Sorry that my posts have been few. Kickstart kind of has gone to the side as I'm dealing with a dog with a neck injury and it's just been way too stressful.
But with this post, I want to discuss the Bay City Rollers. Yeah, you heard that correctly, the band from the 1970's famous for the song Saturday Night and causing young girls to run around in plaid and scream their heads off.
I was one of those girls:
Yep, that's me in my Roller Gear too many years ago! 😁 Eric was my favorite.
When I first got the internet, the Rollers were something I looked up. There were many fan sites and I was able to reconnect with a few penpals. When FB rolled around, I found some more, connected with new ones and rehashed my Roller days.
I became a fan during what is known as the "classic" line-up: Eric, Les, Woody, Alan & Derek. I am very much aware that Les replaced the original lead singer Nobby Clark and that fans in the U.K. are very familiar with him. Though Nobby was with the band since the start and recorded songs with them, he left before the really big break and the worldwide Rollermania (I'm not saying there wasn't any when he was in the band, but the classic line-up is what most remember). Nobby sometimes comes to fan fests held throughout the world and it is my understanding that some of the early recordings are actually his voice and not Les' as there wasn't time to dub them over. I don't know if that's true or not. What I do know is that Nobby wrote a book, Nobby comes to fanfests and Nobby, in my opinion, has never gotten over not being part of the big break. He's a little quieter these days but it was there for a long time.
The fan pages these days, for some reason, are in competition with each other. Keep in mind this is a band from the 70's that hasn't been together in quite a long time. Of the classic line-up only Eric, Woody and Derek are still alive. Both Alan & Les passed a few years back as well as Ian (who replaced Alan for a short period). I must mention Ian as he and his wife Wendy were always very nice to fans on FB. Wendy still shares pictures (and stories) from her private collection.
Anyhow, there's bullying, there's threats, there's accusations......and I can't help but wonder; why? Why is it so important for one group of people to try to be named "The Only True Bay City Roller Fans"? And these groups join with the band member's wives/significant others/children, who apparently don't really get along that well with each other. So it's a divided group. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground and for some reason I can't enjoy my band from my childhood because of it. I can't understand why grown women behave like that!! I can't really understand why anyone would behave like that over anything.
Grow Up People!