Andrew Weatherall 1963-2020

The last time I saw Primal Scream live was in Sheffield when Rachel was about three weeks pregnant (Primal Scream, not bad for a first gig Martha) and it was a bit of a disaster. Rachel’s mate had failed to read the ticket properly and we ended going in just as the encores started. I spent the evening feeling paranoid that some pisshead would barge into Rach and the Scream were a bit lumpy and static compared to previous gigs going back three decades.

Afterwards, over a pint (or orange juice depending on your present state of propagation) I felt a bit bad and conceded that it was possibly my reception of the music that was floored rather than what was coming off the stage. Except the tepid version of Loaded. That was unforgivable.

One my most treasured memories of JLH was playing Loaded back to back with I'm Losing More.. at the very first night and the whole floor just totally got into it. I remember looking at John Kertland, both of us grinning and thinking 'fucking hell, we got this'. As a result we played it at every night we did. Not the coolest record at the time, but we never cared about cool, we cared about fucking genius.

How can anyone recreate a record as perfect as Loaded? It still sounds like it was made tomorrow. It still sounds fresh, sexy and vital. Deadly serious and devilishly fun. It’s still sounds like teenage car journeys and Anita Cash dancing in slow motion in dry ice in 1992. It’s still Just Want to Dance the Night Away by the Mavericks for perpetually cool and the seekers of thrills.  It still makes me get up and dance. If Loaded was Andrew Weatherall’s only artistic contribution he’d always be an icon. But he was so much more.

Like all indie kids, the first time I heard the name Andrew Weatherall it was in the credits of Screamadelica. I thought he was a producer, someone who added a bit of shine and radio friendly-ness to a record. I had no idea he actually created the music himself. The second time I heard his name he was being described as DJing at an Acid House party wearing a Wonder Stuff t-shirt. This was something I could relate too and this was the secret of Andrew Weatherall’s genius.

I remember reading a magazine, probably the NME, with Norman Cook, Pete Tong and Paul Oakenfold on the cover and in the article they were basically saying dance music was the future, guitar music was shit and anyone who listened to it was an idiot. Andrew Weatherall came from a club culture but had an incredible ear and adoration for music. Not dance music, not indie music, music full stop. It was an incredible gift. His ability to blend genres, blend ideas, to take little bits and make something beautiful and new was talismanic and inspiring as fuck.

It was Weatherall who reviewed the second Primal Scream LP and banged on and on about how great the ballads where when everyone else had written them off. It was him who made the remix of Soon by MBV, and a record that by rights shouldn't even exist. The idea you could create a club banger from a shoegaze band on the same label as The Jazz Butcher and The Loft? Incredible.

But this was Andrew Weatherall. Constantly and consistently (he never stopped, he recently reworked a single by indie band The Orielles) pushing boundaries, reaching for the stars and seeing how far he could go and what he could get away with. He will, of course, be remembered for making music that made clubs full of people go mental and his impeccable taste. I’ll always remember him for making dance music you can actually sit down and listen to and inviting skinny awkward indie kids to the party.

Come together as one, I cant think of a more perfect epitaph.  

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of the Just Joans

For those of you who don’t know (or own an Arctic Monkeys record) Motherwell’s Just Joan’s are indiepop royalty. Named after the Daily Record agony Aunt, they write tender, razor sharp songs about actual real life, often incorrectly called Miserablist when they are in fact Realist. They are lead by brother and sister Katie and David Pope (kind of a White Lightening Stripes) and their shows are funny and true and as a punter you feel part of the Just Joans family. People look to their music to get a feel of what’s going on in Scotland the same way people looked to Public Enemy to see what was happening in Detroit. It’s thanks to them a whole generation proudly drinks Buckfast from a bottle and knows what an ‘empty’ is. Their songs are delivered with tongues placed so steadfastly in cheek and with great fists full of salt, its easy to forget what talented songwriters they actually are. Indeed, in If You Don’t Pull and What Do We Do Now? they have two bona fide, 24ct anthems. Underestimate them at your peril.

It was somewhat jarring to realise that last time the postman delivered a Just Joans LP, it was realised on Wee Pop! records. To me. Wee Pop was a talisman, an icon, of the high tide mark, the very peak of indiepop when it seemed there was a new record, band or label to get excited about every week, life revolved around getting drunk with your pop heroes in tiny rooms above pubs and the summers were as endless as the possibilities. Nostalgia? Most certainly, but its hard not to hark back to a time before brexit and Morrissey turning out to be an absolute prick. As MJ Hibbett but it so succinctly recently, we really are ten years older and the band we loved really are dead. Do we actually need the Just Joans?

Well on evidence of this LP, the answer is a resounding yes. ‘Confessions’ is the record they have been aching to make. I despise the word ‘mature’ (it makes me think of moldy cellars) but it really does fit like a glove. Everything has gone up around ten notches since the last record. The singing is confident rather than bashful, the songwriting bristles with verve and ability. Take the chorus of Wee Guys (Bobby’s got a punctured lung) which absolutely soars and is so strong I had to check they hadn’t nicked it. See also the beauty of the strings on Dear Diary, I Died Again Today which shine the song up like a diamond. The lyrics are incredible too. When Nietzche Calls is an arty goth 101 but no less beautiful for it. The heart wrenching The Older I Get, The More I Don’t Know is the song M*rriss*y wishes he wrote. The swooning The One I Loathe The Least is gorgeous as it is wise (The record stores have closed their doors/the cinema shut down/and every bus is calling us/to pack up and leave town).

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of Just Joans will hopefully make the band realise just how talented they are. Just Joans have produced a proper grown up record that bares repeated listening and should find it’s place amongst the annals of Caledonian pop music. If Stuart Murdoch isn't jealous of this record, he really should be.

Martha, Manchester Gorilla 10/11/19

“This is a very, very, very old song” says JC introducing Standing Where It All Began, and in the terms of tonight’s crowd I am a very, very, very old man.

Martha could have been made for me. Their soft, oddly comforting Durham accents are the same as my nan's, they share my dad's politics and my mum's level headedness. I first heard the name on the lips of Ace Bushy Striptease, a localish and rather wonderful noise pop band who struggled to describe just how wonderful they were. I had crush on them after the first play of their EP (self released on Discount Horse records) and by the time I found out that 1978, Smiling Politely and Gretna Green were about poet/activist Audre Lorde and the 1915 Quintinshill rail disaster, respectively, it was a full blown love affair. I started to notice Martha stickers on guitars and flight cases. Every band seemed to adore them. Not just because their music is incredible but because they are genuinely warm, funny, unassuming people. It wasn't long before they were my favourites too.

Gorilla in Manchester is big, and cavernous and it's possible to keep you’re coat on and not be cold. Not quite as big as Heaven in London, a 1200 capacity venue Martha filled the night before, but certainly big enough. For someone who once witnessed Martha entertain 20 citizens of Leamington Spa in a matinee show, it's nothing short of a thrill so them in such a lofty position. Bloody hell, they deserve it.

After wonderfully entertaining sets from Wormboys (a winning mix of Throwing Muses and early PJ Harvey. Halt That Rattle is song worthy of your attention) and Orchards (a No Doubt-esque troupe of good vibes that I confidently predict will be flooring them on the main stage at Indietracks very soon) Martha slink on stage to a heroes welcome. And really it's the crowd that make tonight so special.

Tonight is a celebration of the misfit and the marginalised. Beside me someone wearing a full beard, full make up, flashing plastic animal horns and a massive smile is having the best time ever. Two girls at the end of the crush barrier kissing. All around me people leap around smiling and singing the words as if their life depended it on it. I've not seen a bands audience so dedicated to fun since the Flaming Lips in the late 90's. It's an occasion this. A jubilee of what makes us unique and what we have in common. To a generation, Martha are their Smiths or Manics. A band to love and believe in. If you go on Insta you'll see an array of tattoo's in Martha's honour. They mean it. And what's warming is they treat following Martha like following a local football team away, anyone is invited and the bigger the following the better.

Not so long ago people at pop shows felt very woke and weirdly worthy in welcoming LGBT amongst their numbers but tonight all that is ,wonderfully, turned on it's head and I feel oddly proud that this middle aged dad has been accepted as a fellow Martha fan. In a time of division, political awfulness and nervous unrest, Martha and Martha fans shine like a beacon. It's truly a joy to go out and have such a fun time and a testament to the tired yet ultimately true adage that we are stronger together.

The Understudies-If Destroyed True

“When I was singing and writing this and workin’ with her, I was visualizing all the people of my age group; I’m singing to them. I’m saying, ‘Here I am now, how are you? How’s your relationship going — did you get through it all? Wasn’t the ’70’s a drag (laughter)? Here we are, let’s try to make the ’80s good, y’know?’ It’s not out of our control. I still believe in love, I still believe in peace, I still believe in positive thinking. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

And suddenly, just like Lennon recording Just Like Starting Over, it's ten years later. The people who found each other on Myspace have grown up. Hair a little thinner, waist a little thicker, we've moved from crumbling flats to crumbling houses with a little garden. Our jobs and commutes grow more stressful. The indiepop songs about librarians are now DIY pop songs about identity politics. We have cats and kids to look after and our heroes have revealed themselves as racists and sex pests.The daily horror show of politics, which grows more ludicrous and utterly hopeless by the minute, has taken over the social media which was once full of book and record recommendations. Our self deprecating bonhomie has become polite panic. Modern life brings us closer to our nearest but further away from each other. These are nervous times.

So what to believe in? Well, love of course. And music. Our desire for new music may dim, but our need for good music does not. And friends, our patient wait for a record dedicated to those too old for The Courteeners and too proud for the Shinnne On festival is finally over.

If Destroyed True, the Understudies second LP is a perfectly times masterpiece. An indiepop Unknown Pleasures that instead of following obvious paths carves it's own way, leaving the listener mapless and optionless but to listen to and try to pursue. It's a proper album this, a record not to chuck on whilst doing the ironing but to sit down and absorb with the attention afforded a subtitled film.

Millennial Generational tension is covered calmly and deftly in Sweet Tea (Dance halls fall into the sea/I feel it coming/make a pot of sweet tea/and watch the city capsize) and Helsinki (Please don't make me take another selfie), the latter coming across like Radiohead's Planet Telex for the forty something, and in the dark and satisfying Grousebeat (It's like Phil Collins writing songs about the homeless/I'm not a rich pop star/just a casual observer).

But where there is darkness there is light. Precious Heart and the almost startlingly intimate New Dress are no messing about straight up love songs, giving lie to the Motown notion that songs about love must be about the rush of new romance or the lows of a relationship coming apart. These songs, cleverly and correctly, offer the view that the calm of the centre of a relationship given time to blossom and bloom is to be to be cherished. You can't write songs like this without living them first.

And it's not only Brian Bryden's songs that have matured into something wonderful. The band (fairly recently and hurriedly assembled on début LP Let Desire Guide Your Hand) seem to have finally, FINALLY, realised how good they are and absolutely reek of verve and confidence. Thom Allott's songs are also a welcome addition and fit in effortlessly. Past Addresses is as calm as the ocean and as troubled as a storm, and if you squint a bit sounds like a Tindersticks song. Slow Train is a beautiful and fitting closer but it's the tensely wired Wolves which really pushes the band to new boundaries, it sounds like Delicatessen and The Veils and I almost guarantee you it's their favourite to play live.

I once predicted this LP (then unrecorded) would be album of the year. I was wrong. It turns out it's an LP of a generation. With melodies to die for and lyrics to tattoo on your arm, it's a masterpiece and proof (if needed) that faith in hope in music is seldom misplaced. If Destroyed True makes the Understudies the most mis-monikered band since Extreme and Eternal. They've lit the torch of quality which others must follow. Clutch this record to your heart. 

://theunderstudiesuk.bandcamp.com/

Secret Histories Revealed

I first came in contact with Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History in my early twenties when a woman I had had an exotic, turbulent and ultimately doomed (aren't they all?) affair with came bounding, years after speaking to each other, up to me in the middle of town and excitedly and passionately recommended Tartt's book. Our fling consisted of little more than discussing literature and music, and kissing.

It's clear, in retrospect, we were two lonely people and used each other to cement some form some sort of identity; it was exciting to find someone who shared the same ideals and intellectual leanings. It wasn't love, but a bond of mutual aspiration and common interest. I wrote down the title in my journal, we pecked cheeks, and parted. I didn't see her again for five years.

She was correct of course, The Secret History almost instantly became my favourite novel. A book about a group of rich college kids who study Greek under the inspiring and beguiling Julian Marrow and murder a class mate is maybe an odd favourite. The fact it contains no likeable characters and no female ones of any kind of depth makes it an even more curious choice. But I knew it was special when started to have dreams, not in the aesthetic or timbre, but in the mood of the book. I reread it at least once a year, an intellectual comfort blanket.

It's human nature that when we fall so baldy for a work of art that we want to know more about it, but The Secret History left slim and scarce pickings. Tartt, easily as gifted as Salinger, yet just as reclusive and interview prone left little clues. Then as if a gift from the gods for Tarttophiles came an Esquire article by author Lili Anolik about Bennington college in the 80's. It's incredibly well researched and it's parallels chime like a bell.

Bennington itself is eerily similar to Tartt's fictional Hampden college, based in Vermont it's a geographical match, even to the detail of both having a graveyard running to it's side. Brix Smith, a Bennington drop out who would later go on to play in The Fall describes it as like something out of a child’s fairy tale. It was so isolated and so beautiful, and it was green and surrounded by mountains. At the center of campus was a building—tall, white, very grand, with columns and a bell clock—called Commons. If you stood in front of Commons, you’d see, if you looked to one side, an old graveyard, and to the other side, a meadow. And then, if you looked straight ahead, a long, lush, rolling lawn lined by lovely, New England-y clapboard houses, creating this visual corridor so that your eye was drawn to the end of it, where the earth suddenly fell away, just—poof—vanished. Not really, of course, but it looked as if it did. We called it “the End of the World.” Mists would roll in there at night, these swirling mists so thick you couldn’t see your hand when you held it up to your face. The rumor was that the campus was the site of an ancient Native American burial ground. Supposedly it was one of the few spots on earth where all four winds met at the same time. And there was something sacred about it, something haunted.

Even the winter break where Richard lives in a warehouse and almost dies is taken from Bennington (Bennington had something called NRT, Non-Resident Term. The school couldn’t afford to heat itself during the winter and so it shut down. You went out into the world and got an internship or job).

What's perhaps most jarring are the parallels between the novels characters and actual Bennington people. From the privileged party animals (You’d be shocked that this Neanderthal-looking dude sunbathing by a keg was actually, one day, going to inherit the Benson & Hedges fortune) to the most learned.

Julian Marrow is quite heavily based on classics professor Claude Fredericks (When I went to interview with Claude, his first question was “Have you ever had a job?” I said, “No.” And he said, “Good.” And then he said, “Have you ever been to a football game?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Good.”)

The detail is incredible, Julian's classroom is difficult to locate (Claude’s office...was hard to find. It was in Commons, at the top of this sort of secret staircase that was outside the building and led only to his office.) and bedecked with flowers (There’d be these exquisite flowers, Japanese flowers—I don’t know how or where he got them—in a vase, and everything was polished, beautiful. You’d sit across from him, and he’d serve you tea, and you really felt like you were in the inner sanctum.) , the anteroom where Julian was 'miraculously able to convey four-course meals' out of (You went to Claude’s office for lunch, and out would come this incredible food, and you didn’t know how he’d prepared it. You didn’t see it, you didn’t smell it, and then there it was—a perfect soup, a perfect quiche. He was a bit magical).
Even the Mont-blanc pen of Bunny and Henry's argument pops up (The idea of Claude having a big nouveau-riche pile of Montblancs was really too much.) (No, the Montblancs were true. But it was a piece of accidentalia that Donna seized on and used in a pointed way.)

Fredericks' words are quoted and used as Julian's. 'Julian took both Henry's hands into his own 'You should only, ever, do what is necessary' (Claude was my advisor when I was a student at Bennington. I had an appointment with him, and I was waiting outside his office. The door opened and out stepped this beautiful young man with curly blond hair. And the first thing I heard Claude say was “Not, do only what is necessary. Only do what is necessary.”)
(what Henry said about Julian—“I loved him more than anyone in the world”—was true of how I felt about Claude. He was the single greatest influence on my life.)

Other characters crop up too. (The Secret History isn’t so much a work of fiction. It’s a work of thinly veiled reality—a roman à clef. When it came out, Claude and Matt and I got endless calls. Everybody was saying, “Oh, did you know Donna just wrote a book about Claude and you all? And Claude is Julian and Matt is Bunny and you’re Henry.”)

Bunny is based on Matt Jacobsen (I called my mother and said, “I’ve been caricatured in a book, and my character gets killed.” And she said, “No, no. No one would ever kill you, not even in print, no.” Then she read the book and said, “That’s you all right.” I wore wire-rimmed glasses like Bunny. I had dyslexia—that’s what they called it in the 70s, anyway—like Bunny. And, like Bunny, I was an extremely affected young man. I’d make broad, questionable statements. One day in the dining hall I was gawking at some girl and said, “Reminds me of the way Diana’s painted on the ceiling of my father’s club,” and that line found its way into Donna’s book. And I’d invite people to lunch and then realize I didn’t have any money, something dear old Bunny does. I was kind of a horrible bounder, though in my case it was never intentional. A funny thing. Bunny was actually what everyone called Margaret, Paul’s first girlfriend—the girlfriend before Donna, a cranberry heiress. Some folks thought it odd that my character’s name should’ve been taken from Paul’s old flame. But I always thought the name came from the critic Edmund Wilson. Bunny was his nickname, too.) and Henry on Todd O'Neal ( Henry’s apartment was like my apartment. His eye problems, the chip in his tooth. I smoked Lucky Strikes. I wore suspenders and glasses. I’d gone to a Benedictine monastery for high school, where I learned Latin, and I taught myself Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Sanskrit. I was very deep into the study of Plato and Plotinus, as Henry is described as being. I did go on a trip with Matt, and I did end up having to pay for it because his father didn’t give him much money and he was a bit of a sponge, though he and I always had fun together.)

And what about Donna Tartt, the most illusive of all characters? Well, we learn like Richard her parents were both gas station attendants (father) and secretary (mother). We learn she quoted herself: 'I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone’s life when character is fixed forever; for me, it was that first fall term I spent at Hampden' Tartt writes in The Secret History. And in her commencement speech: 'There is a time in everyone’s youth when character is fixed forever; for me, and I believe for most of us here, our Bennington years were that time.'

What I find most fascinating about the piece is Tartt's reinvention of herself. There is a picture from her school year book, long hair, cute dress, shy smile and one in Bennington in man's waistcoat and tie (Donna started wearing those mannish-cut blazers. She looked like a Mini-Me when she was hanging out with us. Black loafers, khaki pants—boys’ pants, not girls’—J. Press–type button-down, necktie, blue blazer with brass buttons, and hair in this funky little asexual bob. She looked like she came straight out of an English university. She and Paul were like Oxonian homosexuals or something. I once asked him, “What kind of relationship do you have?” And he said, “Well, that’s very funny, because she wants me to call her ‘my lad.’ ”) a cigarette burns in her fingers and she stares through the camera lens.

College is where self discovery and self image are cemented. It's where you decide what and who you are. You can play a few chords? You are a musician. You do a fanzine? You are a writer. It's where ideas germinate and plans blossom. Sometimes, sometimes, they bloom into the best novel of a generation.



Now, who wants to tell me who Judy Poovey is based on?

All quotes in italics are taken from Lili Anolik's incredible article for Esquirehttps://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a27434009/bennington-college-oral-history-bret-easton-ellisI thank Ms.Anolik and apologise for pilfering her work so liberally.

Do you believe in magic?

A few weeks ago I was having a few pints with some friends when I got into a bit of an argument. In my defence, it was exactly a week before Xmas, the anniversary of my fathers death, so Yule is always a bad time for me mental health wise. Not that its much of an excuse. The row centred on the Harry Potter books. I made some drunk old man arsehole comment along the lines of its wrong to read kids books when you’ve not read all the grown up ones. My pal Paloma, quite rightly, shot me down to ribbons. There is, Paloma told me, magic in the books. And what’s wrong with a bit of magic in a world where magic is in such scant supply? I agreed and went home feeling a bit of a tit, but it got me thinking.

The magic for me in art is its relatablity. It needs to be sourced from the real. The first book I really fell for was a Gumbles Yard by John Rowe Townsend. I must have been all of nine years old. It was read out by our teacher, Mrs. Watson, who I had a walloping crush on. Mr. Watson was an archaeologist like Indiana Jones. He unearthed a load of woolly mammoth bones not far from school, so I knew I had no chance bit it didn’t stop me daydreaming. The book left a stamp on younger me. I remember little of the characters of the book and little of the plot, but I can still recall the sense of dark broody panic and sense of loss in the abandoned kids. I really loved the heaviness of it all. It wasn’t wizards or pirates or even footballers in books that got nine year old me going, it was two scared kids and the sense of dread hanging over them like dirty great cloud. I could never really relate to wizards as a kid, but to kids scared of coming home and finding their lost ones gone? Certainly.

The next big book was probably Catcher in the Rye, read out in class by a wonderful woman called Miss Herbert when I was about fourteen. She insisted on reading it a New Yoik accent ('it was real swaaaanky') and Salingers words buried themselves in to the very core of my mind and bones. I loved it. I took it home and read it all over the weekend. Next class Miss Herbert took me to one side afterwards and inquired to why I looked bored when in the last one I was sat open mouthed in rapture. I confessed I had finished the book under my own steam and asked if there were any more books like it I could read. I saw a little light turn on behind her eyes. Finally she had inspired one of the little sods. She wrote me a list of books (one of them was To Esme with Love and Squalor, still my favourite) with a barely concealed grin. It was, to put it lightly, an interesting time in my life. Around the same time I discovered Salinger I found girls no longer annoying but incredible and a source of deep fascination. The period took intellectualism and sexiness in females and entwined them as tight as stitches in a woollen jumper. From then on I would find intelligent and well read women almost unbearably sexy. Its a feeling I'm yet to lose.

Looking back, my tastes in art have barely wavered from Gumbles Yard. The art I like has a dark underbelly, a sense of sadness. An arm waiting to grab me from reality and plunge me somewhere deeper, somewhere scarier. Its there in the books of Donna Tartt and Richard Yates, in the music of Joy Division, The Smiths and the sixties girl group sound. In the paintings of John Waterhouse and photography of Francesca Woodman. Art to me is reality and reality is often sad. But magic? Yes I’ve seen magic. But not in tales of boy wizards but in the days on a cusp a seasons change. In the pint that turns the night into an adventure. In the last hungry kiss before the walk home. In holding hands with someone who really understands you. In drunk arguments that lead you to write. Magic seems an all encompassing word, but its not, its beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Finding someone to share the magic with is unfeignedly fantastic and beautiful. Hogwarts and all.

Bellshill to Brum:TFC and me

When I was 14 year old trainee indie kid, my favourite thing to do was go to Birmingham to record shop with my mate Trig. I say record shopping, our paper round money only stretched as far as the train ticket and a lowly lunch (always, I seem to remember, a can of fizzy Vimto and a packet of salt and vinegar Disco's crisps), but we did like to look at the records and the cute girls in stripy tights and Mega City Four t-shirts. Though we didn't discuss it, we both hoped to run in to a pop star whilst in the big city, one of Ned's Atomic Dustbin perhaps, or the holy of holies Miles Hunt out of the Wonder Stuff.*

           One day, in Birmingham's Virgin Megastore, I was flicking through the 7” singles while Trig rifled through the CD's downstairs. Across from me, on the other side of the rack was Norman from Teenage Fanclub. I knew it was him from reading the NME with religious zeal. He had the trademark long centre parting and Lennon specs and was wearing a dufflecoat and singing along loudly to the Neil Young track blaring out of the PA.**I stood awestruck. It was if George Best or Ghandi was in your local Co Op. I stood and watched him for a while, desperately trying to find something to say to him, but my bottle went so I joined Trig to look at the PWEI shorts upstairs. Later while drinking pop and eating crisps in Victoria Square, freezing in our long sleeve t-shirts (much to the chagrin of our mothers but vital to show off our indie loyalties) I didn't mention the sighting to Trig. It was a little because I knew he would be annoyed I didn't grab him immediately (he would have certainly had the courage to say hello), a little because I thought he wouldn't believe me but mostly because I wanted the moment, the little bit of magic, to be my own.

                                                                              At that point the only Teenage Fanclub music I actually owned was a cassette compilation which included What You Do To Me. I decided this situation needed rectifying post-haste. I felt I owed it to my new pal Norman to listen to his records properly. So, I consulted a lad in the year above called Kev Walder. As well as being Shropshire's premier expert on Depeche Mode, he was very friendly and happy to assist and advise aspiring indie kids. He told my I needed to get a copy of Bandwagonesque, which had a pink cover and and money bag on the front. I saved my paper round money and bought the cassette from Rainbow Records. It was love at first listen.

                                   Cut to a few later, it's a deliciously hot day at the Phoenix festival. Teenage Fanclub are on-stage and my pal Sam and me are sat towards the back being gamely chatted up by two girls from Newcastle. “You know what I do if I'm enjoying a band?” asks Norman “I like to wave my shoe at them. Can you wave shoes at me?” With that the view to the stage is blocked by hundreds of items of footwear being held aloft. Norman lets go a cheeky grin and tunes up. It's around this time it occurs to me I'm doing one of my favourite bands an injustice by sitting down at the back and need to experience them from the front. I make my excuses to the girls and Sam (who look at me like I've lost leave of my senses) and slalom my way through the people sat crossed legged, avoiding knocking paper cupped pints over, to go to the front. As walk, the sun pops up above the stage and the opening chords of Alcoholiday ring out. This is, by far, is my favourite Fannies song by a mile at this stage and it's the only time I've seen them do it live. There's something magical about it, being young, a little drunk, the mix of sunshine and those lazy, woozy chords. It's some kind of magic and remains one of my all time favourite live music moments.

Meanwhile, the Fannies release increasingly wonderful records and something called 'the internet' gets invented. I'm quite lucky, my dad is the secretary of his union and as such is responsible for sending 'emails' and before we know it we have a brand spanking new computer and a dial up modem. Whilst having all the information in the world at our finger tips is cool, it's actually more fun downloading music by the armful. Soon I'm looking up bands 'websites' and stumble across fans forums or message boards. Interestingly, Teenage Fanclub have their own message board. I decide to enquire within.

                       This was the period when message boards were at their absolute pomp. The TFC board was crammed with knowledgeable, friendly, funny people from all across the world. It's impossible to gauge how many bands and records I got into through the recommendations of this little on-line gang, everyone of them just as childishly daft about music as me. What I really loved was the sense of community, discussions went outside music and about everything from the mighty to the mundane. It seems daft now but I really felt amongst friends. When one of my favourite posters, a guy called TomTom died it really did effect me. I felt like I had lost a pal and in many ways I had. He was a great man, a total hardcore TFC fan who was funny and daft and lovely. I knew more about him, his loves, his politics, who he and his wife supported in the football and sometimes what he was having for his tea. The shock of has passing was real, as real as it could be for someone you had never met, and the place never really felt the same again.

                                                                        Sadly, the place went a bit Lord of the Flies. The was (probably still is) Guest setting where people could post anonymously which started off fine, some of the funniest posts were by 'Guesty' but soon it started getting a bit nasty and went out of control. Arguments would rage about football and, being Celtic and Rangers fans, religion and things started to get pretty horrible, with bullying and long ranting drunk abusive arguments being the norm. After a young man we shall call Milla took his own life due to on-line bullying*** is seemed prudent to join the real world again. I'd still pop in occasionally. There was a new LP called Man-Made out and I joined the discussion about how great it was. Someone had asked why the CD came with a card slip case. “Simple” replied Siobhan's Dad “It's for taking to the gig and getting signed”

When the Man-Made tour hit Birmingham I knew I was going to get the card signed. There was that kind of magic in the air. The train was full of excited people off to different shows. My gig was at the Academy 2, and almost comically small venue for such a great band. They didn't let us down though. The gig was incredible, all the favourites off all the albums (no Alcoholiday mind) and the crowd was small (Birmingham can be funny like that) but loyal and everyone had a great time. Afterwards I spotted Norman and marched up with my slip case and Sharpie and even managed a quick conversation while he signed, some gibberish about loving how 'dry' the new record sounded. “Oh” he said raising an eyebrow “thanks” and at that moment Gerry Love walked past and despite clearly wanting to be somewhere else was a darling and signed it too. I practically floated back to New Street Station.

The are bands we listen to when we are happy, those we listen to when we are sad and those we reach out for when something in life goes horribly wrong. There are bands we listen to that make us feel young, bands we miss and bands we hope make another record. To me, Teenage Fanclub are unique in so much they are band I've grown up and grown old with. Whatever has happened in my life, good and bad, big and small, they have been quietly in the back ground sound tracking it all. When it was announced Gerry Love was leaving the group I was quite saddened. Teenage Fanclub are like the sun and the lamp posts outside your front door. They are something you take for granted will always be there. 

          Happily, the bands aren’t splitting entirely and Gerry did leave us with some wonderful goodbye gifts in the form of the Creation era records being lavishly and wonderfully remastered. When I went to buy the first two (I could only afford to buy two a month , not because I was on paper round money but because I'm a dad now) it was at the end of the first proper summer in decades. I was still deciding which two to get on the way to the record shop when I bump into Kev Walder, demob happy from being let off work early and heading for the nearest beer garden. I tell him I'm off into town to get the new Teenage Fanclub record. “bloody hell” he says shaking his head with grin “nothing changes does it?” And he's right. It really doesn't.

*We never did meet Miles Hunt Birmingham but bizarrely bumped into him Shrewsbury when I was old enough to know better. In a weird twist, Mile's brother (the guy doing the Spinal Tap story in the Welcome to the Cheap Seats video) owns a local record shop.

**Baring in mind I didn't know Neil Young from Neil from the Young Ones at the time, I may have embellished that bit. But it was definitely something male and late 60's/early70's

***It should be pointed out that it was mainly bullying on another site though it a) certainly didn't help and b) makes it no less tragic