Makes me nostalgic for an era when music was more than a click away: Teenage Superstars reviewed

In Teenage Superstars, a long and slightly exhausting documentary about the Scottish indie scene of the 1980s and ’90s, there was a moment when a man revelling in the name of Stephen Pastel — his real name is Stephen McRobbie, and he must be pushing 60 now — was described as ‘the mayor of the Scottish underground’.

Such a position — even one, as this, necessarily unelected — would be all but impossible to occupy today. With the internet and democratisation of music — its creation, its distribution, its consumption — has come the fallowing of what were once its most fertile fields: the local scenes created and inhabited by small numbers of interconnected people and encouraged by confident tastemakers — such as Pastel.

For the bands featured in Teenage Superstars, it wasn’t about being heard. Though there were ambitious people in Glasgow and its suburbs, and in Edinburgh, their music was more about a shared endeavour, a bond between friends. And the film gives you a sense of the importance of the tiny scraps of infrastructure that could nourish that endeavour: an independent record label, a club night, a driven individual. Now, with instant communication, there is no need to rely on your locality: your music is as likely to be heard by someone 5,000 miles away from your home as someone 500 yards away.

From these few dozen friends came scores of groups. Some of them became famous for a period of time — Primal Scream, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Soup Dragons. Some forged lasting and well regarded careers — Teenage Fanclub, the Pastels. Some trundle on in the underground — BMX Bandits, regarded by everyone, it seems, as the ur-group of this scene.