I am their greatest fan

In Mark Romanek's film Static, an earnest young man invents a device that can transmit live pictures from heaven. He assembles friends for the grand unveiling, then watches, devastated, as they stare blankly at the screen, unable to see what he's so excited about. That scene has great resonance for me; I can empathise with his sense of alienation. You see, my favourite band is the Auteurs. And when I put on one of their CDs, everyone looks at me like my dog just died. Having halitosis would win me more friends.

The Auteurs are a maligned bunch. They were cheered by critics for New Wave (1993) and Now I'm a Cowboy (1994), which both barely grazed the charts. Now they've been crucified for the release this month of the prickly After Murder Park, an album that at last translates the brutality of their lyrics into music. It's a work that might have divided the country if anyone had really cared a hoot about the band. But they don't. There have been exceptions: rave reviews from NME and Q magazine (who called it "an excellent album"). However, these are matched by the voices of dissent: Mojo, Melody Maker and my friend Diane (who complained that "the music's dingy; it's no fun"). Another pal recoiled at the record, calling it "music made by people who were in the top maths group at school".

Not that I'm bothered. It just makes me love the band even more. For as your parents stop caring about your musical tastes, and you start to miss the battles that were always a part of pop when you were growing up, it's comforting to find that there are still some people around who'll happily deride your tastes. I don't listen to the Auteurs because so many people hate them - I didn't realise quite how despised they were until I was knee-deep in my obsession with them - but I can't say it does my love any harm.

But then the best pop music is always a resolutely solitary affair - you anticipate buying the records, you buy the records, you pore over the records (really tragic fans may even be found miming to the records). All in sublime isolation.

And then comes the gig, and suddenly you're faced with the dizzying prospect that hundreds of others have been vegetating in their bedrooms replicating the very behaviour that you thought was unique to you. They call out for the songs that soundtrack your life, and mouth the words that float around in your head all day. It's like discovering that your most intimate thoughts have suddenly been made public property. You're liable to become brattish about it.

Last Saturday, the Auteurs played in London. And, fully aware that fellow fans would indicate as much about me as they did about themselves, I eyed the crowd suspiciously. Most of them were male. Serious blokes in their twenties with severe-looking sideburns. They might be described as "sensitive, misunderstood and academic" in the personals. Many were alone. Terrified that I was staring into a damning mirror, I sought slim consolation in the fact that I can't grow sideburns.

Unfortunately, I'm the sort of sad fan who still buys T-shirts. There's no excuse for this, I know. But the merchandising stall was wonderfully characteristic of the Auteurs: it amounted to a single T-shirt, pinned to the wall, bearing a snapshot of two body-bags. I glanced at the sale- sheet; it was 10 minutes before the show and I was only the third person to buy a T-shirt. Three down, 97 to go. The fellow took my money grimly.

The gig itself was a revelation. After running a disturbing video for the "Back With the Killer Again" single, which it's safe to say will for ever be absent from The Chart Show, singer/guitarist Luke Haines galloped on stage, pint aloft, beaming madly like an out-patient who's forgotten his medication. Few bands would call a song "Unsolved Child Murder", but even fewer would open a show with it, the soothing cello and rat-tatting drums foxing any attempts to dance. It's pop music, but not as we know it.

Like the songs, the band were skew-whiff. The drum-kit was shoved to the front of the stage, squeezed in beside Haines and cellist James Banbury (who looked like an edgy Jonathan Harker to Haines's wild-eyed Nosferatu) while timid bassist Alice Readman loitered at the back. The devilish drummer Barney Crockford, in his Chippendales-style sleeveless DJ and red bow- tie, resembled Keith Moon after ECT, a comparison validated by his ferocious playing on "Lenny Valentino", where he drove the song to combustion point. There was a theremin, too, that aerial-like instrument which is played without physical contact, emitting ghostly wails on the nastiest number, "Light Aircraft on Fire".

Like all the best gigs, I don't remember being there. Did Haines really apologise for saying "cheers" after a song, and promise to amend it to "fuck you!" in future? Did a bunch of boozed-up girls really start pogo- ing to "Starstruck", the evening's most tranquil song? It all seemed to exist in my imagination. Which epitomises the star/fan relationship - so much of it is woven of ethereal feelings that are impossible to quantify that it's easy to reduce it to the level of the dealer/junkie equation. They make music, we hoover it up, and demand more.

But what do we actually want from our idols? To be them? To befriend them? We could only be disappointed. When Luke Haines met his hero, Mark E Smith of The Fall, Smith remarked, "Your music's alright, but it's a bit Steely Dan. We fought wars to get rid of that stuff." The frustration and ambiguity of the star/fan relationship naturally feeds addiction.

But it's not that simple. There are any number of reasons why a certain band can snare you. Their music could help you to survive a rough patch (New Wave did this for me). Or they could represent your dream band (though I can't even whistle in tune, I always thought it might be cool to be in a band with a double-bass, a drum-machine and heaps of wah-wah; cellos, guitars and a theremin are as near as dammit). Crucially, your favourite band says as much about you as your haircut. It's a short-hand to your personality, just like a love for argyll, the Body Shop or leather harnesses.

I can give literal answers as to why the Auteurs mean so much to me: Haines's writing - Carver-esque lyrics; music that marries Palace at their lightest to Ray Davies at his darkest - excites me. And as a person who says "sorry" too much, I warm to his no-nonsense attitude (when I got home from the gig to the throb of my neighbours playing Joe Jackson, I wished I had Haines's gall and a baseball bat). But I don't know why I can't live without the Auteurs - if I ever find out, I might be free of them. All I hope is that the rest of the world just carries on loathing.