Brendan O'Hare

Brendan O'Hare (born 16 January 1970) is a Scottish musician, who amongst other things has been the drummer in the rock band Teenage Fanclub from 1990 until early 1994, and a member and collaborator of Mogwai.

Career

O'Hare was born in Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire. He joined Teenage Fanclub [1] in 1990, in time to play on about half of their debut album, A Catholic Education. He split from the group after completing the tour for the Thirteen album and joined Telstar Ponies, although he left during the recording of their second album. He was a member of Mogwai for approximately a year. He was described by the NME as Teenage Fanclub's "Monkey Without Portfolio". This prompted the track "With Portfolio" on Mogwai's debut album, Young Team. O'Hare was allegedly kicked out of Mogwai for talking during a performance by Arab Strap leading to a fight with other members of the band. Despite this, there appears to have been no hard feelings between O'Hare and Arab Strap as O'Hare later featured on their double A-side 1998 release, "Here We Go"/"Trippy", contributing to the twelve-minute song, "Trippy".

In addition to his work with Macrocosmica and as Fiend, he worked closely with Dave Barker (formerly of Glass Records, Paperhouse and Creation) who ran the God Bless record label (issuing the sole album by Thurston Moore's 'Foot' project) and was part of the electro based band, Liminal. Brendan is currently in charge of bookings and sound engineering at the Glasgow venue The 13th Note. In 2006, he rejoined Teenage Fanclub for shows in London, Glasgow and Barcelona at which the band played their Bandwagonesque album in its entirety.

He is also an honorary member and producer of Glasgow-based pranksters The Plimptons, and plays guitar on their second album Pomp.

Between 1996 and 2005, O'Hare played guitar and sang with self-proclaimed 'Intelli-metal' band, Macrocosmica. [2]

EPs

• "Space Geek" (1998) – God Bless Records

Albums

• Ad Astra (1997) – God Bless Records
• Art of the Black Earth (2003)
• Farewell To Earth (2005)

They also recorded a BBC Radio One Peel Session (1997), a BBC Radio One Session in Scotland (1999), and a BBC Radio Scotland Live Session (2003), and released "Torch Number One" as one half of a split single with Glaswegian hardcore group Churn on Too Many Fireworks Records in 2003.

Initially a trio of O'Hare, his ex-wife Cerwyss, who died on July 2013 (bass) and Russell McEwan (drums – left to concentrate on his other band, Black Sun), they were latterly a quartet adding Keith Beacom (drums) and Gordon Brady (guitar), both of whom were former members of heavy psyche outfit Bangtwister. The group split at the end of 2005.

Fiend

O'Hare also released a trilogy of experimental ambient albums under the name of Fiend. These albums featured a handful of recordings involving other members of Telstar Ponies, of whom he was still a member when the material was recorded.

Albums

• Caledonian Gothic (1997) – God Bless Records
• Caledonian Cosmic (1998) – God Bless Records
• Caledonian Mystic (1998) – God Bless Records