'Bandwagonesque'

Even as a young fan of rock music, I never took Teenage Fanclub seriously. And why should I? Even at 12 or 13 I realized they didn't even take themselves or the music seriously.

Which, in hindsight, is rather refreshing considering how damn seriously, say, Kurt Cobain took everything.

Even so, the idea of "selling out" was a new idea to me at the time. I thought artists were signed or paid to do their skill because they were good and no matter what kind music or direction they took was just a natural flow from one album (painting, book, film) to another.

Older and wiser, I realize that money talks.

However, this separates the men from the boys. I really don't know how interested Nirvana was in doing the "Unplugged" album and I would bet that it was more of a commercial decision than an artistic one. However, what did they do? Oh, just drugg up a Bowie tune, a couple of Meat Puppets and a Leadbelly tune and just rewrote how bands looked at their songs. It's a magnificent album, Nirvana lost zero cred and Courtney Love is making tons of money off of it.

Teenage Fanclub wasn't telling anyone with any brains anything different than what they already knew or would know. However, you don't have to be all smarmy about it.