Teenage Fanclub for a Saturday – recorded at The International in Manchester on July 12, 1991.
Teenage Fanclub emerged from the Glasgow C86 scene. They formed following the break-up of The Boy Hairdressers, a band featuring Raymond McGinley, Norman Blake and Francis Macdonald. Following a brief period in which Blake was a member of BMX Bandits, the three former bandmates joined with Gerard Love to form Teenage Fanclub.
Originally a noisy and chaotic band, their first album A Catholic Education, released in 1990 on Paperhouse, is largely atypical of their later sound, with the possible exception of Everything Flows. Mostly written by Blake and McGinley, the record included several songs originally intended for The Boy Hairdressers. After recording his drum parts, Macdonald left the band to resume his university studies. They re-recorded several songs with Macdonald’s replacement, Brendan O’Hare, because they weren’t satisfied with the results of the original recording sessions, and because they wanted to involve O’Hare in the album.
In August 2018, the band issued new versions of their five Creation Records era albums which had been remastered at Abbey Road Studios. To celebrate the reissues, the band also announced Songs from Teenage Fanclub: The Creation Records Years, a four-city UK tour during late October to mid-November in which they would play three nights each in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and London, with each night’s setlist covering different periods of the Creation-era discography, and featuring former drummers Brendan O’Hare and Paul Quinn participating, in which both drummers would respectively perform the albums and B-sides they had originally recorded. These gigs would be Gerard Love’s last with the group, as he separated from the band due to differences in opinion on their future touring plans, later revealed to be a reluctance to fly frequently around the world for live performances.
After Love’s departure, Euros Childs joined the band on keyboards and vocals, with Dave McGowan switching over to bass and vocals. A new album with this line-up, titled Endless Arcade, was recorded in early and late 2019. It was originally planned for release in October 2020 to coincide with a UK and Europe tour the following November and December. However, the tour was rescheduled for April and May 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the album’s release date would eventually be set for 5 March 2021. The album release date and tour would end up being rescheduled once again, with Endless Arcade coming out on 30 April 2021 and the tour dates postponed to September 2021 and April and May 2022.
Their sound is reminiscent of Californian bands like the Beach Boys and the Byrds, and their seventies counterparts Big Star. Teenage Fanclub are influenced by Big Star and Orange Juice. They performed a cover of Orange Juice’s “Rip It Up” with Edwyn Collins. In December 2010, at the ATP Bowlie 2 music festival, they performed as the backing band for Edwyn Collins.
Their musical style has been described as alternative rock, power pop, indie rock, indie pop, jangle pop, noise pop, pop-punk, and grunge (early).
Teenage Fanclub were regularly name-checked in interviews by Kurt Cobain, who described them as “the best band in the world”. The band would support Nirvana on tour in the summer of 1992. Juliana Hatfield covered the song “Cells” on her 2012 self-titled album.
Here they are in 1991 just as everything was taking off.
In case you forgot.
(Thanks Wikipedia)
