The Kelly Family. I've always said it, if they ever do the unexpected and reunite, I'm going to enjoy it to the fullest and as often as I can. For my younger self, for my current me and for everything in between. Never ever did I expect that it would truly happen though. The reunion of the band I grew up with. The band that taught me so much about daring to be myself and that it is absolutely okay to not fit in.
What even is not fitting in, these days, you might ask. Well, let me tell you that an 8 year old kid who comes to school dressed in velvet pants with a binder full of Kelly Family articles under her arm every single day, no matter how heavy it got, gets a pretty good shot at looking weird. I was also the child who could sit in her poster-filled room after school all afternoon, listening to the songs that I couldn't fully understand just yet (or still, you bilingual family) and the child who wrote in her diary every single day about her potential marriage to Paddy, the upcoming concerts or the concerts that had just been. Because thanks to my lovely mom, who understood and definitely fueled this somewhat unhealthy love, I always had a concert to look forward to. It was a luxury I couldn't fully appreciate back then because I was too young and too caught up in it.
And oh my God, did people make fun of me and did people make fun of them. They were an easy target just as much as I was for loving them. They were disgusting because they had long hair, or because they were a family that were in a band together or because they had terrible fashion sense and by the way their songs sucked. And people, no matter how old or young, no matter how well I knew them or mostly didn't, never failed to make that very clear to me. It didn't really matter to me because I got used to it at a young age and I was always proud of it all and I feel like I owe most of that to this very band.
As years passed and I grew up a little bit and my mum introduced me to Bon Jovi and the Kelly's all went their own ways as their success got the best of them, I didn't really think about them as much. But ever since my 18th or so, I always find myself going back to them. I could not listen to the music for months in a row and then suddenly feel completely alive as I found myself singing along to those old school tunes that had so much happiness, innocence and warmth attached to them.
I accepted though that it would forever be something from the past. Something that I could remember so vividly and barely at all. It has been about 18 years since my glory days as a die-hard fan and they split up anyway so moving on was only to be expected. Even after the 3 out of 9 reunion in Rossum the other year, this 6/9 reunion came as a complete surprise to me and I still can't fully wrap my head around it. Having tickets to two concerts right now honestly feels like it is only the beginning. This is my second chance to go back to that happy place and I couldn't be more thankful. The first official reunion concert is only 2 months away now and I'm not completely sure how many packs of tissues I should pack in my We Got Loe tote bag that I got with the fan edition of the new album that I obviously ordered.
And by the way even now that I am proudly carrying that bag around I notice that people haven't forgotten about them. And they certainly haven't forgotten how to tell me how stupid they are. It's always the laugh, along with a funny remark and my reaction is still the same, and to be fair I'm the first one to join them now. Because I couldn't care less as we know better. Me and that second family of mine. They can laugh at us all they want, but we got history, we got a closet full of velvet and we're ready to go against the world once again.
x Anjelica
(I'll get back to you with a full report on how many buckets of happy tears I cried in Dortmund. Just wait and see.)
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