THE WEDDING PRESENT SINGLES (Part Fourteen)

I’d long believed that the executives at RCA were quite satisfied that Seamonsters reached #13 in the album charts the week after it was released on 27 May 1991. Turns out I was wrong, as will be evidenced at the end of this week’s musings.

 Nobody knew it at the time, but it would prove to be the second and final studio album that the group would record for the label, and indeed no studio album by The Wedding Present would ever again get into the Top 20 – compilation albums would do well in 1992, but that’s for upcoming parts of this series.

Two months after the album hit the shops, an edited version of one of its songs was released as a second single, or more accurately, the lead track of a new EP:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Lovenest

It’s about a minute shorter, omitting the ‘beached whale’ guitar sounds that take up the opening 20 seconds of the album version, with the other 40 seconds being chopped off the lengthy outro, which on the album, segues majestically into the re-recorded version of Corduroy, a song that had been part of the 3 Songs EP.

There were no real obvious radio friendly songs on Seamonsters, and compared to previous singles, it was something of a low-key effort, issued on 12″ and CD only, with the same three new tracks made available on both releases:-

mp3 : The Wedding Present – Mothers
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Dan Dare
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Fleshworld

All three songs were engineered by Steve Albini, so I’m guessing it meant all the tracks recorded in Minnesota back in April were now in the public domain.

The first of them is a cover of song by the Jean-Paul Sartre Experience.  I have always been under the asumption that they was some sort of weird and underground 60s act, but it turns out they were an 80s/90s indie band from New Zealand, with Mothers being a track on a version of their 1989 album, The Size Of Food.    I’d love to tell you more, but I’d only be guessing.  One thing for sure, is that it does sound like a TWP original, with the anguished shouts of ‘you were going out with HIM!!!!!’

Here’s the original version:-

mp3: Jean-Paul Sartre Experience – Mothers

Dan Dare is a rare thing…..or was at that point in time….an instrumental.   It’s short and to the point, coming in at not much more than a minute-and-a-half.

Boring fact alert.  Dan Dare is the only song recorded in Minnesota that had more than a one-word title.  All ten songs on the album, plus the b-sides that were Niagara, Mothers and Fleshworld.  Talking of which…

……it’s another of the many excellent songs relegated to b-sides over the years.  This is one that I think must have come close to being included on Seamonsters, but then again, don’t ask me which of the tracks it would have taken the place of.

One final point to wrap up today. 

The sessions for Seamonsters weren’t all sweetness and light, and not long after the band returned to the UK, the decision was taken to sack Peter Solowka.  His place on the subsequent live dates was taken up by Paul Dorrington, which meant just two of the original members were now part of the group.  It was a sore one for ‘Grapper’ as can be seen from an answers he gave in an on-line interview in 2005:-

Q: Describe your time with The Wedding Present in five words:

A: “Thoroughly enjoyable life-changing journey”

Q: Tell us exactly why you left The Wedding Present?

A : ” I was kicked out! Officially this was for not being a good enough guitar player and not contributing enough to the song-writing (David still feels he needs to recite this story 14 years after the event). I’m not going to entertain this idea further by listing things that I’ve done. All I’ll say is that I know who I am and what I’ve been responsible for, and I can’t agree with this idea. 

“Reasons for actions such as this are complex but I am sure that it had a lot to do with the following. We had just recorded ‘Seamonsters’ – our (in RCA’s opinion) ‘very difficult’ third album. RCA needed something that would increase sales beyond our fanbase and although we were really happy with the album, it was clear to us that there was no ‘mega hit’ there. We knew we’d have to face their disapproval. Also, the Ukrainian music was still generating interest, at times deflecting interviewers from the current records we were trying to promote. As I was the Ukrainian link, they thought this problem would go away when I did. I feel I was made a bit of a scapegoat for the band’s failings.

“David, Simon and Keith did not consult me about any of my wishes or plans, even though we’d been on the same team for five years. I was especially disappointed with David as we’d been friends since school. After twenty years, I expected a lot more from him.”

———

Peter would continue to write, record and play music with The Ukrainians as a fully-fledged band, and would later become a science teacher in schools.    In due course, the wounds did heal to some extent, with The Ukrainians playing at the second staging of the annual Edge Of The Sea festival back in 2010 and the eleventh staging in 2019.

And with that, we are about to hit 1992 in which TWP again took the record label by surprise.

JC