THE WEDDING PRESENT SINGLES (Part Twenty-Seven)

It’s not that 1993 was a quiet year for The Wedding Present.  The gig history over at the official website shows:-

February:  2 UK shows in Carlisle and London, followed by 18 dates in France
March: 4 shows in Japan and one in Hong Kong
April: shows in Leeds and Sheffield
July: part of the bill at the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-Upon- Avon
September – 3 shows in France
October: 3 shows in the UK (Portsmouth, Windsor and Southampton) and 1 in France
November: 4 shows (Newcastle, Galashiels, Glasgow and Belfast)
December: 5 dates in Ireland, followed by a gig in Leeds.

I make that 45 gigs. It was a year in which Keith Gregory took his leave of the band. It wasn’t the first time he’d wanted to quit, but David Gedge‘s powers of persuasion finally failed to work. He was replaced by Darren Belk.  The Wedding Present now had just one original member left as part of its ranks.

Oh, and they were let go by RCA, which was no real surprise given that they never did play the game the way a major label would have expected.

The only release came courtesy of another hook up with Strange Fruit.  This time around the BBC vaults were raided for a CD/LP release called John Peel Sessions 1987-1990, issued in November 1993, just in time for the Christmas market.

1994 opened up with tours of France and the USA, but all the while new songs were being written and worked on for what would be the next album.  Undaunted by the RCA experience, the group signed to Island Records having arranged a budget that would enable the new material to be recorded in Seattle, with Steve Fisk, who was best known for his work on records released on Sub Pop and K, two of the hippest indie labels at the time.

The producer was given a specific brief by the group – ‘make us do something different and sound like a Sixties band’.  The first thing that anyone heard was a new single released at the beginning of September 1994, on 12″ vinyl, cassette and 2 x CDs.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah

It was different.  And it was a bit of a jolt to the system.   Fans really weren’t quite sure what to make of it.  It was fast, and it had rhythm, as well as that unmistakable Gedge singing voice.  But isn’t that an organ to the fore?   What the heck……????

As it turned out, Yeah to the power of five set things up for the following week’s release of Watusi, the first fully-fledged studio album in more than three years.  It’s one which divided fans on release and still does 30 years on.  It has many lovers and many detractors.  I’m one of those who sits on the fence.

The lead-off single is fine in its own way, but such was the shock of the new sound, that I’ve never fully taken to it.  I wasn’t alone, as it only reached #51 in the charts, which must have been a bit of a sore one to take for a band who just a couple of years ago were regulars in the Top 20, albeit via a clever piece of marketing.

The 12″ and CD1 had three additional songs, two of which were originals, with the other being the now, much anticipated cover.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Le Bikini
mp3: The Wedding Present – Flame On
mp3: The Wedding Present – Him Or Me (What’s It Gonna Be)

Anyone scratching their head at the single probably had their jaws hit the floor when the 100 seconds of the instrumental Le Bikini came to an end.  It was surf-rock.  It was not anything TWP had attempted before.

Flame On was on ground that was a bit more secure, albeit the fast guitars were twisted around in a way that were a tad different.

One thing to note….after years when most songs were credited to ‘Gedge’, these three new tracks were attributed to ‘Belk/Dorrington/Gedge/Smith.’ The signs of a new democracy within the band? Or maybe it was really the case that everyone, working with a new producer in a new city, was contributing on an equal basis.

The cover?  It was of a 1967 hit single by Paul Revere & The Raiders.  I say hit single, but that would have been in their native America.  They might have been part of the music scene on that side of the Atlantic for the best part of 20 years across the 50s, 60s and 70s, but they rarely had their records played on UK radio stations, far less have any chart success.  The cover is OK as these things go, but again, it was hard to digest.

CD2 had three more songs.   They were lifted from a John Peel session that had been recorded on 22 March and broadcast on 16 April 1994.  None of these rang any alarm bells as they couldn’t be anything other than Wedding Present songs and there was no reason to think a drastic change of sound was on its way.  All three tracks would later be included on Watusi, but in two of the cases, in drastically different form to the session versions:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Gazebo (Peel Session)
mp3: The Wedding Present – So Long Baby (Peel Session)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Spangle (Peel Session)

There would be one further single lifted from Watusi, but given so much of the backstory has been told today, the posting on that should be a bit shorter.  Indeed, I might do a cut’n’paste from a few years back.

JC