and late 1990s helped push this material more towards the fringe. As many BandFic communities were inaccessible out of fear of media fandom, it made integrating new members into the BandFic community more difficult. During this period, bands and their traditional fannish bases had not fully realized the power of the Internet; they had not joined in large masses to help those fans transition into this new space. Some of these fans ended up at places like Nifty, an erotica archive founded in 1993, on Usenet groups like alt.sex.stories or on FanFiction.Net, founded on October 15, 1998. These locations did not have requirements for disclaimers, which BandFic communities themselves were frequently requiring. They did not share the same vernacular as BandFic communities, or a similar membership. It created a disconnect; fans located at a site like FanFiction.Net or fans who were integrated into an erotica writing community did not see themselves as belonging to that band’s BandFic community.
BandFic communities had been using mailing lists for a few years by 1995. This included the Led Zeppelin and Duran Duran fandoms. A few of these early lists came out of mail strings where people wanted them to become a bit more official and formal. Others originated from fanzine distribution lists; the zine publisher and the readers want to be able to keep up with events in a timelier manner. By 1995, services like Prodigy, AOL and CompuServe had made Internet access more readily available to the average, at home computer user. More universities and community colleges were becoming getting networked and providing students and staff with more Internet tools like Usenet access, the ability to create their own mailing list and host websites. These additional services expanded the potential membership for fandoms. Mailing lists thus became a social tool, where people across various services could interact with each other, where fans could find like minded fans and make new friends. They became tools which allowed you to get the latest news right in your inbox. It also helped fans in terms of organizing events, meet ups, finding and sharing stories. Media fandom’s rejection and rejection from other music fans also helped push parts of the BandFic community to private mailing lists.
Prior to 1997, most BandFic and music fandom mailing lists were hosted on private servers for a fee, through internet service providers or through non-profit organizations like universities. This created a situation where there were a few really large mailing lists where everyone in a community had to at least pretend to get along; if they didn’t, they would lose access to that fan group and their creations. By 1997 a number of free mailing list servers had been created which allowed anyone to create mailing lists. This included Coollist and OneList in 1997 (Fletcher), eGroups in 1998, and Topica in 1999. (Brown) These mailing list hosts led to the creation of a whole slew of mailing lists over the course of the next few years. Examples of these lists includes beatles for Beatles fic and discussion in 1997, ddfic, a Duran Duran fan fiction mailing list created in 1998, nsync_love for NSync in 1998, jrock-fic for Japanese rock in 1999, Nsync_FanFics for NSync in 1999, ADeeperMeaning for Savage Garden in 1999, beatlesfanfictionlist for Beatles fan fiction in 2000, and Metslash for Metallica fan fiction in 2000. The mailing list would remain at the center of the BandFic community until around 2003, when its influence would begin to die as other Internet services began to dominate and the community found fewer reasons to hide.
At the same time that free mailing list servers were coming on-line and reshaping the BandFic community, a number of free web site hosts appeared. These included AngelFire, Envy.Nu, FortuneCity, GeoCities, HomeStead, Tripod, and Xoom, all of which existed before January of 1999. Many young fans and pop music fans used these free services to create small fan sites. In a throwback to the early days when BandFic could be found in the pages of fanzines, many of their sites contained small archives of their own fan fiction based on their favourite bands. As they began to interact and connect more with others who hosted similar sites, their smaller fan sites with a few stories began to grow and include works from more authors. More sites with more stories began to be the expectation. The stage was set for large fan fiction archives, for fandom to be organized not around a mailing list but a central web based archive. It made FanFiction.Net, a site that quickly gained some mainstream attention in the first few years after its founding, a prime place for BandFic fans to congregate.
By October of 1998, when FanFiction.Net was founded, the term Mary Sue had entered the BandFic vernacular. Its widespread usage in the community can be attributed to FanFiction.Net, where old school media fen were heavily involved and wrote columns about various fandom writing related problems. One writing issue they brought up repeatedly was Mary Sue. In media fandom, Mary Sue characters were original characters that were better at completing tasks than the canon characters, that were romantically involved with characters in a way that felt out of character for that canon character, and generally acted like an idealized version of the author. BandFic communities traditionally involved all male acts. Female musicians as the focus of fan fiction were rare. This created a situation where most male/male BandFic writers defined any heterosexual pairing as Mary Sue fic and found it to be a scourge on fandom. Their attitudes led to a situation where some heterosexual fan fiction writers felt marginalized and started seeking alternative places to post and to create their own mailing lists, their own forums where male/male material was not allowed. There would not be much self reflection on this issue in the community until 2005.
The 2000s
In 1999, TiVo was released in the marketplace (Schoenherr) and other digital recording devices would soon follow. This technology grew in popularity in 2000 and beyond. TiVo and DVRs made it easier to find and record favourite bands on television. It also helped facilitate the sharing of those shows on-line easier as it made recording in a digital format easier.
On October 23, 2001, Apple introduced the iPod to the market. (Schoenherr) The iPod played mp3s, a format that was created in Germany in 1989. The format had been slow to take off and gain widespread acceptance until 1997, when a commercially available player for the computer gained widespread popularity. It was further helped with the creation of the file sharing service, Napster, in 1999. (Prager, 286) The iPod, helped along by mp3 technology and mp3 file sharing services, made it even easier to discover new music and find bands. It allowed for more control over the listening process. The format and popularity of it would give artists an easier means to distribute their work, and to gain a fan base. No longer would artists have to market themselves to recording studios as directly but they could market themselves to fans, get an audience and have the studios come to them.
As search engine technology improved in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as more fans moved on-line and as the BandFic community began to emerge from isolated corners on the Internet, the material became much more visible. The BandFic community by this time was dominated by women. They controlled most of the archives and ran most of the mailing lists. They were the dominant voices for the fandom on a number of general fandom Usenet groups. A fair amount of the stories they were writing featured male on male pairings. On occasion, male members of the band’s fandom would stumble upon the material. The guy would assume that the writer was a homosexual male writing about their own fantasies and thus undermining the masculinity of the male band members. This can lead to some authors in fandoms receiving threats of physical and sexual violence being committed against them, an event that happened occasionally in the Guns ‘N Roses fandom. (“Band Fiction Stranger Than Truth”) There is a feeling in the BandFic community that until more people become aware that adult women enjoy male/male content and change their attitudes regarding how homosexuality reflects on masculinity, problems such as that will persist. (“Band Fiction Stranger Than Truth”)
On September 12, 2002, FanFiction.Net banned all Real Person Fic from the site. The impact on the BandFic community was immediate. NSync, Backstreet Boys, Savage Garden, The Beatles, Bare Naked Ladies, Green Day, Good Charlotte, and Linkin Park were just a few of the communities effected. They protested. They created petitions. They tried to explain why this decision was bad. They tried to save stories before they were lost forever. Despite these actions, FanFiction.Net did not capitulate.
FanFiction.Net’s actions thus created a vacuum. One of the archives that stepped in to fill the void was FanDomination.Net, an archive which had opened for a public beta test only three weeks before. The flood of FanFiction.Net refuges exceeded FanDomination.Net’s band width constraints. Coupled with coding problems that over utilized server resources, the site was briefly suspended by their host until these problems were addressed. The site eventually moved to its own server on a different host and managed to be up most of the time. In the next three years, it would grow host over forty thousand pieces of BandFic, far less than FanFiction.Net but still more than comparable automated, multifandom fan fiction archives.
FanDomination.Net was not an ideal solution for many fandoms. They were tired of larger archives where they did not have control. They did not like the amount of poorly written stories they had to sort through in order to find good fan fiction. For some people, there were too many obnoxious teenage fangirls, a sentiment frequently expressed by teenage fangirls. Others wanted a space where they could more openly express their love of their band, beyond just the fiction. FanDomination.Net and other multi-fandom archives, like AdultFanFiction.Net, efanfiction.net and Soup Fiction which were created in the same period, just did not facilitate such conversations and did not have message boards with people squeeing over their bands. Out of this content, a number of archives were created. They included the multi-BandFic fandom archive RockFic, the Good Charlotte archive GCFanFics.Com, the Placebo slash and news site sucker-love.com and the Link Park archive LPFiction.Com, all created in 2004.
By the time that people were looking for a FanFiction.Net alternative and creating larger, fandom specific archives, social networking and blogging sites emerged as an influential force in fandom. They had been around for a while. Blogger.Com, never utilized much by BandFic writers, was created in 1999. (“Blogging Timeline - Chronological History of Blogging”) That same year, LiveJournal was created by Brad Fitz. (Downes et al.) In 2001, DeadJournal, using LiveJournal’s open source script, launched. (Precissi) Last.FM, Blurty and Quizilla were created in 2002. In 2003, MySpace was launched (Cherim) and GreatestJournal was created. FaceBook was launched in 2004. All of these social networking sites were utilized at various times by the BandFic community.
Dating back to as early as the 1950s, book publishers had been creating unauthorized pulp biographies featuring various musicians. This type of work was easy and cheap to produce and the companies publishing them faced little legal risk, even if the biographies stretched the limits of the truth. Too many bands and recording companies saw them as a source of cheap publicity to help them grow their fan bases. More modern publishers would see to get in on the act, openly publishing fictional fantasy stories about celebrities, celebrities that included musicians. One of the most notable example was STARF*CKER published by Alyson Books in 2001. (“Band Fiction Stranger Than Truth”) It is thus some what surprising that BandFic communities were not active earlier in publishing their stories not just as fanzines but as published books. This trend would not start until around 2003, when Westlife Fan Fiction written by Lesley Slee and edited by Aisling O'Hagan. The release of these books would be followed up by the creation of RockFic Press, an extension of the RockFic website in August of 2006. Both Westlife Fan Fiction and RockFic Press are available from Amazon.Com and can be ordered from any good American bookstore. Their existence largely owes itself to Print on Demand technology and companies providing this service, like CafePress (“About Us : Timeline”) and iUniverse (“History of IUniverse Incorporated”) both founded in 1999, and Lulu founded in 2002 ("Lulu Corporate Profile"). The popularity of Print on Demand in BandFic communities is likely to increase, especially since the community does not have a strong zine history establishing a norm for publishing in print.
As the 2000s begin to draw to a close, BandFic communities are beginning to look to the future. People are looking at new technologies and trying to integrate themselves in to their fannish experiences. The community has started looking outside of itself, for things that work, to see how they can integrate those things into their own fanspace. Most of these practices continue to come, not from media fandom, but from the publishing world, internet companies and the music world.
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