We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Marquee Moon
Year: 1977
. . .
OK, let’s set the scene, as this is a day I’ve been mythologizing for nearly 45 years, though the exact date is lost to those 45 years. What I do know is that it’s late summer or early Autumn of 1978, and I’m just a couple few months shy of turning sixteen.
And it’s the day that I bought my first two punk rock albums.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2665: Television – “See No Evil”
Album: Reality Check
Year: 2008
. . .
I assume that if the French synth-pop band The Teenagers are remembered at all, it’s probably for “Homecoming,” their incredibly crude update of “Summer Loving,” or their star-fucking wishsong, “Starlett Johansson,” both of which might have made Frankie Lymon consider suing from the afterlife for stealing his moniker.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2664: The Teenagers – “Feeling Better”
Album: Endless Arcade
Year: 2021
. . .
And whoops! It’s twenty years later. Weird how that happens. And Teenage Fanclub is much closer to being called Oldage Fanclub, but then again so am I. That said, 2021’s Endless Arcade is only the fourth (or fifth, if you count their 2002 collaboration w/ Jad Fair, Words of Hope and Wisdom) album they’d released since 2000’s Howdy!, which was released when Bill Clinton was president, in case you want context as to how long ago. During those twenty years, they did what many legacy artists did: took their damn sweet time between records, so we had 2005’s Man Made, 2010’s Shadows and 2016’s Here, which were all fine and none of which had any songs that I can remember by name right now.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2663: Teenage Fanclub – “Home”
Album: Howdy!
Year: 2000
. . .
One of the things about having three songwriters in a band is that it triples your chances at having somebody coming up with an utterly killer opening track during each album cycle. So if it was Raymond McGinley doing it with Grand Prix’s opener “About You,” and Norman Blake bringing it even harder with Songs From Northern Britain’s “Start Again,” then on 2000’s Howdy!, it was Gerald Love’s turn with the ridiculously sun-kissed “I Need Direction.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2662: Teenage Fanclub – “I Need Direction”
B-side, 1997
. . .
Your heart has been broken again, it’s broken
This b-side, which is on the shortlist of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Indiepop Division, is also as obscure as they come, having only ever been released as a b-side to 1997’s “Ain’t That Enough” single, but I swear on a stack of Bandwagonesque reissues that they never recorded anything quite so exquisitely beautiful.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2661: Teenage Fanclub – “Broken”
Album: Songs From Northern Britain
Year: 1997
. . .
In 1997, I was still wishing that Teenage Fanclub would somehow revert to the fuzz and grit than lived under the pretty songs on Bandwagonesque, and therefore definitely underrated Songs From Northern Britain, which ignored my wishes and kept the songs clean and tight. And so if I sniffed it at at the time, 25 years later, it sounds pretty great, and even back then I knew that the opening track, Norman Blake’s “Start Again” was an all-time great Teenage Fanclub song.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2660: Teenage Fanclub – “Start Again”
Album: Grand Prix
Year: 1995
. . .
My other favorite song from Grand Prix was also written by Raymond McGinley, who was on quite a roll in the mid-1990s, if you agree with me that “on a roll” equals “writing the songs that Jim likes the most.” Which, of course, is totally up to you. But he also wrote my favorite b-side from this era, “My Life,” from the “Neil Jung” single, for what it’s worth.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2659: Teenage Fanclub – “Verisimilitude”
Album: Grand Prix
Year: 1995
. . .
A couple of things happened to Teenage Fanclub between 1993’s Thirteen and 1995’s Grand Prix. First off, drummer Brendan O’Hare left, to be replaced by Paul Quinn, and secondly, Norman Blake grew his hair out and a pretty thick beard, perhaps to make sure that nobody would mistake them for a Brit-pop band, despite the fact that no less a personage than Noel Gallagher was on record as well and truly loving them.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2658: Teenage Fanclub – “About You”
Album: Thirteen (Bonus Track)
Year: 1993
. . .
The bonus tracks that kinda sorta redeemed the U.S. CD version were a weird and varied bunch: two songs by soon-to-depart drummer Brendan O’Hare, including the soft-rocking near-classic “Golden Glades;” covers of Phil Ochs and the Flying Burrito Brothers and right there in the middle, the Raymond McGinley’s devastating “Weird Horses,” which starts with a lonely acoustic guitar and an even lonelier vocal performance.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2657: Teenage Fanclub – “Weird Horses”
Album: Thirteen
Year: 1993
. . .
The thirteenth and final song on Teenage Fanclub’s album 1993 album Thirteen, which was named either of the number of songs on the album — there was a lot of that going on in 1993, cf. Paul Westerberg’s 14 Songs — or the epochal Big Star song, was Gerald Love’s tribute song, “Gene Clark.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2656: Teenage Fanclub – “Gene Clark”