Great Scots : Scotland’s Teenage Fanclub offers some of pop-rock’s best guitar and four-part harmony.

Teen-agers have few fans. Many parents see them as gum-chewing ferrets and merely tolerate them. Freddy Kreuger kills them with regularity (and ingenuity) and nobody cares--everyone just wonders about another sequel.

Teen-agers are accused of talking too loudly and thinking too little. To paraphrase that eminent observer of the American teen-agers, Al Bundy: Teen-agers only have heads to keep the rain from falling into their necks. Only rock bands, senile grannies and zit-cream makers cater to teen-agers.

So does Scotland’s Teenage Fanclub--even though the only thing teen-age about them is their name. The band is probably hoping that youngsters with cash will pick up a copy of the band’s latest effort, “Bandwagonesque.” Or show up at the venerable Ventura Theatre tonight, when the group will lay some spiffy four-part harmonies on the ears of the locals and, at the same time, answer the musical question, “What if the Beatles’ album ‘Something New’ was remade 25 years later, but without the screaming teen-agers?”

This is one band that doesn’t really need any more helpful adjectives. Not since New Musical Express offered up a description of them as possessing “Godlike genius” and called them “the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the country . . . leaders of the guitar renaissance.” Their moms couldn’t like the four band members much more than that.

“The American press is more interested in the music and uses less hype than the British press,” bassist Gerry Love said during a phone interview. “The British press is more interested in fashion, and the actual music is less important than your haircut.”

There may, in fact, be nothing new in the world. But when four guys sing over some crunchy guitars and the songs all have melodic hooks that stay in your brain, what you have is pop-rock done right. And it can’t be beat--from Buddy Holly to the Beatles to Shoes and on and on. Anyway, try and sing a Guns N’ Roses song in the shower--the neighbors will think someone’s killing you and call the cops.

“Pop-rock never really went away,” Love said. “It’ll always be there. There are always great bands, whether or not they’re fashionable.”

So how does Teenage Fanclub fit into the pop music scene?

“We’re just a collection of our record collections,” Love said. “We’re big fans of all kinds of music. We don’t deny any influences. Our music is environmentally friendly, recycled stuff. You can’t change the world by recording an LP or strumming a guitar, so we don’t see music as a serious thing, it’s more entertainment, fun.”

Being from Glasgow might be part of the reason Teenage Fanclub sounds the way it does, since the Scots tend to resent the London scene. It’s sort of like asking Tommy Lasorda to wear a Giants hat.

“Since there has always been a lot of international trade in Scotland, we’ve been more inspired by American guitar music, especially ‘60s guitar bands like the Byrds,” Love said. “And being Scottish, we wouldn’t buy British, we’d buy American.”

The British Invasion, which pretty much gonged doo-wop, instrumental and surf music off the American pop charts in the early ‘60s, continues unabated. But this is no one-way musical street.

“There was another American Invasion probably three or for years ago,” Love said. “It was Mudhoney, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. and all that American rock thing, now, like Nirvana. Tad and Soundgarden are also popular.”

Of course Teenage Fanclub doesn’t sound like any of those bands except for maybe five seconds of guitar on certain songs. Also TFC can sing better. Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley and Brendan O’Hare are the other three-quarters of the harmonious outfit.

“None of us can really sing that well, but we try,” Love lied. Or maybe he was just being modest.

And their families couldn’t have choreographed the band’s rise to fame any better.

“We’ve been pretty lucky, and I don’t think we’ve made any mistakes,” Love said. “We started in the summer of 1989, and since the Glasgow scene is very small, everyone gets to know everyone else very quickly. I met Norman and Raymond, and seven weeks later, we recorded ‘A Catholic Education,’ our first album.

“The basic idea was just to record some songs, that’s all. All of a sudden people started picking up on the tape and started promising us record deals, long tours, limo rides, things like that.”

Of course, the life of a rock dude is not all blue skies and green lights. Those who don’t OD still have to work hard, although it beats real work with all that unpleasant bending, long hours, low pay and free ulcers.

“Probably the worst thing about all this is having to travel a lot and going to all these great cities and having no time to spend there. I’ve been to Paris, New York and Chicago and my friends ask me what it’s like there and I don’t know. All I know about those places is what I see on a television screen, which the window of the bus becomes.

“Then again, I’m doing a job that I care about and I don’t have to if I don’t want to.”