THE WEDDING PRESENT SINGLES (Part Twenty-Nine)

Last week, I mentioned that the relative failure of Watusi, along with the re-recorded version of It’s A Gas, meant that the Island Records era was really over before it had begun.

In some ways, it was a strange situation as 1994 had been the year the band’s records had sold so poorly, and yet they were very prominent on the bill of the Reading Festival, albeit not playing the biggest of the stages:-

1995 proved to be a transitional year.  Live shows, to begin with, were few and far between.  An 8-date tour of France in March before 4 shows in the UK (Leicester, Huddersfield, St Helens and York) in mid-June.  There were then 5 festival appearances in July.  The strange thing for fans was that these shows saw The Wedding Present perform as a three-piece band, as guitarist Paul Dorrington had quit at the start of the year.

A ‘proper’ tour was scheduled for November/December – 15 dates in England plus one in Newport, Wales – prior to which Jayne Lockley became the first woman to join the band. Jayne played bass, which meant Darren Belk switched to guitar. 

The tour coincided with the release of the first new 45 of the year.  It turned out to be a self-released single, only available in the UK at the shows during the November tour or by mail order, although two small record labels – Merge and Siesta – took on the task of giving it a physical release in America and Spain respectively.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Sucker

Not being available in any shops, it was never going to chart, thus bringing to an end the run of 20 successive 45s that had gone at least Top 75.  

Sucker isn’t the most memorable of singles, and at just over 100 seconds in length, there isn’t all that much to it.  For all that it was only available at the live shows or by mail order, it’s not all that difficult to find on the second-hand market at a relatively low cost, which I think gives a fair indication of what most fans think of it. 

The b-side was a cover:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Waiting On The Guns

The original dates from 1994, and was written and recorded by Butterglory, a little-known indie band from Kansas, who were also on Merge Records.  It’s a bit more substantial than Sucker, and while it does have a certain charm in places, it isn’t the most memorable or unusual of covers.

I think it’s fair to say that The Wedding Present were in danger of becoming a bit of an irrelevance in terms of the big picture….much of the band’s core fanbase had moved on, albeit there was still much love on offer from John Peel for whom they recorded an eleventh session in December 1995, offering a tantalising glimpse of new material scheduled for release on a new label in the new year. Worth mentioning that December 1995 was when John Peel was the subject of the long-running TV show This Is Your life, and David Gedge was one of the surprise guests invited to come on and say a few words.

JC