Just before 1991 came to a close, The Wedding Present released details of an audacious plan that would, if successful, put them on a plateau with Elvis Presley.
The King had, since the late 50s, held the record of the most Top 30 hits in a calendar year. TWP were determined to match this, and would do so by releasing a brand-new single, on the first Monday of each month. Only 10,000 copies of each single would be pressed up, all on 7″ vinyl only (which must have had the RCA execs pulling their hair out in despair given that CD singles were becoming increasingly popular and profitable). Each single, which would consist of a TWP original on the A-side and a cover on the B-side, would be deleted the following day, and the calculation was that the 10,000 copies selling out in the blink of an eye would be enough to ensure Top 30 status for one week only.
It was a great plan, but there were serious flaws as soon became evident on Monday 6 January as loads of fans were left unable to get their hands on a copy of the single with shops all only getting a small number. I was working that day, in Edinburgh, and myself and Jaques the Kipper spent an extended lunch break going round everywhere we knew, chain stores and smaller shops alike, only to be constantly told that the stock had sold out. The same thing happened the following month, which led me to abandon plans to get out to the shops each Monday. Before the year was out, I did have three of the 12 singles – I had a couple of Mondays where I wasn’t working and could get to a shop in Glasgow for it opening, while towards the end the demand had eased a little bit, partly because CD compilations of the singles and the b-sides meant there were other ways to get your hands on the songs.
(Spoiler alert. I’ve since procured copies of all the singles that I didn’t have at the time, and the original vinyl will be getting used to supply the music over the coming weeks).
The group also announced that each single would be accompanied by a video, all to be made at a really low cost of £3000 per promo, with the group asking young, independent filmmakers to submit ideas and storyboards.
David Gedge has since said that, in an ideal world, he would have been able to use a different producer for each single, but the expense and practicalities of doing so were prohibitive, and so they were recorded over four different sessions…..
I’m intending to also, for reasons of time, bundle up some of the 1992 singles, but with this being such a long and rambling intro/backstory, I’ll limit myself today to the first in the series.
One of the things that really pissed me off about not getting this back in January 1992 were that the TWP original was a very fine song, taking up where Seamonsters had left off, albeit there was a new producer involved. Chris Nagle was a legend to those of us who loved Factory Records, having worked alongside Martin Hannett on many of the seminal records. He was part of the fabric at the famous Strawberry Studios in Stockport, and although no fans knew it at the time, he would be at the helm for the first three of the singles.
mp3: The Wedding Present – Blue Eyes
The other thing was not being able to listen to the b-side, a cover of one of my favourite records of all time.
mp3: The Wedding Present – Cattle and Cane
It’s a very decent take on things, which is high praise given how that I feel the original version by the Go-Betweens is so very special. The Weddoes stick to the basics and don’t try and do anything flashy with it. The one big difference being that the lyric is very much what had been sung by Grant McLennan back in 1982, and there was no attempt to reproduce Robert Forster‘s spoken contribution.
Blue Eyes reached #26. This would prove to be the worst chart placing across the next 12 months, so I’m assuming 10,000 sales in the first week in January had stiff competition with folk going out and spending Christmas money/gifts on singles that had been in the charts over the previous weeks. It was the highest new entry in the charts that week.
It got them an appearance on Top of The Pops in which David sang ‘live’ over a backing track, but didn’t take his guitar playing all that seriously.
One peculiar thing to mention.
Blue Eyes was still in the charts the following week, at #56. This is perhaps an indication that the distribution hadn’t gone exactly accordingly to plan, and some shops were late in receiving their copies. But all 10,000 copies were sold….
Remember the bit earlier about the cheaply made promos?
This one was directed by Mark Turner.
Quick word re the quality of this one. It was the hardest of the singles to track down online and the copy I’ve ended up with is less than pristine. All the other singles (with one exception, which is a bit crackly in places) are in better condition and will sound much better.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Was also living in Edinburgh at the time and working on Princes street , would race out to shop near station ( was it fopp) each first Monday and was lucky to get one each month . I’m a total sucker for stuff like this and shame re the producer idea . It was a lot easier when they repeated the idea and the singles just arrived in the post
Friend of Rachel Worth
I ended up with 7 of them at the time. Took until April to find a shop happy to ‘hold’ one for me – and then missed a couple when on holiday. It’s probably quite difficult to take ‘promotion’ for a single seriously when its already sold out everytime you do ToTP.
Matt
I was working in my local branch of Our Price at the time. We were only sent two copies of Blue Eyes and I snaffled one for myself on the day of release. This continued throughout the year. I was lucky. They were very difficult to get hold of for a number of years, but nowadays they are pretty easy to source. During a trip to a second-hand shop in Cardiff last year, four of the set were available for a couple quid each. For so,me reason, they had four copies of the 10th single…
What a great opening A & B side to the year ahead. I wasn’t particularly a fan at the time (that came later) but you had to admire the sheer ambition. And it worked.
I was far-sighted enough to stick my head round the door of a small independent shop not far from where I worked the week before the first release and ask if they’d save me a copy if I promised to collect it on the Monday lunchtime. The guy looked bemused and said that there would be no problem with that at all as hardly anyone went in on a Monday! He was as good as his word – and then trusted me to get the next 11, which I duly did. Not bad as I’d never set foot in the place before.
I ended up becoming good friends with him until the shop closed seven years later. Yes, my high spending levels certainly helped, but in fairness, he did chuck me quite a few freebies including a couple of box sets.