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Live Review: Teenage Fanclub, San Francisco, CA, Oct. 12, 2010

If somebody had figured out the calendar right in the beginning, we would now be about a month into what should be known as “The Embers,” the four-month stretch that ends the year. September, October, November and December have the best family holidays and some of the nicest weather—not to mention the World Series, college and pro football and the annual rebirth of hockey and basketball. Like the dying embers of an autumn campfire, this is the finest part of the year. Maybe renaming this month “Octember” would seal the deal.

This October, in San Francisco, brings a rare opportunity to reflect on the MAGNET years: roughly, the last two decades’ worth of indie rockers who found a pulpit in the never-less-than-honest magazine founded by Eric T. Miller, still in college, and a few cronies back in 1993. Acts championed by MAGNET set to play the Bay Area this month include the Flaming Lips, the Clean, Guided By Voices, Hoodoo Gurus, Teenage Fanclub and the Apples In Stereo. MAGNET’s grizzled West Coast veteran Jud Cost will be there for all six shows, pencil tucked into the brim of his rumpled fedora with all-access laminates dangling from his neck, ready to fire off reports from the trenches.

Night Four: Teenage Fanclub

For anyone who loves “melodic pop music with an edge,” it bordered on nirvana to experience Teenage Fanclub at its best in San Francisco. (And yes, it’s true, Kurt Cobain also loved these guys.) That’s how the Scottish band’s Norman Blake described its sound to me a few months ago, as he turned thumbs-down on the commonly used “power pop” classification, thus linking arms with a small army of the disaffected that also includes fellow travelers the Posies, Tommy Keene and Velvet Crush.

Looking more like stocks-and-shares salesmen or country veterinarians than rock icons, Blake and fellow guitarist Raymond McGinley and bassist Gerry Love—each of whom writes his fair share of TFC’s material—packed the Great American Music Hall to the rafters with the faithful after the venue was switched at the last minute from the much larger Fillmore Auditorium. TFC’s 75-minute set, tight as a python’s death-grip on a goat, had fans stomping on the floor and singing along football-style like it was a vintage set by Slade. The soaring three-part harmonies and stirring melodies of Teenage Fanclub—frequently compared to Big Star, the Byrds and the Beach Boys—were the most exhilarating thing heard in these parts since the halcyon days of the Cyril Jordan/Chris Wilson-era Flamin’ Groovies.

It was all business with the Fanclub. Just the basic red, yellow and blue stage-lighting and an auxiliary crew that included a drummer and someone on keyboards and extra guitar. No anecdotes about opening tours for R.E.M., Radiohead or Nirvana or of palling around with the Vaselines back when in Glasgow. Just an endless stream of those perfectly realized, breathtaking songs, each one with the lead line sung by the man who wrote it and drawn from a back catalog that includes highly lauded albums such as 1991’s Bandwagonesque, 1995’s Grand Prix and 1997’s Songs From Northern Britain. From the occasional grunge moments of 1993’s Thirteen to the sunshine pop excursions of 2002’s Howdy, each of the band’s nine albums, including the recent and very fine Shadows (Merge), rates at least a very-good-plus, a standard of excellence met by very few.

Guitar solos barely exist in the rhythm guitar-dominated live show of Teenage Fanclub. Instead, you’ll find an occasional, unadorned 16-bar lead break, tastefully executed a la George Harrison, by either McGinley or Blake. A few songs drizzled some backstage Flying Burrito Bros.-style pedal-steel guitar like backwoods barbecue sauce.

Now that the lads are all pushing 50, it adds an extra layer of irony to the franchise tag they chose more than 20 years ago, at a time when they hadn’t a clue this would turn into a career. “We thought there were a lot of pretentious band names around at that time,” said Blake. “So we liked the idea of having something that was the antithesis of that. Something that was completely dumb and meaningless.” And, he added, they’ve never regretted their choice. When a European border guard recently asked their driver the name of the band he was transporting, the official remarked, “Teenage? These guys look like a bunch of pensioners.”

Maybe grey hair is making the customary inroads, but the Fanclub still sings with the zeal of adolescent choirboys and writes songs like nobody else. And when they wrapped things up with Blake’s “The Concept,” the lead-off batter from Bandwagonesque, everybody in the house joined in, all but drowning out the onstage vocals. This hackle-raising anthem has always been an alchemical blend of joy and sadness, and just when it looks like the song has run out of gas, it’s kick-started back into full bloom for a stratosphere-scraping finale.

It’s plain to see, more than two decades down the road, Teenage Fanclub is a timeless outfit that has survived the trendy days and occasional excesses of the grunge and Britpop scenes, stayed true to its vision and has come out the other side of the tunnel all the better for it. It may seem odd to say at this time in life, but the best days of these grizzled professionals may still be in front of them.

—Jud Cost

2 replies on “Live Review: Teenage Fanclub, San Francisco, CA, Oct. 12, 2010”

Those ” auxiliary crew ” have been in the band for a bit . You’d think a grizzlled veteran would have done the research . Brillant show though I lurved it

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