Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque
posted Mar 25, 09:18 PM by Rick WebbFile under: Overseas , Reunions
Rocktourist UK Correspendent Aug Stone reports from the aforementioned ATP Concert: Teenage Fanclub, Bandwagonesque.
Right then, the set from the first half of the teenage fanclub gig this evening:
1. The Concept
2. Satan
3. December
4. What You Do To Me
5. I Don’t Know
6. Star Sign
7. Metal Baby
8. Pet Rock
9. Sidewinder
10. Alcoholiday
11. Guiding Star
12. Is This Music?
(joke)
hmm…well in the spirit of rick webb (who ever so kindly gave us the tickets) we got DRUNK. & perhaps fittingly the extra ticket went to a friend of mine from high school as, & we’ll get to this later, this album is forever linked with. (jay, my friend from high school, reminded me this evening, talking about shows we saw at toad’s place, where i saw teenage fanclub with uncle tupelo march 2, 1992 on the ‘bandwagonesque’ tour, that for the belly/helium show we saw in ’93 that the other band on the bill was radiohead, pre-‘creep’. i’ll open the debate here – helium vs. radiohead? not to give away my answer, but i would never approach thom yorke at the bar and say “let me take you away from all of this”...)
okay, back to this evening’s show. they came non-chalantly, but with continuing thunderous applause, out onto stage, mumbling some things i couldn’t quite understand. though, like women, i’ve never met a glaswegian i could understand ; ) and into ‘the concept’ WHICH WAS AWESOME. took you right back. though i must admit i forgot and started clapping in the break before they went back into the protracted ending. and there was a third guitarist onstage that i didn’t quite understand either. he played on less than half the songs but was still there and he and another man approached the mic (with no guitars) during ‘metal baby’ for some amusing handclaps. ‘satan’ COMPLETELY ROCKED! one of the highlights of the night. and funnily enough i hadn’t heard the album in quite some time so i wasn’t quite sure what was coming next after ‘december’. though the magic of this song was somewhat diminished by a short, extremely drunken man shouting along in my ear “she don’t even care, but i – would – die…for her love”. for ‘what you do to me’ one started to realize that perhaps the ‘simplicity’ of these songs was very much of its time and that this was more than a bit of a nostalgia thing. it was 4 regularly dressed, normal looking aging dudes playing some simple tunes on stage. jay and i started to reminisce about high school. but, mid-sentence even, when ‘star sign’ came on we shut the hell up and for the entire duration of that song i had chills, not just in my chest where the soul is said to be, but from head to toe. ‘alcoholiday’ was great as expected but i had completely forgotten about ‘guiding star’, which brought the tears a-brimming on the edge of my eyelids. and had one so incredibly excited, to the point of not even wanting them to do it with the thought of how overcome one would be, that they were gonna do ‘is this music?’. which they announced they had never played live before (i think, who knows what they said, i thought they had done it in ’92). and there was some glaswegian banter, uncaught of course, about who was the best-ever teenage fanclub drummer. which they then introduced ‘the drumulator’ (?), their drum machine, who nevertheless missed the opening cue and they had to start again. and i must admit, it was a bit lackluster.
they came on for basically a second set which was for the most part great, but full of things i only half-recognized. except for the ending ‘everything flows’, which was FVCKING AMAZING!!!!!! and then one more encore (i forget what it was, but it wasn’t a cover of alex chilton’s ‘free again’ like they did in ’92 and i was hoping they’d do again tonight.)
i can’t give much more of a review than this, for you see so much of this evening was so incredibly personal to me. ‘bandwagonesque’ along with, though moreso than, ‘god fodder’ (this album is more dec. 1991) sums up that time so perfectly for me. the last month or so before i knew what it was like to be broken-hearted. of being 15 and having to find a ride to the show and once there being introduced to a world you finally felt at home in. but more than anything, of course, it reminds me of a girl. and not the girl who broke my heart.
kate, wherever you are this evening (and so strange that i have no idea, esp. with all the useless information regarding people who meant nothing to me), i have missed you dearly in my life, though perhaps not thought of you in some time. but, as this year has especially proven to me, these things never leave you, and come back both (sometimes simultaneously) to buoy one’s spirit or drag one down in a chokehold. and the saddest thing of all is that you never knew that i felt the same way too, for i chose instead to let that first tetanus-tinged strain of heartache overpower me and when i realized it, it was all too late. though i’m smart enough now to have learned that regret is most likely pointless unless it reminds you never to let that happen again. as one feels that life is simply waves of sadness, with only crests of joy, that crash into one another before dissipating back into the deep, dark unknown.
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