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34 Years Ago: Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque
How Nirvana’s new labelmates made Spin’s best album of 1991
The click of an amp being switched on. A brief burst of feedback. Then a strummed chord on a Telecaster through a string of effects pedals, topped with an unexpectedly sweet voice, singing maybe my favorite opening couplet of the 1990s.
“She wears denim wherever she goes
Says she’s gonna get some records by the Status Quo, oh yeah”
That’s the near-perfect opening of the near-perfect “The Concept,” the lead-off track of Bandwagonesque by Glasgow, Scotland’s Teenage Fanclub. Just like their new labelmates Nirvana, whose Nevermind had come out just a few weeks before, it was their second album (sort of…but we’ll get to that) and their first for a major label (sort of…but we’ll get to that). For a lot of people my age, Nevermind is the album that defines the sound of the winter of 1991/92 and the promises and pitfalls of the “alternative rock” era it ushered in. But others of us (raises hand) were more keyed into Bandwagonesque, its influences, and the musical direction it pointed to for the rest of the decade. One of the people in that second circle turned out to be Kurt Cobain. But let’s start at the beginning.
