in addition to fulfilling some serious scottish pop music dreams of mine, i just found this unbelievably sweet and moving. teenage fanclub serving as the backing band to their and every other scottish pop band's hero, edwyn collins, playing mostly orange juice songs (plus the song from empire records) in glasgow early last fall.
it's good to see edwyn in such fine form; it's been a long road back from his brain haemorrhage five years ago, with the multiple surgeries, rehabs, and intensive speech therapy that followed. what gets me is that no one could look happier to see edwyn doing well and playing again than the guys in teenage fanclub. in the crowd and presumably also beaming: stephen pastel and katrina mitchell, duglas and the superstar guy from bmx bandits, john mckeown from the yummy fur, stuart murdoch, and members of camera obscura.
from duglas (as posted on teenage fanclub's message board):
I felt I had to come by and say that it was very special from Falling and Laughing to witnessing Norman take a verse of Blue Boy. When we were teenagers listening to those two Postcard singles we couldn't dream that one of us one day would be up there playing with Edwyn and taking a verse on Blue Boy.
It was like those songs were the start of our journey and so tonight felt really very extra special.
someone else on that board:
So to hear my favourite band performing those same songs was like a dream - there were tears in my eyes during Falling and Laughing and Blue Boy, it was like things had come full circle, it must have been amazing for the boys to be up on stage playing with a fellow artist who must have been a huge influence on them when they were just starting out playing and writing songs at first - I can still picture Norman singing " I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn " with a big smile on his face.
In fact, a lot of smiles were exchanged by the band during the set. Gerry was just beaming, Ray was great at looking after Edwyn - and Francis stood clapping and smiling for what seemed like ages at the end of the set ( as we all did )
