Are Teenage Fanclub to blame for Starsailor? (or TF vs. FT)

And what do define as "classic rock" anyway? Even bands like the Jesus & Mary Chain, while punk in their attitude in the early 80s, still worshipped such "classic rock dinosaurs" as the Beach Boys and the Ronettes. Neither of those bands are particularly "punk".

did you find a copy of "against health and efficiency," nick? reynolds discusses this fascination with the 60s as a central element of indie culture.

His point being: as had we ("we") all in those days, and how strange/funny it was that those who came after took the year-zero-ism so SERIOUSLY.

To answer ND's question: what abt the Earache rosta? Indie yet Purple fans? MOSH01 surely predates TFC?

They haven't? I don't know where you grew up, but I got laughed at, laughed at from my teenage hardcore band days right up to the uber-indie garagepunk scene, for liking stuff like the The Ronettes and the Shangri-Las.

Anyway, to continue the thread, I guess what is being said is that a lot of the early indie (where indie diverged from punk) stuff involved the inventive mixing of classic influences into punk ethos- e.g. Husker Du discovering the Byrds and turning from Hardcore to Indie, the JAMC mixing the feedback explosions of the Velvets, Stooges and Pistols with the bubblegum sugarpop of the Ronettes and the Beach Boys.

I don't know who was the first band to go from inventive *mixing* of old with new, to go to regurgitating classic rock and calling it indie, which seems to be the trouble with indie today, whether it be the lumpen Dadrock of Starsailor or the hopelessly 60s retro twee Belle and Sebastian.

*That* is the problem- not simply having retro influences- but sliding deliberately into the past rather than mixing past influences to come up with something new.

I'm sure I remember an interview with TFC (several of whose records I like, btw) in The Wire (!!!) - and the Wire guy was really struggling for some angle w/which he could sell TFC to Wire readers, and eventually said that they were so classicist they were kind of avant- garde, or something. Not very convincing.

1) Duran Duran was not pap. Thank you. OK, that album was an overproduced mess compared to the self titled album or Rio, but it's hardly Dire Straits.

2) If your argument is that soulless chart pap is the inspiration for the most mind-blowing of indie music, where is the reaction against utter dreck like Britney and N'Sync? You really think that the hopelessly retro twee of B&S and that ilk is any better? (I refuse to even call things like Starsailor or the Strokes indie.)

I don't know where I'm going with this argument, so I'll stop it.

So, in my mind at least, that was the first break. Many, many indie musicians of the mid-to-late eighties were completely obsessive about staying true to a very nebulous definition of punk, though (tales of super-fey-jangle era Primal Scream wandering around after their shows asking "Was that punk rock?"; see "Are You Scared To Get Happy" fanzine for extensive further use of the term). The 'definition' (never, or rarely, actually defined) would probably have included: a fierce independence; an accent placed on *creating* something of "our own"; a suspicion of musical competence; a dislike of guitar solos; a disparagement of the chart pop of the time; also, crucially, something called 'attitude' which was a whole bundle of things including a certain snottiness married to a vaguely leftish bent and a loathing of racism / sexism.

As punk moved further into the past, and a generation of kids grew up to whom the Pistols were a detail of history every bit as much as the Byrds were, such definitions were forgotten. There are those who'd argue that they weren't relevant because the new generation didn't feel they had to kid themselves that they were the carriers of the flame for punk.

Of course, that kind of 'attitude' rhetoric (which Norman Blake was surely very familiar with in his Boy Hairdressers days) tends to make a lot more sense to a 17 year old than to a 23 year old. A whole lot of people, I imagine, grew out of it.

I never liked Johnny Marr anyway, not even when I liked the Smiths a lot. Axe heroes I can live without. And the TFC struck me as a very ordinary sort of rock group indeed.

Surely it's clear that Nick D didn't 'mean' what he said about 'pap'?

But unlike him (?), I like both 'Walk Of Life' and 'The Reflex'.

I think that Nick is on to something - he's right, at some level. He's talking not just about the existence of 'influence' (see other thread) but about changed 'attitudes' and changed contexts.

i live for axe heroes.

I believe the leap to the heavy, Neil Youngish sound of the TFC's first few releases came not from their reverence for artists like Big Star and Neil Young but as a result of a number of high profile Glasgow gigs in 86/87 by US bands like Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth, Redd Kross, Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney and others. I'm not suggesting that they did not appreciate such heaviosity before (Duglas Stewart of the BMX Bandits used to advertise his fandom of bands like Throbbing Gristle) but what they were doing pre-TFC was quite theatrical and rather contrived. These US bands gave us a long-overdue dose of well-rehearsed (slightly taboo at the time), old-school RAWK music and we loved them for it.

So the Teenage Fanclub were more directly influenced by the high profile US indie bands of the mid-80s, rather than by the oft-cited Big Star etc.

i don't doubt the huge dinosaur influence on the fannies or on any of the other creation bands of that era. but let us not forget that psychocandy was released well before dinosaur ever toured glasgow. i'd give JMC some of that credit.

surprised to find myself enjoying teenage fanclub

'the concept', anyway, hopefully the rest too

file under great bands i didn't get first as i found them shallow in the beginning and loved when i realised how great they were in marrying melody and noise. i am thinking especially of bandwagonesque of course.

how would you compare it to a more orthodox noise band like this one?

Art Is Over - The Official ILM Track-By-Track GEROGERIGEGEGE Listening Thread

TFC mean almost nothing to me after 1995

I dont understand when they could have made 3 or 4 Bandwagonesques....why turn the guitars down?