One Week // One Band

Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I don’t know: Morrissey and sexuality

getoutofmycity — Fri, 24 May 2013 03:12:00 +0200

What is it about Morrissey that inspires this in people of both genders?

The reason I ask is because after over thirty years in the public eye, we’re still discussing and debating Morrissey’s sexual orientation. Johnny Marr said in a 1986 interview that none of The Smiths were gay, but Morrissey had both girlfriends and male lovers in his past, but was celibate. Morrissey said he was celibate and non-sexual for the majority of the 1980s and 1990s. In 1997, he admitted he had been in a two-year relationship with a person whom he loved which had ended. In the mid 2000s after interviews and the content of Ringleader of the Tormentors, it seemed like Morrissey was hinting that he was in fact having sex.

It obviously doesn’t matter to me if Morrissey is celibate or having sex. I have no fantasies of kissing a Morrissey poster, but I also know how I feel when I hear his lyrics. When his voice reaches such great heights on “I Won’t Share You,” who wouldn’t hope that someone would feel that way about them? No matter his sexual orientation, he inspires feelings that go beyond heteronormativity. Straight men cry and launch themselves on a stage to be close to him; they clamor and scuffle to get the shirts that he throws into the crowd.

In all of the discussion about his sexuality in the press, his comments about gender are what I always focus on.

In a Rolling Stone article from 1984 he said: “The sexes have been too easily defined. People are so rigidly locked into these two little categories. I don’t know anybody who is absolutely, exclusively heterosexual. It limits people’s potential in so many areas. I think we should slap down these barriers.”

Perhaps that’s what Morrissey provides us. He’s a human that’s dodging all of the trappings of gender and opening our collective conscience to a different way for us to approach our lives. As a person who has a very strong animus in the Jungian sense, that’s probably another reason I’m drawn to him. I’m hopelessly drawn to sensitivity in men because it’s my blind spot; I have a harshness that cannot be denied. He is also, above all else, an individualist, which is something that attracts both genders. He doesn’t care about being perceived as dour or weird, and he certainly has no problem speaking his mind. As he said in a Guardian interview in 1997, “…if you know yourself, you can avoid damaging or hurtful situations. Isn’t that what life’s all about, making yourself comfortable and protecting yourself?”

I was transfixed when I saw Bloc Party last summer. Kele Okereke was dressed like he was about to play a pick-up basketball game, singing “Letter to My Son” and I was filled with a sense of “this feels so familiar.” The guitar riff is very reminiscent of Johnny Marr, and the sad song about a man unprepared for fatherhood could easily have been by The Smiths. Okereke had been compared to Morrissey in that he often dodged questions about his sexuality until finally coming out in 2010.

As Okereke wailed, “You look like you could start a hundred wars,” I wasn’t concerned with his sexual orientation. I was too entrenched in the song’s narrative and my own feelings – that’s what leads to these grand debates about artists’ sexuality. Their sexual orientation really doesn’t matter in the end – humans will project their fantasies onto individuals who inspire them to feel something.

Just as Morrissey said of sex, “It’s what most people are motivated by, whether they’re involved in it or not.”

This is a full video of the first solo Morrissey show on Dec 22,...

getoutofmycity — Thu, 23 May 2013 23:33:35 +0200

This is a full video of the first solo Morrissey show on Dec 22, 1988. It was meant to be a The Smiths farewell show, with Mike Joyce, Andy Rourke, and Craig Gannon backing him. A lot of fans made the stage. Make sure you watch this before it gets yanked!

Johnny Marr talks about a possible The Smiths reunion.

getoutofmycity — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:47:03 +0200

Johnny Marr talks about a possible The Smiths reunion.

We are never ever ever getting back together: The Smiths, reunions, and knowing when to walk away

getoutofmycity — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:27:00 +0200

When Neutral Milk Hotel announced they were reuniting for a tour, I didn’t lose my mind with joy.

It’s not that I’m not excited about the reunion, because I am. I think it’s just that I have a complete aversion to reunion tours now. Perhaps I’m taking a very crunchy, romantic self-help approach to my view on this, but they call it a break-up because it’s broken? And I know Neutral Milk Hotel didn’t technically “break up” as it were, but still. I can’t tell you how much money and time I’ve spent traveling and going to shows that bands have touted as THE FINAL TOUR SEE US NOW OR SEE US NEVER AGAIN WE’RE CONSIDERING MASS SUICIDE AT THE FINAL DATE BECAUSE THAT’S HOW SERIOUS THIS IS. I then buy the DVDs of the final mass suicide show (spoiler alert: nobody died), to then have the band reunite years later to pompous fanfare. I find it maddening, yet I still feel myself drawn to see the reunion because they’re one of my favorite bands or artists. We as fans still reward them even though they pulled the classic ex-boyfriend/girlfriend move of when you decide you’re feeling good enough to get back out there and start seeing someone new, they call or text and suddenly you’re emotionally compromised. And I’m left thinking: but I thought you left me with my memories and the music?

That’s why I’m comforted by the fact that a The Smiths reunion is almost impossible. Both Morrissey and Johnny Marr have gone on record saying just as much. The Smiths had a very acrimonious split and have kept the rancor alive in the nearly 30 years after the split, which mirrors the tumultuous way they dealt with each other during their tenure.

When the lead singer of your group dismisses you in a manner that was a plot on Sex in the City, it’s bad. Andy Rourke’s heroin addiction led to his dismissal from the band by a note in 1986. In Rourke’s own words from an interview in Mojo magazine: “Morrissey left a little postcard on the windscreen of my car, like a parking ticket. It said, ‘Andy — you have left The Smiths. Goodbye and good luck, Morrissey.’” The dismissal lasted only weeks (the band did retain the replacement bassist Craig Gannon) but it left a scar.

“After I’d stopped crying,” Rourke said in the same interview, “I phoned Johnny and said, What’s going on? He was like, ‘Er… you’d better come round.’ Johnny was really good — he helped me through it, he was very supportive — but he had to abide by the judge’s decision. That was the low point of my life, really. As far as I knew, it was permanent.”

A year after that dispute, the band was dealing with managerial problems and Johnny Marr was dealing with substance abuse. Rumors flew about Morrissey being unhappy with Marr’s projects with other musicians and Marr being unhappy with Morrissey’s musical direction. Marr took a sabbatical from the band in June 1987 and left permanently in July. Rough Trade confirmed the split in August. Their final record, Stangeways Here We Come, was released in September.

“I’ve got lots of photos and loads of video footage of us making that album,” Marr said. “You can see us talking and having a laugh. But towards the end of the band, when we weren’t doing music, we weren’t able to be comfortable with each other any more. I was unhappy, and I didn’t want to just harbour all this unhappiness and sulk and run away. But I was into making that record. And I love almost every track on that album.”

Two years after the split, a royalties dispute between Morrissey/Marr and Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce emerged. Rourke and Joyce alleged that they were treated as session musicians because both Morrissey and Marr each received 40 percent of the band’s royalties, leaving only 10 percent each for the other band members. Rourke settled out of court for a sum payment of £83,000 and 10 percent royalties, renouncing all further claims. Joyce continued with the legal proceedings which reached the High Court of Justice in 1996. The court sided with Rourke and he received a sum of £1 million in previous royalties and 25 percent from the point of the ruling.

No love was lost. Morrissey has said, “I would rather eat my own testicles than reform The Smiths, and that’s saying something for a vegetarian.” He’s also said that the band has been offered astronomical amounts of money. Marr has said that the reasons that the band doesn’t reunite are “abstract” and “nothing to do with money.”

In the end, we all deal with separating ourselves from the toxic environments we place ourselves in. I admire them for saying that cash isn’t a motivation (which may be why I get annoyed with bands breaking up to reunite dramatically). In the end, I can search YouTube for live clips, I can listen to bootlegs. I can enjoy Morrissey and Marr’s solo work and I can also listen to Strangeways and still feel complete with my memories of the record and the music contained in it. I don’t feel that I’m missing out on an experience because – could it possibly be as good as the expectation and the desire? Like with exes blowing up your phone, it has more potential for future heartbreak than it does with a loving reunion.

Johnny Marr said it best in 2001: “I think when something’s over, events have a way of conspiring to make you realise that it’s over. As cryptic as that sounds, it’s true. Things would happen and I’d be like, ‘Am I going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life?’ And it was a very, very emotional band. It’s in the music. The relationship between me and Morrissey was very emotional. It wasn’t volatile in that we would row or anything like that, but it was so intense that if rocked slightly it would be a big deal.”

This awesome cake was at a Morrissey birthday party/DJ night...

getoutofmycity — Wed, 22 May 2013 23:58:00 +0200

This awesome cake was at a Morrissey birthday party/DJ night last night at Zanzabar, in Louisville, KY. Photo provided by my friend Eric Condon, taken by Sarah Bonifer.

That being said, a very unhappy birthday to Steven Patrick Morrissey who is 54 today.

Morrissey discusses the Latino connection during a Telemundo...

getoutofmycity — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:51:40 +0200

Morrissey discusses the Latino connection during a Telemundo news spot.

Preview for the documentary “Passions Just Like...

getoutofmycity — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:45:20 +0200

Preview for the documentary “Passions Just Like Mine” which explores the connection between Latinos and Morrissey.

Todo sobre mi madre: Morrissey, Latinos, and I

getoutofmycity — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:30:00 +0200

Morrissey was going to have a show in Wichita Falls, Texas on November 28, 2012.

I know this not because I have an interest in the social calendar of the Texoma area, but because of the giant Kay Yeager Coliseum sign by the highway that I could see from the hotel room where my parents and I stayed as we experienced the last days of my grandmother’s life and her funeral.

One of my oldest jokes—one I can always guarantee a laugh from music nerds—is that one of the ways I stereotypically live up to my Latin heritage is my unabashed love of the Smiths and Morrissey’s solo work. I say Latin because if you ask members of my family, you get conflicting answers about our lineage. We’re Spanish, no we’re Mexican. We’re Spanish on my grandmother’s side and Mexican on my grandfather’s. In any case, I’m biracial. Being biracial has had a big impact – my cultural identity has been something that has cycled as a point of worry over and over in my life. I never seemed to fit in with either side of my family. While in Texas with my mother’s family, it was a comfort to be surrounded by people who look exactly like you, but might have a completely separate worldview. Whereas on my dad’s side of the family, I stick out like I was bussed there.

My grandmother was a tiny, tough woman who had twelve children. She was our matriarch, the glue that held all of us together. We all lovingly called her “ma’am,” no matter if you were her child or grandchild or great-grandchild. Even though there were so many of us, she remembered and loved each and every one of us.

The day after my grandmother died, my mother, one of my aunts and I went to the funeral home. We were allowed to prepare her hair before the viewing. My aunt had my grandmother’s brush and a stack of bobby pins so we could put her hair in her signature bun. My grandmother always had jet black hair and wore it in a bun that reached Ronnie Spector heights since before I was born, but her hair was grey and coarser than I remembered. My aunt brushed her hair, spritzed it and pinned it up the best we could despite her prone position. When we finished, we all stood there looking at her. My aunt broke the silence by saying, “Looking good, ma’am!” I never can pass up the chance to make a tense moment funny. “You know what they say, ma’am,” I said, “The higher the hair, the closer to God.”

In that funeral parlor, three generations of tiny Latin women were together. It was one of the most precious moments of my life. I had never felt more grounded in my identity than that moment. I was with women who I could be carbon copies of, my near and ultimate future. And for the first time, I didn’t feel out of place, or lacking, or that I wasn’t meeting someone’s expectation of what a Latina or a white woman should be. I just was.

The day of the viewing we ran errands and when we returned to the hotel, my mom and I were yet again greeted by the Morrissey sign. I don’t know why, but I told my mom I was planning to go to the show in Michigan. I then asked her if she knew about the Latino connection to Morrissey, which of course I knew the answer would be “No.” I showed her the Telemundo story about the connection and for the rest of the afternoon while we prepared ourselves for the viewing, we listened to the Smiths. I asked my mom if she liked it, and she very diplomatically said, “It’s okay.”

What is it about Morrissey that speaks to Latinos? Several hypotheses exist: Is it because the lyrical content and music style are akin to Ranchera music? Is it because Morrissey’s discography projects and seeks to explain and/or empathize with a sense of “otherness” that second and third generation Mexican-American children can relate to, being part of cultures that don’t entirely understand and/or accept them? Or maybe it’s just that lines like “Save your life because you’ve only got one,” are fucking great, and you don’t have to look further into it?

I don’t dare to speak for a group that encompasses so many different people. I can only speak for myself – I connect because he sings about an otherness that I’ve often felt in my life, but he also sings about the desire to be a part of the world, that yes, is very flawed. He sings about being different not being strange, but rather preparing you to be immersed in the world.

Perhaps the otherness Morrissey sings about is like a feeling that other second and third generation Americans might feel when they think about their lives. Can you speak Spanish? If so, is it with an “American” accent? What if you can’t? Does that somehow make you less? What if you’re biracial, where does that place you? How do you explain your customs and holidays to coworkers who don’t understand?

I think the desire to explain the phenomenon makes sense, but in the end, it can’t be explained definitively. It isn’t rational, it makes no sense that a whole legion of Mexican-American and other Latin youths relate to a pompadoured Mancunian.

Morrissey’s lyrics tap in to a type of emotional, cathartic release that few other artists provide me. Like my mother, I have an amazing capacity to feel, but we also feel the crush to hide it, so we can stay in control. Morrissey sings the things I try to hide away.

He never made it to Wichita Falls. He canceled the Michigan concert date I was going to because of his mother’s health, and then rescheduled the tour to be with her.

I don’t blame him. Our mothers are the lights that never go out in our lives.

This is me, Kim Huston, the lady writing about Morrissey this...

getoutofmycity — Tue, 21 May 2013 01:12:02 +0200

This is me, Kim Huston, the lady writing about Morrissey this week. I’m not posting a photo of myself because of vanity, but to ask about my fellow Morrissey fans about who you are.

I’ve always felt as a devout fan of Morrissey’s work, you have to defend yourself somewhat. I’ve never understood that. If someone said they were obsessed with, let’s say, the Clash—no one questions a person’s depression level. But with the Smiths and Morrissey, people always seem to question you as if you decided to date that kid who played Cher’s son in that movie Mask—“Really? Him? That’s your choice?” And you find yourself in a huff, stopping yourself from saying things like “You don’t know him like I do! He’s smart and funny and well, honestly, what do you know about it?” Morrissey fans aren’t the stereotyped wallflowers everyone thinks. I love the NBA, I volunteer, I’m loud, and I love to laugh. A lot.

I was one of the people that was canceled on three times for the Flint, Michigan tour date this year. Moz said he’d play Flint if it killed him, but in the end, he canceled the entire tour. I was obviously disappointed after each cancellation, but the thing I feel worst about is that I couldn’t meet any cool Morrissey superfans like the ones I’d encountered at my first show.

It’s the thing that I like most about being a Morrissey fan: the built-in kinship and the diversity among his fans.

Do you love Moz? If so, tell me what was your first Morrissey show like. Where were you when you first heard The Queen is Dead or Suedehead? What makes you a Morrissey fan?

Because until he tours again, who knows when we’ll see each other again?

It takes guts to be gentle and kind: accepting Morrissey and yourself

getoutofmycity — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:42:00 +0200

This post ran previously on Unbest

Morrissey
Royal Oak Music Theater
December 18, 2011

If I learned one thing from this show, it’s that I’m not the Morrissey fan I thought I was.

I am a fan of his entire discography; I have a Morrissey nightlight. I thought that was commitment.

I thought going to a Morrissey show alone might be the most depressing thing I might ever do, but it turned out to be one of the most jubilant shows I’ve enjoyed in my lifetime. As an added bonus, I got accepted into a group of super fans by just showing up and asserting myself.

I arrived at the theater as doors opened and there was already a sizeable line. I made my way into the theater and immediately went to the stage to stake my place. Within twenty minutes, two gentleman pulled the “Oh, hey I see my friends!” gambit to get closer to the stage where their tall friend was camped (I know this trick, it’s no one’s first time at the rodeo) directly in front of me.

Despite my lack of intimidating size, much like any grab-bag third world dictator you can think of, I can have an air of authority of someone much taller. When those gentlemen asserted their spots, I loudly and sarcastically proclaimed, “Well I’m super glad I got here really early so I’d have no chance of seeing.”

The shorter of the two gentleman, Nick, looked at me and said, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll move so you can see.” He was wearing a jean jacket with a large Morrissey patch adhered with safety pins on the back of it. Some time passed and he looked to me again and asked, “Is this your first show?”

When I replied “Yes,” his eyes lit up. “It’s going to get really crazy up here, but you’re going to love it.”

Nick and the other tall fellow who dared to block my view, Roy, then proceeded to explain that they met through attending Morrissey shows. Indeed, most of the folks that surrounded me traveled the world to see Morrissey. Nick, from Atlanta and Roy from Philly, only see each other at these Moz shows. They had been to the previous night’s show in Chicago (which was quite raucous), and came to Metro Detroit to enjoy the last night of the tour. It now feels like a rookie journalist mistake to not have asked how many shows they’d seen on this tour and in total.

While discussing their travels, something they said struck me and I laughed. “No smiling or laughing,” Nick said playfully. “You’re running in the sad gang now.”

When Morrissey came to the stage, he looked like some kind of majestic silver lion. He swayed, he gestured wildly. His band looked like a weird version of the “Addicted to Love” video, if instead the women looked like a team of Anthony Perkins stand-ins wearing matching YMCA shirts, and Robert Palmer was replaced with Morrissey.

The set list was peppered with old and new tracks. Standards like “First of the Gang to Die” and “Every Day is Like Sunday” were followed by newer tracks like “People are the Same Everywhere.” Smiths gems were included and those tracks received the biggest reactions. The first time I cried was during “There is a Light That Never Goes Out.”

Everyone around me was singing along, but I was still self-aware enough to realize Roy and Nick were enjoying the reaction of the first-timer. As Morrissey went back and forth shaking hands with those in the front row, Nick would aggressively push me to the front and gesture like I should hold my hand out. When I did, he would point to my lone hand, like it was the one that needed to be blessed, almost like “Go ahead, get baptized, become one of us.”

The extended version of “Meat is Murder” was intense because of the multimedia display (“Meet Your Meat,” a film often used by PETA) behind the band, depicting the worst of animal slaughtering. It was also the best song for the band to display their immense skill as Moz left the stage and allowed them to take the song to a raucous, dramatic conclusion.

I’m glad I went to this show by myself. I don’t like big displays of emotion or letting people see my “sensitive side” (unless you catch me watching basketball). I have a pretty significant wall. Had I been with a group of people I knew, I probably couldn’t have enjoyed myself as I did. I sang along; I cried three times. Each time I sobbed, I could feel Nick’s hand on my shoulder reassuring me, as if saying “It’s OK to cry.” (I need to hear that more often, I guess, and not just at Morrissey shows.)

I had the most intense reaction when he sang “I Know It’s Over,” the third track off of The Queen is Dead, a lifelong favorite. When he sang “It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate/It takes strength to be gentle and kind/Love is natural and real/But not for you my love,” I lost it in a way that I haven’t in a really long time. By the time he got to the final chorus and everyone began singing “Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head,” I was inconsolable. I’m glad this is my last show of the year; I’m thrilled he played that song.

2011 was all about ending and beginning big phases of my life. I changed my career; I moved. I reevaluated some of my relationships. When I look back on this year, I’ll feel like I watched it all happen in slow motion, because I know I have only begun to deal with some of it (as happens when you embark on new journeys). I still feel a pang in my heart when I drive by my old house in Detroit or I talk about the city. I hated my last job but I still intensely crave the creativity and friendships that it once fostered.

That’s why I had such a reaction to “I Know It’s Over.” The lyric “Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head,” represents that feeling you get when you know you’re changing; something has ended and there is no way out of dealing with it. It hurts, it’s bittersweet, but you know what? You’re alive. You’re feeling it; you can still feel chunks of dirt slapping your face.

But while the song ends that way, the preceding bridge reminds that “it takes guts to be gentle and kind.” That’s my goal for 2012: have guts. Trust more, love more, give more. I may feel the dirt on my face now, but I know I have the capacity to be gentle and kind.

Morrissey ejected the second of his shirts, a sparkly black number, into the crowd (one of Nick and Roy’s friends initially caught it, which sent Nick into a fit. “Do you think he got the whole thing? If he did, I’m going to steal it!”).

Before “Still Ill” began, Nick warned me “Things will get nuts.” In the short amount of time it took, I saw Roy and another fan hoist Nick above the barricade where he was able to shake Moz’s hand before security took him. As the song progressed, something happened which led Moz to end the song short and thanked the venue’s security for doing so (Morrissey was either almost pulled into the crowd or his guitarist Boz Boorer was roughed up by security according to differing reports; it was not in my view). After the show ended, I stood there for several minutes, shell shocked, until Nick returned to our sides with a set list.

Nick was jubilant with his acquired trophy. He and Roy chit-chatted about meeting up in March to see Morrissey in Brazil. I just stood there silently until reality sank in and I realized the show really had ended. I thanked them and said it was great to meet them.

And who knows, maybe I’ll see them again, as a braver new me for 2012.

I have to say that I’m very nervous about this adventure I’m...

getoutofmycity — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:25:50 +0200

I have to say that I’m very nervous about this adventure I’m embarking on. There’s no other way to say it: people either love Morrissey to the ends of the Earth, or believe him to be a hack of Las Vegas magician proportion. Much like religion and politics, Morrissey probably shouldn’t be discussed at the dinner table because you JUST KNOW your Aunt Jane is going to go on a rant about how liking Morrissey makes people insufferable and Obama is in a nefarious pyramid scheme with Jay-Z and Beyonce when all you did was ask her to pass the salt.

No matter how you look at it, the man sometimes called “The Pope of Mope” inspires intense feeling. That’s what I hope to focus on this week – what drives each and every one of us to either love or revile an artist. Is it just the music or the man – and can you separate those?

No matter what side of the great Morrissey/Smiths debate you reside on, I hope you’ll enjoy the week.

Coming up: Morrissey (solo & The Smiths) Thank you,...

hndrk — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:37:04 +0200

Coming up: Morrissey (solo & The Smiths)

Thank you, Danice!

How did we ever manage to get to almost a hundred and twenty weeks of tales of fandom and devotion without talking about the one who inspires those more than (most) any other!?

Well, we’ll be rectifying that next week. Kimberly Huston will pick her favourite moments from Morrissey’s career both with The Smiths and solo.

You can find Kim on her Tumblr.

Till tomorrow.

— Hendrik

Hey look, we re-designed our site! Everything should be a bit...

hndrk — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:06:48 +0200

Hey look, we re-designed our site!

Everything should be a bit prettier for those viewing OWOB outside of the Tumblr dash. Plus it works much better on mobile devices now.

Many thanks to our pal David Greenwald for letting us use some ace shots from his photography portfolio for the page header.

There’s also an updated “About” page with further details on this blog, all of our bands featured in both alphabetical and chronological order, and a blogroll with additional procrastination inspiration.

As always, thanks for reading & following!

Teenage Fanclub - “When I Still Have Thee” A...

inwardfangirling — Sun, 19 May 2013 18:00:17 +0200

Teenage Fanclub - “When I Still Have Thee”

A Postscript to Teenage Fanclub

It’s 2013, and to date, Teenage Fanclub has had ten full-length albums: a solid body of work. All its members are still active in the music scene. Norman Blake has formed a new band called Jonny, and Gerry’s band Lightships even has a tumblr account! Their separate bands sound like parts of Teenage Fanclub, without the club part.

I still get excited when I hear rumors of a new album. Their last album as Teenage Fanclub came out in 2010, and I loved it. They’ve come so far since “Bandwagonesque”. Listening to both back-to-back, you won’t be able to tell that they were done by the same band, but that’s a good thing. I have listened to Teenage Fanclub through my best moments and some of my darkest. Their songs have in turn been companions, inspirations, guideposts, reminders. These songs have seen me grow up and grow older, and while their chords and lyrics remain unchanged, their use and meaning will forever evolve as I keep coming back to listen to them.

I know these songs by heart and these songs know me. Always have, and always will. Thank you, Norman, Ray and Gerry. Til the next album and the ones after that.

Teenage Fanclub - “Fallen Leaves” Teenage Fanclub,...

inwardfangirling — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:00:11 +0200

Teenage Fanclub - “Fallen Leaves”

Teenage Fanclub, Live at the Metro, Sydney - August 17, 2005

My best friend Rhea who lives in Australia got me on a plane so I could watch my favorite band performing live in Sydney. The band was touring to promote their eighth album “Man-made” and were set to perform at The Metro, an intimate venue. It was a standing room-only show, and the atmosphere was very laid back.

I was the only rabid fangirl present at the gig. I’d say the audience was made up of 70% 35’s and older and the 30% below that demographic were jaded indie boys. I would have gone to that show carrying a home-made banner or placard that read “I Heart Gerry Love” and brought the “Teenage” and the “Fanclub” to the party, but I was too caught up in my out-of-body fever dream that the show was actually happening and I was there to see it. I was going to see them – my favorite band performing my favorite songs live. I was going to breathe the same air as Norman, Gerry, Raymond, Francis and Finlay. I was going to scream in heavily accented English OMAYGADAYLABYU just so they would know they had a Filipino fan that has come all the way from Quezon City to see them.

The shitty doorman refused to return my ticket stubs. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t allowed to keep them as souvenirs when I presented them for inspection at the gate. Officially, taking photos during the gig was was not okay, but Rhea who was on camera duty was able to get a whole bunch of them. Since the atmosphere was very relaxed, we had no problem with picking a good spot from which to watch the show. We had planted ourselves firmly on the second row, positioned in front of where I thought Gerry would be standing onstage.

The opening acts were local bands The Frames and The Pyromidiacs, who had a similar sound as Teenage Fanclub – sunny power pop this side of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. I liked them and bought one of their albums after the show.

When Teenage Fanclub stepped out onstage, I lost my shit for the first, but not the last time that night. Norman Blake was wearing a brown, striped collared tee. It was the same one he wore in several press photos from interviews that appeared online during this time. I freaked out from the recognition of the band’s personal items. His hair was cut short and he was wearing glasses, looking every bit like a dad. Raymond was very tall thin, and technical-looking in person, and his longish hair was greying. I thought Gerry would be thinner and more fragile looking, but in person, the man was gorgeous. A stone fox. Gerry had the bluest eyes on anyone ever. “I want Norman to adopt me now or hire me as nanny to his children,” I wrote later in my journal. “And Gerry is a golden god.”

The very relaxed and laid back crowd came alive then, transforming the most serious looking lads into fanboys who knew every word of every song. They could have fooled me for all the bored-as-hell, couldn’t-be- arsed posturing that was going on in the lounge earlier. Fanboys at heart the lot of them.

Norman was every bit as charming as he appeared in interviews, chatting away in between songs with the crowd as if he’d known us all our lives, like he was a regular guy who could be my neighbor. Through heavily accented English (I died hearing it live), he told the audience that he’d almost put on his underwear backwards and then quickly adding that that was just too much information. He asked everyone what the band ought to do on their day off the next day and the crowd starting shouting suggestions at him at the same time. Finally Norman just says, “It all sounds good!” Later on he joked about his accent, “You probably have no idea what I’m saying!” but then this loud voice came from the back of them room shouting “PERFECT, NORMAN! PERFECT!”

The Fannies refuse to do “Starsign” at their shows, but one of the ladies in the audience kept screaming for it. Gerry looked genuinely apologetic, saying “Sorry”, but then the band ended up doing “Starsign”! And what made it extra special was that Norman and I had a moment. He looked over at me, saw me rocking my little Asian fangirl heart and gave me this “Hey you!” look that validated my entire existence as their fan.

“Don’t Look Back” came early in the set. I might have died screaming. According to my best friend, Gerry looked over at me and smiled, but I had no recollection of that ever happening because being in such close contact with him had actually made it difficult to look at him directly.

We missed our train home that night, but I could floated all the way back to Manila after that show. Seeing my favorite band live had been every bit as perfect as I had envisioned it so many times in my mind’s eye.

The Set list:

Hang On
It’s All In My Mind
Nowhere
I Don’t Want Control of You
Fallen Leaves
About You
Start Again
I Need Direction
Feel
Slow Fade
DON’T LOOK BACK
Your Love Is the Place Where I Come From
Did I Say
Starsign
Only With You

Speed of Light

Neil Jung
Sparky’s Dream

== First Encore

Born Under a Good Sign

Verisimilitude

Mellow Doubt

Everything Flows

== Second Encore

The Concept

Teenage Fanclub - “Metal Baby” More Fandom Friends:...

inwardfangirling — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:00:00 +0200

Teenage Fanclub - “Metal Baby”

More Fandom Friends: Mark and Jing

Mark and Jing are best friends, and were the ones who introduced me to Teenage Fanclub. The room I was in when I first heard “Sparky’s Dream” was Mark’s, and at the time, the pair was re-discovering their love for the band. They saw me go from clueless and fanclub-less to the President of the Fannies fanclub, Quezon City chapter.

Mark and Jing, who were in a semi-famous band from the 90’s had a lot in common with Teenage Fanclub. For one, both bands were thrown into the frenzy of major record labels signing on alternative bands when the genre exploded twenty years ago. Second, both bands never really took off, despite “cultish appeal” and really good songwriting. It was not surprising at all that Mark and Jing were Teenage Fanclub fans, though as far as best friends go, these two couldn’t be more different from each other.

Mark was more of Norman Blake type - he sang as well as played guitar. Jing was more of a Gerry/Ray hybrid - he played bass, and was more organized and level-headed.

Mark

The “Grand Prix” cd we were listening to that summer belonged to Mark’s younger brother so no matter how much I begged him to lend me it, he wouldn’t. He would redeem himself years later at Christmas, when he gifted me a second-hand copy of “Thirteen”, which was also very rare and hard to find in local music shops.

Next to Sandy, Mark was my staunchest supporter when it came to my long-term “plan” of meeting Gerry Love and marrying him. He had even suggested I name Gerry’s and my future son “Liam” because “Liam Love” just sounded so good. He is still waiting to become that child’s godfather.

Jing

We three had always wanted an official Teenage Fanclub t-shirt:

but we either didn’t know how to order it or couldn’t afford to order it online. So Jing came up with a solution to bootleg our own TFC t-shirts. All we needed was a silkscreen and a couple of black t-shirts. (In actuality, the official TFC t-shirts were not black. They were a really dark green shade.)

Jing knew a place where we could have the silkscreening done cheap. He offered to collect the t-shirts and bring them to his guy. When he saw Mark’s t-shirt, he flipped. We had agreed on black. Mark’s was a bright traffic-cone yellow. Something about that was not canon.

A few weeks later, Jing and I went to get the t-shirts. They turned out perfect and we couldn’t wait to wear them. They looked just like the real thing, except ours didn’t have the band logo silkscreened in reverse at the back of the t-shirt and were technically the wrong color. We didn’t care about the details anymore. What mattered was that we had these cool Teenage Fanclub t-shirts.

We were so stoked!

Teenage Fanclub - “Fear of Flying” More Fandom...

inwardfangirling — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:00:11 +0200

Teenage Fanclub - “Fear of Flying”

More Fandom Friends - Ryan

While I consider myself a music fan, I was never one for scenes or crowds and sometimes I feel that I am missing out because of my reclusive approach to music (or fandom in general). Don’t get me wrong - I love meeting other fans of musicians I love. Many of them have become close friends who are among my dearest, but I get panic attacks whenever I choose to step out and see local bands performing live in clubs.

The local scene in Metro Manila has changed since I was younger, but I don’t think I’ve ever outgrown my fear of it. When I was in college, I stood in awe of the older bands and the groupies that seemed so elegant in their wasted-ness. My awkwardness, created/imagined or real, was a badge that set me apart from everyone else. In my eyes, these people knew what they were doing - whatever it was I thought they were doing - flitting from one social circle to the next, exchanging gossip about people they had a six-degree separation with, doing all kinds of exotic drugs, sleeping with each other, getting drunk on all kinds of alcoholic beverages - who were these people and how did they become such experts at it? It felt to me that they were living life, no matter how messy and complicated it was and how bored of it they kept saying they were.

I made friends with Ryan, a fellow Filipino TFC fan who was based in the U.S. We met on the Teenage Fanclub message board and discovered that we both had LiveJournals. Since meeting other Teenage Fanclub fans was so rare, I welcomed the friendship. Ryan was a sort-of big deal in the local indie music scene because he was in a band called Sodajerk and they were pretty good. His band was well-known among indie kids, and it seemed every single time his name was mentioned, a ripple of awe and envy was attached to it. I’d never heard of Sodajerk, but talking to Ryan was fun, and he didn’t strike me as the indie god that some local indie scenesters were making him out to be. He was very down-to-earth, level-headed, and loved Teenage Fanclub dearly, but I swear, the way some people in the indie scene talked about him, you’d have thought he had singlehandedly created twee pop.

I developed a bit of a crush on Ryan, but of course knew that there was not a chance in hell that anything would come out of our online communication. He lived too far away, and I didn’t think he would ever be interested in me.

Still, one day I got a parcel from him containing “Fandawagonesque”, the 2-cd fan tribute to Teenage Fanclub, of which his band Sodajerk was a contributor. It also contained a mix cd he had done especially for me. It had 16 songs, and being a student of the Nick Hornby “High Fidelity” mix tape rules, knew that his mix cd was perfect. The mix featured songs by The Trashcan Sinatras, Primary 5, BMX Bandits, The Pearlfishers and other indie rock heroes. If I had a crush on Ryan before, I was in love with him by the time I listened to his mix, as young reclusive music fans are prone to do.

Later that year he emailed, saying he was in Manila and suggesting we meet and hang out. He told me where to find him - he was seeing a few local bands at a small rock club in Makati City.

I was already uncomfortable with having to go to a club, but the thought that I was going to one to meet a crush face to face for the first time had made it terrifying. I asked a friend to come with me, and he suggested we arrive fashionably late so as not to do a “red carpet”, as that would be terribly, unforgivably lame.

Outside the venue, we bumped into an acquaintance who was in a local indie band himself, and knew Ryan was in town. Of course he did - he was a scenester who had crowned Ryan king of indie rock. The conversation turned to Ryan, and I heard this rumor about him dating this other girl who was also a big deal in the local indie scene.

I wondered if he was already at the venue and mentioned that if I saw him, I wanted to say hi. Our man from inside kind of balked and said something like doing that was uncool and against the rules. For a bunch of people who claimed to be non-conformists and anti-mainstream anything, the irony of his statement offended me. This was why I refused to go to places like these.

Despite the negative vibes, I hung about, and I did spot Ryan, who was hanging out by himself in one corner. He stood stock-still, and if he was enjoying the music being performed live, his body language didn’t show it. I looked around me and saw the same posturing from everyone in the room. Not for the first time I wondered why showing the smallest bit of enthusiasm in venues like this was such a crime. I wanted to throw up. Instead, I walked directly in front of Ryan’s line of sight and got close enough to say hi.

I didn’t.

After that night, we lost contact. I do still wonder what would have happened if I had just followed my instincts and said hello. Probably nothing, but probably also, I could have made a really good friend whom I could talk TFC with, despite his reputation preceding him and planting a seed of self-doubt in my mind.

Teenage Fanclub - “Fallin’” (with DeLa Soul,...

inwardfangirling — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:00:22 +0200

Teenage Fanclub - “Fallin’” (with DeLa Soul, from the “Judgment Night” OST)

Teenage Fanclub at the Movies

There was a time in Metro Manila when rock music and hip-hop had a kind of weird rivalry. For some reason, if you were a young music fan in the early 90’s, you had to pick a side. You were either with the rockers or with the hip-hop crew and it was somehow against the rules and not cool to like both. Like rock music? Then you must ban hip-hop from your musical vocabulary. Like hip-hop? Then you must never listen to rock.

Local alternative rock radio station LA 105.9 even released a radio plug that fanned the flames and condoned the hostility towards hip-hop fans. Listeners generally accepted it as a joke, but in hindsight, it was a pretty dick move on the radio station’s end.

Then the movie “Judgment Night” was released with a clever soundtrack that featured alternative rock bands collaborating with big name hip-hop artists, throwing every for/against argument from either camp out the window. Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill? Slayer and Ice-T? Mudhoney and Sir-Mix-A-Lot? Finally an album that both rockers and hip-hoppers could purchase and enjoy!

Teenage Fanclub collaborated with De La Soul on the track, “Fallin’”. The match was beautiful. Coming from the East Coast, Dela Soul had a lyrical, jazzy approach to hip-hop. Their style played well with the Fannies’ brand of harmonized vocals and sun-drenched guitars, giving the track a bit of an urban edge. The guitar-work on the track is subtle and easy-going, just weaving in and out of the track’s solid hip-hop beat.

It’s still unclear to me what the rivalry and animosity between rockers and hip-hoppers boiled down to, or what caused it, but for a while it seemed both groups wanted exclusive ownership of the color black and the final say on who can wear flannel better. The only difference was in the pants they wore: rockers wore their jeans tight, and the hip-hoppers liked theirs baggy and low. Perhaps the rocker vs. hip-hop rivalry was not about music, but fashion.

And like so many fashion trends at the time, it eventually went stale. The tension between the rockers and the hip-hoppers faded as local artists from the rocker camp started collaborating with other hip-hop artists and vice versa. Perhaps albums like the “Judgment Night” OST helped too, in that the potential for mixing musical genres was explored without prejudice and the two sides that were thought to be opposing forces were able to find a common ground and a similar flow.

Teenage Fanclub - “Like a Virgin” (from...

inwardfangirling — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:00:18 +0200

Teenage Fanclub - “Like a Virgin” (from “Threesome” OST)

Teenage Fanclub at the Movies

“Threesome” came out in 1994 and stars Josh Charles, Lara Flynn-Boyle and Stephen Baldwin. It’s a sex comedy set in college about a boy who likes this other boy who likes a girl who falls for the first boy and also happens to be their roommate.

The film’s soundtrack capitalized on the 90s alt-rock band boom, including artists like Jellyfish, Curve, The The and Teenage Fanclub, whose contribution to the OST is their cover of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”.

The track also appears on The Fannies’ second album, “The King”, which was released in 1991. “The King” was considered as something of a failure, and it was allegedly done out of a contractual obligation to the U.S. indie record label Matador. The overall contents of “The King” were not very good, but not long after this album was released, Teenage Fanclub came out with “Bandwagonesque”.

TFC’s “Like a Virgin” removes the signature keyboard/bass line of its source material, but adds a tongue firmly in cheek. True, it has the feel of a filler, and may have been a better idea on paper (much like the movie “Threesome”), but the fact that The Fannies covered Madonna? Priceless.

Teenage Fanclub - “The Concept” (from the...

inwardfangirling — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:31:49 +0200

Teenage Fanclub - “The Concept” (from the “Young Adult” OST)

Teenage Fanclub at the Movies

The movie “Young Adult” opens with Charlize Theron sitting in her car popping a Memorex tape (the 90 minute kind, no doubt) into her car stereo. She plays Mavis, the ghostwriter of a popular book series for tweens. She is on the way to her hometown, set on rekindling her relationship with her ex-boyfriend (now married and a new father.) Mavis pushes the Play button on her stereo, cranks the volume up, and the distorted feedback of guitars floods her car.

It’s Teenage Fanclub’s “The Concept”, a song that sonically belongs in the era from which it comes from. The track can be found as the opener to Teenage Fanclub’s third album,”Bandwagonesque”. The fuzzy guitars are grungy, and the plodding bass lines give the track a hint of shoegaze. It sounds familiar enough to tell you it’s from the 90’s, yet obscure enough not to be dated. This was not the 90’s “Jesse’s Girl”. This was about another girl, but it’s not “About a Girl”.

“The Concept” is the nicest, most sensitive douchebag song ever. Norman Blake sings about a groupie who “wears denim wherever she goes.”. The song makes fun of her musical taste and recounts the girl’s virtues as though they were faults. It’s coming from a point of view of the narrator’s own insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. He talks about her liking him for his long hair and how she supports the band he’s in when he himself isn’t particularly that impressed with it. He likes her enough to have her drive him and the boys home from gigs, but not enough to stop taking advantage of her. The idea of her is attractive, but there are parts of her he can’t accept. His awareness of this is crushing. “I didn’t want to hurt you…” he says over and over, but it’s what he does.

There is a gorgeous guitar break in the middle of the song between the mea culpa’s: Fender-drenched ellipses as far as the confession is concerned, the narrator struggling for some kind of explanation for his behavior. There isn’t one, so the apology is what he comes back to instead. The song’s guitars noodle towards its end, leaving the declaration open-ended. It’s a one-sided break-up, a rehearsal of an apology, an unsent rejection letter.

If you saw “Young Adult” and had no idea what the opening track was and who it’s by, you may have missed the 90’s alt-rock reference but the song scores the sequence perfectly, and sets the tone for the misadventure to come.