Tag: teenage fanclub

demo, Get This!

Love Songs

Craig McAllister

It starts slow and understated, and remains so for 15 spine-tingling minutes. Vintage synths hold down eee-long-gated chords as a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar picks out little arpeggios underneath. A wee chiming bit of pitched percussion tinkles away in the foreground, announcing itself like a far-off ice cream van shimmering in the haze. There’s a faint whiff of 1970s BBC library music, of the sort you might hear while the girl played noughts and crosses with the clown as you waited impatiently for something to happen through the arched window. A beautiful wee melodica pops up now and again, backed by the same guitar arpeggios, this time chiming away on a clean electric guitar. Then a polite banjo, picking out that same melody. By the time the flutes flutter in, your world has turned beige and tan and orange, you’ve styled yourself a side parting and the beginnings of a moustache have appeared on your top lip. An Open University degree beckons…

gerard love lightships Gerard Love. Happy to take a back seat when there’s a clarinet around.

Motorhead it ain’t. It’s called All I Have To Do Is Sit And Wait and it’s from a five year old, buried-in-time and long-since forgotten about project of Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love. Made to accompany a film about a place called Abbey View, it’s designed to be listened to on the bus from Dunfermline to Abbey View, a journey that takes 18 minutes and 43 seconds, the exact length of the original pice of music. You can find out more about it here. Somehow, I only have it in a slightly edited form, but I’m sure you get the idea. Music for a long summers day, or a short bus journey, if the driver put his foot down a wee bit, or skipped a stop or two, he’d have you in Abbey View before the edited version has faded away.

gerardlove

Of course, this was all a precursor to Love’s excellent Lightships album from last year. It’s just that no-one had really heard it until it sneaked out online for 5 minutes then sneaked itself back in again. Grab it quick.

Above is the aforementioned Lightships doing University Avenue from their Fear And Doubt EP.  Sprung from the same DNA as the above track, with added singing, it‘s a beauty. Stop The Clocks, sings Gerry. Aye, stop the clocks indeed. Sit down, relax, play on repeat. And if you haven’t heard Lightships……………….

lighships fear and doubt ep

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Under The Covers With Sarah Cracknell

Craig McAllister

Cor! Eh? You beauty! (Nudge, Nudge). Knowotoimean? (Adopts Sid James cackly wheeze). I mean, ‘oo wouldn’t? Eh? Eh! Ow’s yer father? Eh? Eh? She’d get it! And no mistake! Let’s slip into sumfink more comfortable, shall we?

Yeah, let’s slip into something more comfortable. Like the honeyed tones of La Cracknell and her backing band of boffins and beard strokers tackling some of the finest moments in thinking man’s pop. With mixed results. Saint Etienne annoy me. Not in the way that wasps annoy me. Or paper rustlers in the cinema. Or blue-blooded ‘n bigoted Rangers fans. Or those paranoid green-tinted Cel’ic supporters and their uncouth manager after a decision goes against them. But Saint Etienne get my goat. I can’t put my finger on it or tell you exactly why. There’s no one reason. I’ve got tons of their stuff, vinyl and CD, bought in faithful chronological order as and when released, up to a point around How We Used To Live. I’ve always liked their way with a sixties-inspired piece of London pop and the sly wink of an eye towards the reference points therein. They’re a true ‘record collection’ band, that’s for sure, but with that comes a feeling that they’re just a wee bit too hip for their own good, just a shade too arch for those in the know and slightly smug in the knowledge that no-one is quite like them. Suffering from something of an identity crisis, they’re too ‘indie’ for pop when they themselves’d probably consider themselves too pop even for pop.

That said, they probably wet their collective knickers when asked to produce a version of Kylie covered Nothing Can Stop Us with a coolness that even Sarah would find difficult to cultivate. This was Kylie BH (Before Hot Pants), the Kylie of mid 90s hell, when only Nicky Wire and ironic students paid her any attention. And here she was, covering obscure, non-charting singles built around old Dusty Springfield samples. Of course. Great version, Kylie! Really!

Saint Etienne’s best known cover is surely Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a pre-Cracknell track where they dismantled whiny old Neil Young’s campfire strumalong of angst and re-tooled it as a Soul II Soul-styled shuffler for the dancefloor. But you knew that already. Dig deeper into the Saint Etienne ouvre and you’ll find all manner of cover versions. Available on the rare-as-can-be fanclub-only Boxette, you’ll find their version of David Bowie‘s Absolute Beginners. I saw them do this live, at the Mayfair in Glasgow, with a pre-fame Pulp supporting. I’ll need to dig out the ticket some time, as the band’s name is written as St Etiene, with one ‘n’. Anyway, their version was rubbish that night (no Bowie aping bap-bap-ba-ooos, surely the best bit?) and the studio version, despite the inclusion of the aforementioned bap-bap-ba-ooos, remains kinda rubbish to this day. Some shouty sampled bit or other by the boys whilst Sarah sounds like a Dalek on downers. Not their finest moment. Maybe they should’ve tackled The Jam track of the same name instead.

On the Deluxe Edition of So Tough, you’ll find them having a go at Teenage Fanclub‘s Everything Flows. A staple of TFC’s live set since their first gig, Fannies fans froth at the mouth for its meandering Neil Youngesque solos and melancholic ruminations on life. Saint Etienne, surely having a laugh at our expense, render it practically unlistenable. Now, some folks say that the best cover versions are when the band takes the song and makes it their own (see, for example, Only Love Can Break Your Heart), but when the heart and soul of the track (in this case the insistent, wailing guitars) are replaced by synth washes and a politely skittering drum machine so bland a yoga teacher would have trouble chilling out to them, well, you can imagine….

Going some way to redeem themselves, this year found Saint Etienne taking a shot at the holiest of holies, The Beach Boys‘ Wouldn’t It Be Nice. It‘s not bad – starting acapella before morphing into a soft focus mush of warm harmonies, ticking clocks and half-speed backing tapes, keen scholars of Wilson pop will easily spot the odd nod to the Smile-ear Barnyard amongst the mix. See – they’re too fucking smart for their own good, that Saint Etienne.

I love ’em really. Wrinkles ‘n all…

Cover Versions, entire show, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Alex Chilton

Craig McAllister

Fuck. Just heard the news. This keyboard is awash with tiny tears as I type. It’s always the way, but why do the good guys go first? I can’t believe I’m writing about Alex Chilton in the past tense. His music, especially with Big Star, means as much to me as Them There Beatles, it really does. Whether he was bedroom balladeering or bar-room bawling and balls-out rocking, his songs hit a nerve that jangled all the way to the auditory part of my brain like one of those fancy pants chords he could tease out of his guitar.

If you’re reading this you probably know all about him. Teenage Box Top. Cult hero in coulda been shoulda been Big Star. Producer of The Cramps. Friend and collaborator with fellow enthusiasts/obsessives Teenage Fanclub. All round nice guy, he wrote and recorded some of the best pop songs you’ll hear. Seek out #1 Record or Radio City or 3rd/Sister Lovers for proof. Sometimes bleak, often uplifting, always soulful. But you knew that already. Given our track record for celebrating the artist in death rather than life, Alex Chilton may yet become somewhat ironically a Big Star.

I’m glad I caught Big Star live. Just the once, when they first played Glasgow as part of their initial reunion tour. I stood on the balcony of the QM Union looking down onto the stage where Chilton led his band through non-hit after non-hit after non-hit. The crowd knew every word. So too did Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of The Posies, similarly Teenage Fanclub-like in their obsessiveness about Big Star, and on-stage playing out their own version of Jim’ll Fix It on bass and guitar. Chilton himself played a mean guitar that night. And I mean mean in the economic sense. No frills, no pedals. Just him, a nice warm valve amp and a couple of vintage guitars. What a sound! Often overlooked in the scheme of things, Chilton was a fantastic guitar player – proof? – His version of My Baby Just Cares For Me is still up for grabs via this post.

He could play anything. Anything. Rock. Pop. Stax-inflected southern soul. Doo-wop. Jazz. E-nee-thing. He was a player’s player. A dude. And he once, sorry twice, played the 13th Note in Glasgow with Teenage Fanclub as his backing band. Naturally I found out about this the day after the second show. It was a Tuesday morning and a colleague from work casually mentioned it on the phone. Pre internet days, I’m afraid. Pissed off? You better believe it. Especially as the bootleg sounds amazing. Here‘s the entire show. No artwork. No tracklisting (I’m far too lazy/far too busy to type it out). First track is a rockin’ September Gurls. There’s covers of T-Rex, 60s pop standards and, yep, Stax-inflected southern soul. Get it and remember him this way.

Thanks for the music Alex.

Alex Chilton. December 28th 1950 – March 17th 2010

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

Round Round Get Around He Gets Around

Craig McAllister

Everyone’s favourite spectacle-sporting singer from The Best Band In The World…Ever (that’ll be the Teenage Fanclub) Norman Blake is no stranger to the odd side project or two. As well as playing in parallel with TFC and BMX Bandits until 1991 when, let’s face it, Teenage Fanclub became really really good and so much better than the Bandits, he’s also added his golden chords and vocals to records by The Pastels, Kevin Ayers, the Trashcan Sinatras and Bill Wells. And he plays tonight in Glasgow alongside Gorky’s Euros Childs. A walking side project for hire, the Bellshill Beach Boy knows them all. This, then, is as good a time as any to point you in the direction of a few Norman Blake curios. Tracks that may have slipped underneath your Teenage Fanclub radar but would undoubtedly have become firm favourites by now, were they to have been presented as Teenage Fanclub records.

shoe004

In the mid/late 90s Norman teamed up with future Fannie Francis MacDonald as Frank Blake and in ’96 recorded a one-off limited single for Shoeshine Records. Being a collector of all things Fanclub-related I naturally have a copy. ‘Don’t Let Love Pass You By’ is a slice of classic Blakery – a mid-paced love song with typically tricky jangling chords here and there. It even has the grace to start with the chorus so you know how it goes after the first 20 seconds. ‘Plastic Bag’ is a bit different. It sounds, for want of a better word, ‘light’, as in the total opposite of AC/DC. It passes by pleasantly enough, but those wonky keyboards and acoustic guitars have always been a bit too twee for these ears. Sorry Norman.

norman-dj

Frank Blake also recorded a version of Frank Zappa’s ‘Anyway The Wind Blows‘. I must confess that until recently I had no idea this was a cover version, so I was all over the internet until I could find a version of Zappa’s original. As it turns out, the cover is a fairly faithful reworking of the original. I have a version somewhere of Alex Chilton backed by the TFC live in Glasgow. They do a  grrrrreat version of it. I’ll have to dig that one out for your appraisal sometime  I took this quote from the Shoeshine Records website…

“I hadn’t heard any Frank Zappa and I was wondering what he sounded like. I thought his most musical thing would be his first thing so I got the first Mothers Of Invention LP. I started playing through it and ‘Anyway The Wind Blows’ was the really obvious pop song. I thought it was really good and would be fun to do. Again, it was all done pretty quickly and just sort of worked out on the spot because that’s the way Frank Blake like to work.”

Lastly, tucked away at the very end of a 2001 Shoeshine Records sampler I have ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’ by Frank ‘Jackson’ Blake. There are no sleevenotes with the sampler and I can find no information about this song/band line-up at all. I can only assume this is Blake, MacDonald and Belle & Sebastian’s Stevie Jackson, but I may be wrong. In any case, this track is a belter. It sounds like something the Everly Brothers would have done some time in 1961. In fact, ‘You Don’t Have To Cry‘ sounds so good it has to be a cover. Right? I think it’s a Gene Clark song. Yeah? It sure sounds like it. Someone help me out here.

teenagefanclubflyer

I’ve had this picture for ages and was looking for any excuse to put it up here. Cracker, eh?

Cover Versions, entire show, Hard-to-find

Hang On! Acoustic Fanclub!

Craig McAllister

Last weekend was Teenage Fanclub weekend. A triple treat, a trio of tip-top turns, a heroes welcome for a hatrick of homecoming shows. And any other number of alliterative delights. Each show was different and each show was great for any number of reasons. I’ve mentioned the ‘Electric Chestnuts’ show below, so we’ll focus on the other 2 for now.

Sunday night’s setlist

Sunday night was the ‘Acoustic Chestnuts’ night and it was fantastic. Instruments were swapped, harmonies were finely honed (especially Francis- who knew drummers could sing?) and there were big smiles all round. In contrast to the sound problems of Saturday night, at some points the vocals were so good it was like listening to the Everly Brothers. Personal highlights were the songs from the Grand Prix era- ‘Don’t Look Back’, ‘Going Places’ and ‘Some People Try To Fuck With You’, which sounded like Astrud Gilberto on Buckfast.

Monday night’s setlist

Monday night was the one I was looking most forward to – the b-sides and hardly-ever-played night. Teenage Fanclub did not disappoint. The show was heavy on ‘A Catholic Education’ -era Fanclub (‘Heavy Metal’! ”Every Picture I Paint’! Eternal Light’!) and the much-neglected ‘Thirteen’ album – ‘Escher‘! ‘Gene Clark’!, ‘Ret Live Dead’!, which meant lots of distortion pedals, fewer backing vocals and the odd cocked-up start (poke about on YouTube for Norman 3). It was like a Fannies gig from way back in the day and it was extra magic, the best of the three without a doubt. Brendan O’Hare got plucked Springsteen-style from the crowd to sing ‘The Ballad Of John & Yoko’ and no-one’s mentioned this yet, but Norman’s McCartney backing vocals were pretty immense. Raymond’s frazzled playing on ‘Born Under A Good Sign’ made it sound like Love, circa 1967. They even played ‘Broken’, before coming back on for the genuinely not-planned double-whammy of ‘Sparky’s Dream’ and ‘Alcoholiday’, although had they also played ‘God Knows It’s True’ and/or ‘Everybody’s Fool’ (and given the albums they were drawing from I think they could’ve) and maybe even ‘I Heard You Looking’, if that’s not being too greedy, this gig would have been gig of the decade. Still, Best Gig of 2008 is good enough for now.  

Norman 3 (nights)

Anyway, lots of talk over at the Teenage Fanclub Message Boards about how the band should release an acoustic album, or a b-sides album, or a live album, or indeed, any kind of album at all. But an Acoustic Fanclub album would be an excellent idea. In the meantime, you could do worse than make do with these wee beauties. Firstly, recorded for ‘The White Sessions’ on French radio on the 11th April 1995….

Don’t Look Back
Say No
Star Sign
I’ll Make It Clear
Sparky’s Dream
Have You Ever Seen The Rain
Mellow Doubt

(click here to download as one complete session)

‘The White Sessions’ is a long running French radio show where bands go in and record acoustic sessions. Teenage Fanclub used their time to promote Grand Prix. The same radio station also do ‘The Black Sessions’ where the band play a longer, usually electric set in front of a small invited audience. Teenage Fanclub also did a Black Session in 1993 but I’ve never heard it. It may be that some of the tracks below are taken from it, I don’t know. An official-looking CD from the show was on sale up until yesterday on eBay and I was quite excited. But when the bidding started approaching £30 I got scared off. I couldn’t justify that sort of money for something which will probably turn up online soon. Fingers crossed. If you were the lucky bidder, how about sending me a copy?!

Also taken from my personal vaults (!) of badly-labelled Teenage Fanclub radio sessions, curios and oddities, here’s a random selection of acoustic-based Teenage Fanclub. I’m unclear as to where most of these came from. Radio sessions? I don’t know. But not b-sides. No siree. Rare Fanclub. Cos the Teenage Fanclub are a rare band, a rare band indeed. Download and enjoy!

a piano-led Hang On

Four Strong Winds

He’d Be A Diamond

Sparky’s Dream

Tears Are Cool

The Shadows (Mark Radcliffe session)