A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS
Close Up: The Cinerama Singles #2
The Va Va Voom singles
Ready for your close up? After last time’s pre-credit sequence, our Cinerama retrospective begins for real here. It’s all about the singles, but the LPs have been of great use in providing a structure, a helpful timeline and some wider context. So they’ll pop up along the way and hopefully will be as useful to you too. First up…
‘Lush’ was how I remember summing up this mysteriously named debut Cinerama release on Cooking Vinyl. Music-wise this was certainly a departure from the Wedding Present sound, with strings (of the non-guitar variety) prominent in the mix.
At the time, and now so many years on, Kerry Kerry felt like a statement in that regard. As did the sleeves housing the CD and vinyl singles. On these appeared Gedge and bandmate Sally Murrell, albeit diffused and half-hiding amid the jazzy, highly stylised artwork. Going forward, most Cinerama releases would apply cover stars or artwork in the way Wedding Present releases always did, but these rare personal appearance on sleeves might have been designed to further discriminate between the two bands.
If musically a whole new direction was apparent, where Kerry Kerry chimed with the Weddoes was in lyrical content and theme: the very well-trodden Gedge territory of rejection and betrayal. You bought him presents with my money. That makes me feel just great…
The song opens also with the singer delivering a few sung words in advance of the music, and so calls back to another debut: Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft, the opener to George Best. And the line in question: Well at least can’t you look at me when I’m talking to you? does that Wedding Present trick of locating us in the middle of a conversation. So it’s like we’re not listening; instead, we’re eavesdropping, which is a far more compelling proposition.
Your B-sides were split across a CD single and a couple of seven-inch singles.
On the CD was found Love, and this continued the new sound established by the A-side. The song also introduced Murrell’s softly delivered harmonising vocals: an effective contrast.
mp3: Cinerama – Love
For curious and worrying WP fans challenged by Cinerama’s loungey sound, second B-side Au Pair, despite its brass-filled coda, would have placed them nearer their comfort zone. Au Pair’s a corking song and probably the go-to track from this tranche of releases. Both these B-sides would pop up again, tagged onto the US and Japan release of the imminent debut, Va Va Voom.
mp3: Cinerama – Au Pair
As for the seven-inches: Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is fine, and its title reveals the singer’s fondness for James Bond (this would be evidenced again in short order, via the Va Va Voom track Honey Rider – perhaps deliberately mis-spelled against the Dr No character’s Ryder for legal reasons).
mp3: Cinerama – Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Somewhat confusingly, in 2020, Gedge got together with the back-together Sleeper for another shot at Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. But this was a cover of a song from the 1965 Bond film Thunderball. So: same title. Different song. Different band. Different film. And if it’s perplexing reading about this quirk, you should try writing about it.
Anyway, this new track formed part of a larger project – an LP of 20 Bond-related covers from The Wedding Present and Friends. Sold in aid of the mental-health initiative CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).
www.scopitones.co.uk/product/not-from-where-i-m-standing-lp
Curiously, James Bond will return in this series, but a bit further down the line…
Last up for the Kerry Kerry era though is the second seven-inch B-side 7X. Named after the top-secret formula for Coca Cola, and recounting the tale of an equally inscrutable partner, this is the better of the two vinyl flips.
mp3: Cinerama -7X
As an aside, debut Cinerama LP Va Va Voom had largely delivered on the promise of Kerry Kerry. The album’s swooning arrangements and its roll call of cellos and flutes, violins and trumpets successfully removed the band from typical guitar-bass-drum territory (even if the lyrical themes drifted not terribly far from those associated with The Wedding Present).
Looking at Va Va Voom’s tracklisting now, Dance, Girl, Dance still stands up as the natural candidate for that tricky second single. There are better songs (particularly the Emma Pollock-guesting Ears and the knock-your-socks-off Hard, Fast and Beautiful) but the jaunty and joyous Dance, Girl, Dance had more of the single about it.
mp3: Cinerama – Dance Girl Dance
On the flip of the sole CD single was Model Spy (largely instrumental and sounding every bit like the 60s TV-show theme its title suggests).
mp3: Cinerama – Model Spy
But its fellow B was a different prospect altogether: the unusual and arresting Crusoe. This song samples the theme tune of the TV series The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, which Wikipedia tells me first aired in the UK in 1965.
mp3: Cinerama – Crusoe
This Cinerama track is a real beauty that seamlessly receives the show’s elegant theme and complements it with suitably heartbreaking lyrics. Crusoe is absolutely the song to seek out from this release. Perhaps acknowledging its worth, this track, along with Model Spy further supplemented the Japan issue of Va Va Voom.
So, with what we’ve gone and called the Va Va Voom singles pored over, next time we’ll be looking at the singles that popped up both prior to and around Disco Volante, Cinerama’s second LP, released in September 2000.
Four singles made it out of that release alive. But to avoid a post that goes on and on even longer than this one, here’s fun: we’ll next do the two releases that preceded Disco Volante. Then over a couple more post we’ll tackle the set of singles connected with that second LP – one that led Cinerama’s arguably quintessential and definitely highly prolific mid-period.
Thanks again to Jim, and to you for reading.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
the one cinerama lp I have – looking forward to hearing the b sides
I enjoyed that. Could the period be referred to as the ‘perplexing years?’
I was familiar with the songs – and had a wee sense of smugness at my recollections. Alas, the smugness was washed away when a quick look at my CDs identified that I owned none of the singles – only a compilation, This is Cinerama, on which the singles appear. I turns out I’m a fraud, again.
Flimflamfan
The Robinson Crusoe theme was written by Robert Mellin & Gian-Piero Reverberi. The marvellously surnamed Mr Reverberi also co-wrote (with his brother Gian-Franco Reverberi) the theme for “Build a Coffin Django” which was sampled for Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”. If you are gonna do theme tunes… do them well.