20 years of it: Thru the eyes of … Christian Gerhardts

The conclusion will be: The German Genesis Fan Club is my great passion, the work involved is great fun, sometimes it's a love-hate relationship, but it's something I would be reluctant to give up.

For almost 10 years, I have been 'the new guy' on the team, and readers and forum users often perceive me as the 'website guru' or even the 'fan club boss'. The latter is not correct, and the former was never planned. But first things first…

I became a Genesis fan around 1990, and I first heard about the fan club on 3 July 1992. Genesis were playing in Gelsenkirchen, and someone handed me a flyer for the fan club. I don't remember who it was. The flyer ended up in the depths of my desk drawer, survived my A-levels and was suddenly rediscovered during a major tidying-up operation. That was in 1996, and so it-Magazin #19 became my first issue. More than 700 membership numbers had already been assigned before me.

By that time, I had conquered the Gabriel cosmos, had long since worked my way backwards through the Genesis catalogue, listened to Both Sides over and over again, even though it was already three years old, and found a strange pleasure in Guitar Noir, even though that was also already three years old. I began to take a closer look at Hackett with Genesis Revisited. I probably wouldn't have known about the album without issue #19. In the following period, I completed my collection of solo albums and solo projects and, after contacting Peter and, above all, Helmut, began to write various articles.

I attended the club days in 1997 and 1998 together with another club member whom I met through a carpool advertisement (I didn't have a driving licence at the time). After that, I was unable to attend any more club days for a while, as there were often excursions as part of my studies during the Whitsun weekend or other reasons prevented me from going. Even back then, my friends envied me for being part of such a fan club. Two of my friends were members of the Queen fan club and were quite impressed by the quality of the it magazines, especially compared to the Queen fan club magazines at the time. The same was true of the Pink Floyd fan club, which was called Eclipsed back then. There's a story about that too, which I'll share later…

I followed the editorial team's 'cost-cutting plans' with some concern – only two issues instead of four, and anyway, there wasn't enough time! So I offered Helmut my services to work more closely with the editorial team if this was desired. Helmut gratefully accepted the offer, but initially I heard nothing more on the subject. Around the turn of the millennium, things quietened down a bit at Genesis, but everything shifted to the internet. It was noticeable that in various newsgroups and well-run websites such as The Way We Walk or, initially, The Path, information was easier and quicker to access than at it. So it was a logical consequence that it also went online. From today's perspective, this was done in a somewhat cumbersome way with a protected area and continued club membership. This was soon abandoned and the website was made fully accessible to everyone.

2002 was a 'busy' year for me. At the time, I was involved in university politics and was chairman of the General Student Committee (AStA) at the University of Essen. In the summer, I decided to take a step back in order to focus on my studies again. No sooner had I made that decision than the phone rang. It was Bernd Zindler, and after some small talk, he explained that Helmut wanted to step down for personal/time reasons and that they needed reinforcements. The guys came to me, probably because I was one of the few who had offered quite emphatically to do more than just write reviews. The paradox was that I had hardly had any contact with the three of them until then; we had only met at the two club days and briefly at the memorable Genesis 'concert' in Bielefeld in 1998. In Welkers, I was at least able to discuss the idea of a Genesis book about their tours with Helmut – but nothing came of these plans.

I didn't have to think long about Bernd's offer, and shortly afterwards I was already in Braunschweig for my first editorial meeting. Helmut Janisch was absent, but it was explained that he wasn't leaving completely; instead, I would be joining the team and Helmut would continue to contribute when his time allowed. That was no problem for me, especially as it made the induction process much easier (as I was to take over Helmut's tasks in particular).

Shortly before and after I started working at the magazine, there were big Genesis features in the English magazines MOJO and Classic Rock. As I was a student at the time and had a job in a station bookshop, I was able to organise a club bulk order. During this time, my boss's tenant also approached him and asked if he could offer the Pink Floyd fan club magazine 'Eclipsed' in his shops on a trial basis. In fact, my boss, who knew at the time that I was in the Genesis fan club, asked me for my opinion and I promised him that we could sell quite a few copies of this magazine. After this proved successful, he immediately asked for the magazines from it, which I had once shown him. But these were no longer being produced. The rest is history, Eclipsed still exists today in a different form.

Back then, Peter was the webmaster at it, doing amazing things with GoLive that I didn't understand at all. When Peter Gabriel's album UP was about to be released, I had the idea of setting up a kind of microsite about the album and the tour. This, however, exceeded Peter's self-taught skills as a webmaster, and I couldn't do much at the time either, so I asked Martin Timmerbeil, a good friend of mine, to create something for us. The microsite looked completely different, and I felt a growing desire to have more influence on the website. I tried to make this clear to the others in a strongly worded email. This led to the restructuring of the website in 2003. It would not be the only one.

In 2003, I was back at the club day, and during the preliminary meeting, Helmut was delighted to announce that he would be handing over the role of stage clown to me in future. This wasn't a big deal, as I enjoyed doing this kind of thing anyway. So it came to pass that I took over as presenter at all club days and events from then on. However, the 2003 club day will remain a special memory for me. It was a kind of apprenticeship, so to speak – apart from the incredibly heavy boxes that had to be carried, there were many things to consider that I might have smiled at before. Karin Woywod, for example, was always responsible for putting the posters in the appropriate picture frames. This was done with millimetre precision, which I couldn't comprehend at first. And just as the posters fit perfectly into the frames, this precision was also evident in other areas of the club day organisation.

As a result, there were five fan club projects that I wanted to pursue more or less consciously and that were to occupy me more and more:

1) Bring a star guest to Welkers

2) Make the website news more dynamic and up-to-date

3) Create a full English version of the website

4) Fill the website archive

5) Expand the IT forum

We brought the star guest to Welkers in 2004. Ray Wilson played twice at the community centre with Steve Wilson and Irvin Duguid. Organising this event was a mixture of farce and serenity, but overall, this 'first time' was also a test of nerves for many in the editorial team. Looking back, RayVent was a great event for the guests, but for the organisers, many things did not go as planned, and we have learned our lessons for future events.

At that time, the IT news was relatively static and was only updated every two to four weeks. For me, that was too little, for Bernd too time-consuming, so from then on I took care of the news and also decided to put an English version of our site online. The new news section has been up and running since 2004, and the review of Still Growing Up: Live And Unwrapped was the first article to appear in English on genesis-news.com. At the time, I wanted to translate my own review myself (in this case), but I quickly realised that someone else would have to do it for time reasons. By chance, I came across Martin Klinkhardt, known to forum users as martinus, in one of the newsgroups I was trolling. Since then, he has translated everything I've given him – around 300 articles and countless news posts in seven years. Looking back, we must have been crazy. Looking ahead, too…

The website archive became smaller and smaller with each relaunch and restructuring, as we simply had less and less desire to squeeze all the old articles into new designs. That only changed in 2008, when we went online with a fully dynamic website. In addition, we transferred a number of articles from IT magazines to the website. We are still a long way from finished, but there is probably no other Genesis website with a comparable density of information.

The forum was initially run by Bernd Zindler. This goes back to the magazine structure, when Bernd was responsible for member administration. In 2004/2005, I started to invest more and more time there, and Bernd wanted to take a step back because his job and private life no longer allowed him to fully support the club. The expansion of the forum finally took place in 2006 in the form of new software (vBulletin) and was necessitated by the strong growth in membership. Even the band's official website had similar problems.

This development explains why I suddenly became the face of the club at club days and events, took on more and more responsibility and activities within the website, and was also the contact person in the editorial team as an admin in the forum. No one in the editorial team would disagree with me when I say that I have actually invested the most time in the club, especially since 2005. However, the external impact of my tasks also had the effect that the roles of others were often overlooked because they were not actually noticed. Club days and events (with the exception of RayVents), for example, took place almost without me in terms of preparation – Helmut and Peter were always in charge here.

Most of the content on the website came from me (unless it was written by third parties), but the entire visual appearance is the work of Helmut, and for a little over a year now, many of the graphic contributions have also come from Martin Timmerbeil. This is precisely where a tension developed between Helmut and me, which was mostly productive, but sometimes also difficult. On the one hand, there was me – always striving to get the information out to people as quickly and concisely as possible.

On the other hand, there was Helmut, who wanted to meticulously prepare everything graphically first and, last but not least, wanted all questions regarding Duden conformity to be clarified and didn't like it at all when typos appeared on the website. Helmut's roots and, in a sense, his grounding have always been IT magazines, while my passion lies in the website with all the consequences of Web 2.0, which Helmut cannot relate to at all.

I always had a thousand ideas in my head, some of which were duds, while others were further developments of ideas from our forum users. The Genesis album league, song of the week, projects that never came to fruition such as album of the month, tour dates and song database, etc. – but in the end, I always had far too much to do to keep everything running smoothly.

As a fan and member of the it editorial team, I often found myself combining work and business trips, as I frequently had interviews to attend, press conferences to visit, and similar engagements. It was always exciting, but not necessarily very relaxing. The fan club was increasingly perceived as an institution that could not be ignored – or that was appreciated for its many years of work. As a result, we have long had a good relationship with management, record companies and concert organisers. This has enabled us to always provide you with interesting reports, discuss albums well before their release and, last but not least, offer tons of competitions.

There were often moments when I thought about giving up my work with the fan club. My move to Dresden was one such moment; sometimes I felt burnt out or had taken on too many 'projects'. At times, the fan club is just another job on top of my actual job. And last but not least, I had to learn not to let the sometimes absurd incidents in the forum get to me. I made mistakes here too, but today I am much more relaxed.

However, it cannot be ruled out that my priorities may actually shift at some point. In any case, the forum did not exactly contribute to cheerfulness in difficult times. Threats, insults and the like were low points. It will always remain a mystery to me why a few people, who naturally prefer to remain anonymous, want to destroy what others enjoy.

But I am still very passionate about it and had to show Helmut's baby, our fan club, the right way in its adolescence, so to speak – with all the nerve-wracking discussions that entails. And now I am simply curious to see how the club will develop in its adult life – until it eventually retires.

In almost ten years as an IT editor, it's almost impossible to pick out special moments. My first interview (Ray Wilson) was certainly one such moment, but overall I never had that 'nervousness problem' when meeting our heroes. That's another reason why I always enjoyed interviews, especially stage interviews on club days. The Genesis press conference in 2006 was also something 'big,' but more because of the topic than the event itself. Our numerous editorial conferences were usually very busy, but in the end, they were above all very entertaining. We never despaired of ourselves in all those years; in the end, humour always won out.

Ray Wilson's first visit to the fan club as part of RayVent was 'special', his second in 2007 was much more relaxed. Richard Macphail and Armando Gallo's visits also remain fond memories. John Mayhew's spontaneous participation in The EVO event is historic for other reasons. We had a lot of fun with Dale Newman in 2008, even though the event was a bitter disappointment for us in terms of visitor numbers. The Musical Box playing an exclusive show for us was a highlight. All of this was ultimately topped by the Steve Hackett event in 2009. Steve still talks about this event today. There is no better compliment than that.

It is difficult to describe how much the club has shaped my adult life. This is mainly due to the people I have come into contact with over the years, whom I would never have met without the fan club. Of course, it was an advantage for me to be known through the fan club – it meant I could always quickly strike up a conversation with other fans, for example at concerts. Today, I no longer have the same desire I had seven or eight years ago for everyone in the club to like me, but I don't think it's difficult to get along with me. We also have good contacts with the musicians themselves, although to varying degrees, of course.

We are respected by everyone, and yet it's always nice to hear from someone like Steve Hackett or Ray Wilson that they enjoy meeting up, or to learn that Peter Gabriel reads our website. We have also made a name for ourselves in the 'industry'. Countless advance reviews, prize draws, etc. are proof of this. All of this makes me a little proud, but it doesn't let me rest – in the style of Ray Wilson's current album, I also remain "unfulfilled" when it comes to fan club work. There will always be something else that can be done. It will never really be finished.

All in all, I realise that I must be completely mad when I look back on these ten years. But actually, that's a good thing. With considerably more composure than a few years ago, I would like to thank my editorial colleagues Helmut, Peter and Bernd, who didn't know me but have put up with me for almost ten years now and have become friends, the authors of many articles, whom I often don't know personally, the helpers at events, the readers of the website and the forum users. To sum up the current situation and look to the future, I will simply quote a song title from the most important Genesis album: Like it or not …