Teenage Fan Club vs. Wedding Present

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That is a surprise. No thread on TFC at ILM up to now.

I have got a tape of 1991 (what an amazing year with "Loveless", "Gish", "Nevermind" and the two albums on my tape) with Wedding Present's "Seamonsters" and TFC's "Bandwagonesque". The Weddo side has always been my favourite from the beginning on. But when relistening to it it seems to have lost its charme. David Gedge's voice and guitar play wore out.

Back in 1991 I found TFC too Big Star-like, too poppy, too soft, too light. Recently I have started listening to the TFC side again. And I must say that by now I prefer it to "Seamonsters". The indie pop of TFC has got a huge noise component which I did not realise before. Quite psychedelic and addictive. And 1995's "Grand Prix" which is more melodious and listener-friendly is definitely another master piece by TFC. What do you think? The sound of which of the two bands has aged better?

― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oops. I think they are called Teenage Fanclub, n'est-ce pas?

― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The Wedding PResent because they did us a favor and broke up instead of degenerating.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'd argue that they did a fair bit of degenerating before breaking up. It was downhill all the way post Seamonsters.

― RickyT, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Both dire beyond words.

― Dr. C, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

TFC nice but uninspiring, but they rarely knocked the needle over "oo this is nice", did they? Wedding Present was my ideal for indie pop. Favourite Dress >sob< i r weed

― Alan at home, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

bandwagonesque is better than anything wedding present did but i love cinerama and think any of their albums tops it. new cinerama cd 'the hustle' soon, woo hoo!

― keith, Tuesday, 6 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Teenage Fanclub win because they actually managed to record something (anything!) that wasn't a big steaming pile of shite.

Although actually, I was a big fan of Ukranian folk music. Even so, TFC it is...

― emil.y, Wednesday, 7 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

David Gedge has said that the Wedding Present haven't split up - they are just on hold for a while. But, anyone who has seen Cinerama over the past few years will have witnessed with every tour the guitars getting louder and less emphasis placed on the keyboards. They've been dropping WP songs into the sets during the past two tours (such as Suck, Brassneck and Crawl). He still uses that godlike guitar sound he discovered around Seamonsters time.

When Seamonsters got reissued earlier this year David was asked if the WP wanted to play live to promote it. He was interested but the rest of the them weren't so enthusiastic at the time.

Oh well. The two Cinerama albums are great and really worth checking out.

I love TFC as well - I'd go for Bandwagonesque and Howdy.

― gd, Wednesday, 7 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yaagh you people slagging WP don't "Love Music"

definitely they are a classic band. sure gedge's voice in the beginning was maybe an acquired taste, he did learn to sing eventually. I dunno, maybe if you have experienced a breakup of a long term relationship you just can't relate. Great mopey music, especially seamonsters. I don't think albini's production sounds dated, and "Dalliance" et al still opack a whallop. In general they had a pretty distinct sound. Also, I think the last WP album, Satrunalia, is pretty underrated. As for TF, I think they have always been good, but less distinct, their albums are pleasant but not memorable. I can't remember any individual tracks from the last 3 for ex.

― g, Wednesday, 7 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I lost interest after their debut albums>>>both of which I liked>>

― , Thursday, 8 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I started a thread called Are Teenage Fanclub to blame for Starsailor? once, alex.

Well I lost interest in Teenage Fanclub after Bandwagonesque, when they started settling into just making comfy music. To lose interest in the Wedding Present after 'George Best' just seems perverse. They clearly didn't lose it till the later 12x7" singles. If you don't like what Gedge does with words (ie. not skirt around things) then fine, I suppose. But sometimes I think it's not that other lyricists don't want to take his approach, it's that they can't. It's not just about the lyrics, either. Seamonsters.

― Nick, Thursday, 8 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Teenage Fanclub lost me after Bandwagonesque, too, but they got me back by surprise. I had listened to both Thirteen and Grand Prix and found both to be particularly uninspired, and only gave Songs from Northern Britain a cursory listen. I was in a record store over a year later, and I heard this album on the overhead which was extremely gorgeous popmusik, and discovered that I hadn't given it enough of a chance. Both SFNB and Howdy have amazing pop sensibility, even if they aren't deep. I still like Bandwagonesque from an ear candy perspective, though.

― Sean Carruthers, Friday, 9 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm with doctor c. They both sux0r. To me they both represent thee ultimate in dreary reactionary brit guitar drudgery. "Classic" songwriting skillz0r - (see also wonder stuff) my a$$. I can vaguely remember the sort of sound they made, but not a single one of their songs. I still remember putting a PA system in at this indie disco @ newcastle university, where about every third rekord was by thee teen-age phan klub. 0ne ov theeeee most wretched nights ov my entire life - hey man, we''ve heard "freak scene" and are going to replikate it FOREVER. Then the DJ played "lithium" and crystal clear spring water flowed thru thee kanyonz ov yr m!|\|d and all that hippy guffx0r.

Wedding Present OFF! Throbbing Gristle ON!

x0x0

― Norman Phay, Friday, 9 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You know, I initially decided I had no opinion on this, as both were relevant formative experiences from me and I could no more decide between them than I could decide between, say, chocolate and raspberries.

But then I thought about it, and: Seamonsters. There's something about it, a perfect match between the feeling it contains and the way those feelings are expressed. Perhaps this is a chicken- and-egg phenomenon, given that I learned to play guitar along with records like this, but the sound of Seamonsters seems exactly in tune, down to a physical level, with precisely the sort of giddy frustrated misanthropy that comes through in Gedge's voice and lyrics -- this feeling that's at once hugely bitter but also hugely amused, as in "Fuck it -- I'm just going to double over and rip at these guitar octaves until they start to buzz and wail." This is a bad explanation, I think, but this is one of those records that was very basic to me, one that I think I'd have to write hundreds of pages on in order to work out exactly what it is that I get out of it.

Bandwagonesque was also very basic to me, but not in quite as complex a sense. Bandwagonesque is just a pop record; Seamonsters is a pop record gone fascinatingly bad.

― Nitsuh, Friday, 9 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one year passes...

sorry to revive my own thread. that's dud, i know but i don't care.

weird that so many of you people use the word pop for wedding present's music. i'd never associate pop to wp. if there was an indie band that rawked, it was wp. the raw noisy guitars, gedge's raspy voice, come on that can't be pop. that's a further development (in the tradition) of dirty rockn' roll. and please not that discussion on rockist (album oriented) etc. again.

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Thursday, 23 October 2003 18:38 (twenty-one years ago)

It's the lyrical content, alex.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 23 October 2003 20:44 (twenty-one years ago)

clearly wedding present. they're great, especially bizarro (lost it after their debut? come on...). brassneck is one of the best singles of all time, in my opinion...i love the attack sound on Gedge's guitar...
teenage fanclub? just not very interesting...

― paulhw (paulhw), Thursday, 23 October 2003 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)

TFC ably built a career on Big Star's melodies, harmonies and wiftfullness, and some of TFC's early stuff brings its own energy and inspiration and exhiliration. All I ever heard in the WP was something missing. (personality?)

― Aaron A., Thursday, 23 October 2003 21:15 (twenty-one years ago)

He's a maths graduate. Maths graduate should be allowed to make records too.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 23 October 2003 21:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Gedge really is a mathematics graduate! Why did I not know this?

I've had a soft spot for both TWP and TFC at various points, but it seems so damn long since either of them were truly on top of their game. I might have to put George Best up against A Catholic Education just now to answer the question though. There can't be a lot in it...

― Nag! Nag! Nag! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Friday, 24 October 2003 07:24 (twenty-one years ago)

I love them both, you can't make me choose

― chris (chris), Friday, 24 October 2003 08:02 (twenty-one years ago)

When Teenage Fanclub became good, Wedding Present were already history. In 1991, Teenage Fanclub were just slightly better - underproduced, but with some good melodies buried behind the noise.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 24 October 2003 08:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Neither was as good as they were supposed to have been. TFC had some winners, though.

― Sarah Pedal (call mr. lee), Friday, 24 October 2003 16:34 (twenty-one years ago)

haha this thread is like TS: cold porridge vs gruel

― geeta (geeta), Saturday, 25 October 2003 08:27 (twenty-one years ago)

:-( But the Weddoes rule!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 25 October 2003 17:44 (twenty-one years ago)

My memories of both bands involve violence. At a Wedding Present benefit gig in 87-ish a group of Leeds Utd hools started lashing out indiscriminately in the mosh pit. The band played on until one got on stage and started on them. At a TFC gig much later the drummer got into a blazing row with s.o. in the audience, other bad members had to hold him back starting on the punter.

― stevo (stevo), Sunday, 26 October 2003 09:37 (twenty-one years ago)

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