A Teenage Fanclub Education: Jorge Ben's "Samba Esquema Novo"

TFC It’s dead easy to list the most obvious influences of Scotland’s Teenage Fanclub. He’s read them so often, founding band member Norman Blake can rattle them off at the drop of a tam: Big Star, Byrds, Beach Boys. Pigeonholing the Fanclub’s melodic-yet-rocking sound becomes a little more dicey. Though most of the cornerstones of power pop—Posies, Flamin’ Groovies, Matthew Sweet, Velvet Crush, Tommy Keene, Alex Chilton—don’t think much of the label, it seems to be the only one that’s stuck. If they keep this up for another five years or so, Teenage Fanclub, which opened for business in the mid-’80s when Blake met fellow Scots Raymond McGinley and Gerard Love, might surpass the Groovies for career longevity, a career award that usually precedes only the obit in a band’s publicity dossier. And yet, the group’s new album, Shadows (Merge), is as vital as anything TFC has ever cut, adding fuel to the proposition that some artists come up with their best work after turning 40. Blake and Love will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with Blake.

JorgeBen

Gerard: I first heard Jorge Ben in the late 1980s. He was in a room overlooking Copacabana Beach singing a song called “Mona Lisa.” I was at my mum and dad’s, overlooking the steelworks, watching The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC2. The show was presented by a guy called Andy Kershaw, who was known as something of a world-music aficionado. I guess I was was too young to appreciate most of the sounds and rhythms on offer in the world-music section of the show, but Jorge Ben was completely instant, and the memory of this singer and this song was stuck in my head for years. Almost two decades later, in 2004, I ended up in Brazil, playing some shows with Teenage Fanclub, and our Brazilian tour manager was playing this absolutely amazing music through the speakers of the bus as we were driving back through the wet São Paolo streets in the dark early hours of the morning. It was kind of orchestrated but loose, a big band with a nylon-string acoustic guitar way up front. It sounded 1960s, definitely Brazilian, with sweet melodies that would spend a lot of time in the echo chamber, almost like a Lee Perry production. Everyone was loving it; it was a perfect moment. We asked Eduardo what it was. “It’s Jorge Ben. It’s his first record, from 1963. It’s the record that changed music in Brazil. It’s called Samba Esquema Novo.” The next day, I got up early and tracked down a copy. It’s been one of my favourite records ever since.

Videos after the jump.

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