December

A day late with the December songs but better late than never. The obvious starting point is this one...

December

December was on Teenage Fanclub's 1991 album Bandwagonesque, a song about lost or unrequited love and 'wanting to assassinate December'. I know how they feel. 

Those guitars though... perfect. 

Creation labelmates Pacific, very much a forgotten Creation band, released a couple of albums and had a song on Doing It For The Kids. their 1990 album Inference was a compilation and probably the best entry point. This song came as one track on a split flexidisc cover mounted on The Catalogue, a music trade magazine. Indie pop with violin and doleful vocals. Very late 80s indie, rather endearing and about to be swept away by Manchester and by Creation releasing Screamadelica, Bandwagonesque and Loveless on the same day. 

December, With The Day 

Finally, from 2019 and Belfast's The Vendetta Suite is this two minute slice of nostalgic, psychedelic December...

Three Days In December

Forty Five Minutes Of Teenage Fanclub

A few weeks ago I was suddenly struck by the urge to hear a load of Teenage Fanclub and I binged on them for a couple of days. They wrote some of the best guitar songs of the 90s and their sound the guitars and triple songwriters and lead vocalists- set them apart from most of their peers. I got on board with Bandwagonesque (but was already familiar with A Catholic Education via housemates) and then followed them through the 90s before drifting away from them some time in the 00s but from A Catholic Education, Bandwagonesque, Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain they rarely put a foot wrong. They really nailed that Glasgow indie via 60s and 70s America thing and a lot of their songs carry an emotional heft too. Big Star were often referenced by the music press in the early 90s but I think the Fannies have taken as much influence from Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Love and The Byrds as Big Star. Anyway, the Sunday mix series came calling for them and here it is, forty minutes of Teenage Fanclub songs, sequenced together, one running into another like a dream TFC gig but with no gaps between the songs.

Forty Five Minutes Of Teenage Fanclub

• Don't Look Back (Have Lost It Version)
• Star Sign
• Everything Flows
• It's A Bad World
• Ain't That Enough
• Alcoholiday
• I Don't Know
• Sparky's Dream
• Planets
• The Concept
• Don't Look Back

In 1995 Teenage Fanclub released a 7" single titled Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It with acoustic versions of four songs, one from each of their then four albums. As well as acoustic guitars there are organs, recorders, sampled sounds, melodica and banjo- much more than just the songs done on acoustic guitars. Gerald Love's Don't Look Back, a genuine TFC and 90s guitar band peak, opened the EP. The singing and playing are glorious and the lyrics beautifully romantic, 'I'd steal a car to drive you home/ But don't look back on an empty feeling'.

Star Sign is from Bandwagonesque, released in November 1991 (on the same day as Screamadelica and Loveless- Creation really cleaned up). Star Sign fades in with guitar amp feedback, Neil Young style, and then explodes, drummer Brendan O'Hare thumping away, Gerald (again) singing and shrugging, 'big deal... seen it all before'. Alcoholiday is from the same record, a gloriously fucked, end of a love affair song.  I Don't Know is Raymond McGinley's sole Bandwagonesque song. The Concept opened Bandwagonesque, a Norman Blake masterpiece about being in a band and a girl. The freak out coda is pure Neil Young. 

Everything Flows is from 1990's A Catholic Education, the band's sound ragged, looser and darker, borrowing more from US 80s indie punk (Sonic Youth, Pixies et al), proto- grunge than their later 60s sound. Norman sings and writes, admitting to a very turn of the 90s aimlessness.

It's A Bad World is from 1997's Songs From Northern Britain, pound for pound and song for song their best album. Every song could be a single. There was a time in the late 90s when we were waiting for Isaac to have a bone marrow transplant to treat the rare genetic condition he was born with, a wait to find a matching donor that seemed to go on for months. I would drive home listening to either Songs For Northern Britain or Primal Scream's XLRTR and certain songs really, really struck me, they were almost too much. Raymond McGinley's It's A Bad World was one of them- the triple harmonies, crunchy guitars, Neil Young lead line and love lorn lyrics hit me hard and it really did feel like it was a bad world. A beautifully sung bad world. Ain't That Enough is from the same album, its first single and a wide eyed look at the world and its wonders. Planets saw them look up and add strings to the mix- it seems very at odds with 1995's hedonism- 'we're going over the country/ Into the highlands/ To look for a home'. 

Sparky's Dream is from 1995's Grand Prix, released at the height of Britpop, a sugar coated pure pop rush. Don't Look Back was also in its original form on Grand Prix and takes us back where we started, those chugging Big Star guitar chords and harmonies and the driving into the sunset lyrics that marry euphoria and loss- don't look on an empty feeling.

Thirteen

On New Year's Day 2010 I started Bagging Area- which has made it very easy to remember when the blog's birthday is if nothing else. Today the blog enters its teenage years, thirteen years old. There are several songs titled for what is often seen as the unluckiest number.

Big Star's Thirteen from 1972 is a celebration of teenage love. 'Won't you let me walk you home from school', it begins, the ache and pain of young love perfectly captured by Alex Chilton and Chris Bell.

Thirteen

Big Audio Dynamite's V Thirteen is from 1987, co-written with Joe Strummer who also produced the album it came from (Number 10 Upping Street, according to Joe, the home of 'an alternative, funky Prime Minister'). V. Thirteen's lyrics take in all sorts of stuff, not least Little Jamie who writes 'V 13'- I've always assumed this means writes as in graffiti- my copy of the 12" came with a stencil for spraying V. 13 onto walls and other surfaces, still unused. V. Thirteen is one of B.A.D.'s finest moments.

V. Thirteen

Teenage Fanclub released an entire album titled Thirteen, released in 1992 following the flush of fame that Bandwagonesque brought. Inevitably it felt like a bit of a slump, the songs not quite up to par, many being fragments and leftovers from 1991/2. The experience of making it wasn't a happy one for the group, it dragged on and became hard work. Drummer Brendan O'Hare left after they toured the album. Time has been fairly kind to Thirteen I think, it sounds pretty good today, just not a great step on in any way. One of the key songs was 120 Minutes, a Raymond McGinley song, which the group recorded acoustically for their Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It EP, released in 1995

120 Minutes (Acoustic)

Andrew Weatherall's 2016 solo album Convenanza included a song called Thirteenth Night. The album was a wide ranging affair, spanning post- punk/ punk funk trumpets and featured Weatherall's vocals on many of the songs including references to writers Hans Fallada and Robert Walser (Fallada wrote Alone In Berlin, the true story of a German couple who leave a series of handwritten postcards around Berlin during the Nazi years attacking the regime and who then become involved in a deadly cat and mouse game with the Gestapo). Thirteenth Night was a slightly melancholic instrumental. For the remix album that followed- Consolamentum- Thirteenth Night was remixed by Andrew's Asphodell's bandmate and studio engineer Timothy J. Fairplay. The Asphodells' steam powered drum machine makes a welcome appearance.  

Thirteenth Night (Timothy J. Fairplay remix)

Set A Course That I Don't Know

This clip came  up on the ever- excellent @Birmingham_ 81 Twitter account yesterday, a birthday post for Norman Blake. Teenage Fanclub, on the way up, performing Everything Flows live caught by Snub TV's cameras in December 1990. Just watch this...

I mean, wow! Mayhem. Noise. Songs. Guitars. Drums. Kids losing it. Out of key vocals. Gloriously sloppy. Absolutely life affirming stuff isn't it?

Everything Flows is one of their best songs, a 1991 single and on the Fannies debut album A Catholic Education. It's got everything that made them sound so good- a group in love with the sound they're making, a yearning and slightly melancholic edge, loose harmonies, feedback. The recorded version is more controlled than the live one above but still seems to be at the edge of their capabilities (in the best way). 

Everything Flows

In 1995 they put out a four track EP of acoustic versions of songs from their back catalogue, one from each album they'd put out at that point. Gorgeously done stuff. 

Everything Flows (acoustic)

You Were Putting Me On

I found this clip recently and it made me smile, Teenage Fanclub back in 1995 or '96 playing live on The White Room, covering The Byrds 1965 B-side (B-side!) I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better, if push comes to shove my favourite Byrds song.



There's nothing wrong with this clip at all- Teenage Fanclub in 1995, a band in love with music and the sheer joy of playing, Norman and Gerry sharing the vocals, a group who could out jangle anyone, totally Byrdsy. There's some frantic tambourine rattling too from roadie Guitar George.

I'l Feel A Whole Lot Better opens with that wonderful chiming Rickenbacker riff by Jim McGuinn and then lifts off, with all the harmonies, the uncertainty of the lyric- 'Ill probably feel a whole lot better when you're gone'-  and that rocket fuel rhythm section, a perfect slice mid 60s folk rock, all over and done with in two minutes and thirty two seconds. I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better was written and sung by Gene Clark and released as the flipside to Mr Tambourine Man, their first self- written song that sold in its millions.

I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better

In 1989 Dinosaur Jr covered the song, released on a Byrds tribute album called Time Between, an album that also had covers by the likes of the Mock Turtles, Thin White Rope, Miracle Legion, Robyn Hitchcock and The Chills. J Mascis, Lou and Murph go at it fast, ragged and in one take. Gene Clark said this is his favourite cover of the song and I can't disagree with that. I don't have a copy of this anymore- I owned the album once but have no idea where it is now. If anyone has an mp3 of this version I'd be more than happy to take a copy off your hands.

There's A Side Of Me Unknown

There's a lot of Teenage Fanclub on the internet right now and in real life (they're touring). They've become very... comfy. Heartwarming. Fair play to 'em. The songs off Bandwagonesque still do it for me, there's a bit more crunch and distortion about them. The album sounds like a group on the rise, in a fruitful period where the songs just poured out of them.

I'm a Taurean by the way. Reliable, practical, sensual and independent it says on the web, with an eye for beauty and good with money (ha! My wife would disagree about that last one). Also lazy, stubborn and materialistic. Like, whatever.

Star Sign

Away Again

A quick turn around and I'm off again, with the family this time, down to the Dordogne in South West France for the next couple of weeks, stopping off in the Loire for three nights on the way back. It's looking good.

I'll leave you with a couple of songs to speed us on our way and to keep you happy. Rikki Turner's new band The Hurt released a cracking song a few months back, the moody and epic Berlin. The new one is a cover of Nico's One More Chance and is a stately throb.



The new Hardway Bros ep Pleasure Cry is one of my records of the year thus far. This song, Argonaut, was written specifically by Sean Johnston to be played on the boat at Croatia's Electric Elephant Festival. It starts off like Weatherall's mix of Come Together and then heads off into the sunset putting its arms around you and doing a little dance.



And just so's there's some screaming guitars and drawled vocals here's J Mascis and The Fog covering Teenage Fanclub's Everything Flows with Mike Watt on bass. It then diverts into Pavement's Range Life and The Ruts' In A Rut. Is it any good? Of course it is. It is seven minutes of good.



See you in August.

You Don't Change Or I Don't Notice You Changing

I'm not going to move on from this little Alex Chilton inspired run without mentioning Teenage Fanclub. When Bandwagonesque came out in 1991 music journalists were falling over themselves to praise it and then the really clever ones started saying they were just ripping off Big Star. Which led to a thousand indie kids beating a path to the record shop to buy Big Star records. I always thought they sounded as much like Neil Young and Crazy Horse, or a slightly mellower Scottish Dinosaur Jr as much as Big Star. But anyway, Teenage Fanclub have many wonderful songs. I was going to post God Knows It's True but JC did that recently at the Vinyl Villain so I'll go with Everything Flows from A Catholic Education instead. The ramshackleness of their early days is a joy to behold. In this song they also nailed a pretty specific feeling in the lyrics.

Everything Flows

She Don't Even Care

I was going to post this on Monday but got carried away with Jane Weaver so it's coming up today- plus, as I scraped the ice off the windscreen yesterday morning and tried to unfold my frozen solid gloves, and the car's temperature gauge read 1 degree last night, it would seem we are well and truly into winter. Some media scaremongers are saying there could be eight inches of snow this weekend. And this Teenage Fanclub song, off 1991's Bandwagonesque, is gorgeous.

December

Like A Vir...shhh

This Madonna song caused a bit of a stir in the school yards of the mid-80s when it was released- use of the word 'virgin' (snigger snigger). Teenage Fanclub covered it in 1991, quite fantastically, smothered in acres of beautiful distortion with sleepy vocals. When JC posted it a good while back at The Vinyl Villain it gained a takedown notice from the DMCA. When he re-posted it much later, he would not even name the song for fear of attracting the attention of the internet police. Sneaky, unnamed and hush hush. You ain't seen me right.

Like A Secret

Starsign Creation

Early 90s Creation stalwarts Teenage Fanclub perfected that yearning, aching, whistful type of song, West Coast USA via Bellshill. In 1995 they released a cracking 7" single, Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It which proved they definitely hadn't. Four songs, one from each of their albums, done acoustically. Not acoustic guitars, stools and tastefulness though- acoustic instruments including shakers, flageolet, treble recorder, wheezy organs and lots of nice analogue hum. All four songs are ace, this one is Star Sign (originally from Bandwagonesque).

'Hey, there's a horseshoe on my door

Big deal

And hey, there's a black cat on the floor

Big deal'

Star Sign (acoustic)

Teenage Fanclub 'It's A Bad World'

They say that the sense most closely related to memory is smell, but sound must run it a close second. I posted some Teenage Fanclub a couple of weeks ago, and inevitably one thing led to another, and I ended up listening to their Songs FromNorthern Britain album, for the first time in years. I used to have a copy on cassette which lived in the car. Back in 1998 our son I.T. was diagnosed with a very rare genetic disease, aged 8 months. He needed a bone marrow transplant to give him some chance of life, although BMT we were told was swapping one set of problems for another, though if it worked it would ensure he lived. At the time success rate was 50%, and there was a 20% mortality rate, so it didn't look great. We also had to wait ages for a suitable donor. After spending the summer of 1999 in hospital we didn't get a donor until spring 2000, and we were told they wouldn't transplant after his second birthday (November of 2000), so it was all pretty tense. In September 1999 I went back to work and all the way through to April 2000 I found myself drving home from work with all kinds of thoughts running through my head. It became pretty Pavlovian- I'd get in the car and for the next 40 minutes the same thoughts attacked me, usually what we'd do if the BMT didn't work, how we'd cope, and how on earth we'd go about organising a funeral for a one-year old. I tried to block this out with music. I'd forgotten about this until recently, and Teenage Fanclub's Songs From Northern Britain opened the lids off some jars I thought I'd put on very tightly. The three albums I remember listening to mainly on those car journeys were the Teenage Fanclub one, Primal Scream's XTRMNTR and Sugar's Copper Blue. There's a song off each one I can't listen to now without the exact feelings being triggered and flooding back. Off XTRMNTR it was Keep Your Dreams with a line about 'I believe that when we die our bodies become dust' (you can see where that one was going), Man In the Moon off Copper Blue ('There's a man in the moon, he's a good friend of yours, he's a good friend of mine': not sure why that one hit me), and this song It's A Bad World, which is a beautiful song about it being a bad world. Which at the time it was.

I.T.'s BMT failed but he survived it. He had a second BMT in the summer, with me as a half-match donor, which worked. Which brings me back to memory. I heard It's A Bad World a couple of weeks ago for the first time in years, and it took me straight back instantly. Bizarre. The chords, tune, words, everything were fresh in my mind and triggered the whole thing off. I daren't listen to Keep Your Dreams or Man In the Moon. I think I'd probably dissolve or something.

On top of this I visited Auschwitz on Monday, and while there's no real way a pop song can adequately express what I saw there and what happened there, this song kind of fits. While we there, there was a march, the March of The Living from Auschwitz 1 to Birkenau, celebrating survivors and survival. I don't want this to sound crass but, it is bad world, but we do get through, because people can survive. I'm not sure this is a well thought out response to Auschwitz but there you go.

Sorry if this has been a bit heavy folks, but it's been bubbling away for the last two weeks and I needed to get it off my chest. Tomorrow, some lovely reggae and rockabilly escapism.

06 It's A Bad World.mp3

Teenage Fanclub 'Don't Look Back'

Teenage Fanclub, like Sonic Youth, saddled themselves with a name that looks slightly more daft each decade they survive. They have recorded some great and beautiful songs, this one Don't Look Back being one of them. There is nothing wrong with this song at all, it's perfect- wistful, wise, romantic, great vocals and lovely guitars, melancholic and uplifting. Somewhere I've got a 7" e.p. Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It, where they did acoustic versions of four of their songs, with old organs and shakers and stuff, which I need to go and dig out.

dont-look-back-teenage-fanclub.mp3