Month: June 2024

A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS

Close Up: The Cinerama Singles #9 :  The Post-Torino Singles (2)

We’re nearly there. The Cinerama singles spool is almost all unwound. But like many a decent film, there’s room for one more twist ending…

The Girl From the DDR (live) (2015, Come Play With Me)

We’re back to plain old black vinyl for a live take of The Girl From the DDR. This song occupied one half of a split seven-inch single with the artist Harkin – Katie Harkin – who contributes the song National Anthem of Nowhere.

It’s complicated. The Girl From the DDR is in fact a Wedding Present song – one of the best cuts from the 2008 Scopitones LP Valentina. So this Cinerama single is, I suppose, a cover version.

Connected with this song was Cinerama’s version of that entire Valentina LP. It was released by Scopitones in 2015 and became the fourth Cinerama album, albeit in a kind of technical sense. It is graced by a lovely sleeve and inlay from the illustrator Lee Thacker, a long-time Weddoes and Cinerama associate.

Anyway, this live cut of DDR was taken from a June 2015 Cinerama show. That gig saw the band accompanied, at the O2 Academy in Islington, by a significant amount of other musicians and instruments. The notes from the subsequent Cinerama Live 2015 concert CD reveal violin and viola. Cello and trumpet. Flute and triangle. This single then completely reinterprets the guitar-led original and delivers a shimmery, loungey version.

mp3: Cinerama – The Girl From The DDR (live)

This was released by Come Play With Me, a Leeds-based label that specialises in split seven-inch singles from its part of the world and beyond.

In 2017 Come Play With Me also put out the Wedding Present single Jump In, The Water’s Fine on seven-inch and on ten-inch picture disc too (featuring an image drawn by Darren Hayman of Hefner). Given the label’s name, it’s maybe not a surprise it is so entrenched in Weddoes fare – in fact it handled too The Wedding Present and Friends’ James Bond covers LP. This record was sold in aid of the Campaign Against Living Miserably. But c’mon they’ve had two plugs already in this series.

The Name of the Game (2018, Where It’s At Is Where You Are)

Closing (almost) this Cinerama series is a cover, and another split single. On one side you’ll find Cinerama’s take on The Name of the Game. And, yes, it’s the ABBA song. It’s an OK listen, if kind of inoffensive.

mp3: Cinerama – The Name of The Game

The Name of the Game was released by Where It’s At Is Where You Are, a label whose seven-seven-inch-singles-a-year club, which launched in 2012, ended as planned in 2018, this release closing the project.

Of more interest is the flipside. There you’ll find a cover of the Clash’s White Riot. As fast and manic as the original, it’s not however by Cinerama. It’s by a band named The Wedding Present.

mp3: The Wedding Present – White Riot

And isn’t that where this whole series started?

End credits

So that’s that. Cinerama continues to play gigs, though mostly for the annual At the Edge of the Sea Festival, where the Weddoes line-up, in the blink of an eye, becomes the other band.

The Torino-and-beyond singles – right up to I Wake Up Screaming/Unzip – are collected on the 2014 Scopitones compilation Seven Wonders of the World. Its title, just like previous anthologies This is Cinerama and Cinerama Holiday, is borrowed from a 1950s film shot and projected using the three-camera Cinerama process.

Pretty much everything the band has done can therefore be acquired via the albums, those three singles compilations and, if you’re game, the three John Peel sessions collections.

For deeper cuts, in addition to the Live 2015 CD/DVD, a couple more live CDs – Los Angeles and Belfast – were released by Scopitones, as well as a digital release of a gig from New York. Finally, a DVD, Get Up And Go, documented the group on tour in 2002.

For the sake of fastidiousness, worth a mention is a Cinerama release from February 2018 – a CD and ten-inch of a 2015 Marc Riley session.

It features just a couple of Cinerama takes (Cat Girl Tights and Wow) alongside two Wedding Present songs (You’re Dead and The Girl From the DDR) and is brought to you by Hatch Records.

mp3: Cinerama – Cat Girl Tights (Marc Riley session)
mp3: Cinerama – Wow (Marc Riley Session)
mp3: Cinerama – You’re Dead (Marc Riley Session)
mp3: Cinerama – The Girl From The DDR (Marc Riley Session)

That label also collates the Wedding Present’s numerous sessions for the DJ’s programme in a similar way to Strange Fruit’s collection of Peel sessions.

Another line of thanks to JC for the space to write all of this stuff, and also to those who stayed with the series, or even read/scanned one or two posts.

Next, as a kind of post-credits scene, and to make the entries number an even ten, the final offering in this series will be a bit of fun. And curiously, it will feature no Cinerama singles at all…

strangeways

A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS

Close Up: The Cinerama Singles #8 :  The Post-Torino Singles (1)

As we near the end of this ten-part series, we’ve split the last four Cinerama singles in two. Bunching them together would have made, even for these contributions, an obnoxiously long post.

For now though, you’ve stuck with it this far – so, to recycle the gag that opened this series, whatever you do…

Don’t Touch That Dial (2003, Scopitones)

A big, brooding bruiser of a single, Don’t Touch That Dial was released in October 2003. Unless you really want to dive down rabbit holes – and admittedly we’ll peek inside them across this post – this would be the final Cinerama single (and certainly the last – so far – on the band’s own Scopitones label).

It was an epic ending – though more heartfelt-note-on-the-fridge than screaming row and swiftly packed suitcase. And in its huge and hurt manner, Don’t Touch That Dial provided a not-so-cryptic clue to the reassembling of The Wedding Present that would begin a short time later.

mp3: Cinerama – Don’t Touch That Dial

Don’t believe me? Look only to Take Fountain, the Weddoes LP that emerged just a couple of years after this single. Among its eleven tracks you’ll find Don’t Touch That Dial (Pacific Northwest version), that appendage reflecting Gedge’s home at the time: the Emerald City of Seattle, a location hardly a stranger to a distorted guitar or two.

Themed around the dying of a relationship, Don’t Touch That Dial turned a bit of a trick then: closing one era whilst contributing to the opening of another.

The One That Got Away is your first B-side. It’s a real doozy, relentless and dinky, and decorated with an Ennio Morricone-style break, its whistled construction calling out for tumbleweed and cacti.

mp3: Cinerama – The One That Got Away

Last B On/Off is a bit of a blast. It doesn’t hang around long and although it’s hardly the greatest Cinerama B-side it’s a fine listen that makes room for some scurrying organ.

mp3: Cinerama – On/Off

A notable feature of the Don’t Touch That Dial CD is the inclusion of a video for the preceding Cinerama single, Careless. The sleeve, meanwhile, a subtle, red-bathed shot of a woman’s legs and feet, could almost be grabbed from a 70s James Bond title sequence.

But as the end credits roll on the Scopitones releases, let’s get silly and look at the lesser-known Cinerama singles. At the time of writing there are four of these, all are on seven-inch vinyl and I’m actually looking forward to getting to know them a bit better myself.

It’s Not You, It’s Me (2004, Go Metric!)

Limited to 1,500 singles, It’s Not You, It’s Me was released in June 2004 on the short-lived Go Metric! label.

Barring compilations, the single, in a shade of yellow that flirts dangerously with being light-brown – a real gift for detractors – would be the last from the band for almost ten years.

mp3: Cinerama – It’s Not You It’s Me

It’s Not You, It’s Me is a decent, if gruff and lo-fi, affair. It’s kind of dialled-down and despite the band name on the sleeve – which features a line drawing of a lounging, clotheless woman caressing what might be a ukulele – is pitched closer certainly to The Wedding Present than Cinerama.

B-side was Erriner Dich, a cover of a track by the Cologne-based band Klee. This group would go on to create a very fine remix of a Wedding Present song: I’m From Further North Than You, from 2005’s Take Fountain LP.

mp3: Cinerama – Erriner Dich

Erriner Dich – a song I am very unfamiliar with, is a great surprise. It’s sung in its native German and a driving rhythm, home also to female backing vocals from Terry de Castro, plus keyboard parts, is maybe a bit reminiscent of Stereolab. The track’s title translates as Remember Yourself, and I should know because I just checked it on Google Translate.

Thanks to both that limited pressing and the imminent dissolution of the band, both songs were, I suppose, something of a rarity. There were no digital releases back in the day either. But in 2014 their inclusion on the elegantly-sleeved Seven Wonders Of The World compilation gifted them a wider release.

I Wake Up Screaming (2013, Artificial Head Records and Tapes)

Courtesy of Artificial Head Records and Tapes of Houston, Texas, I Wake Up Screaming is as bright as its almost day-glo pink vinyl. Five-hundred copies were pressed up and Discogs tells me that – in more trouble for completists – 100 of these were in a ‘mixed marble’ colour.

As for the A-side it’s a cracking quiet/loud number all about betrayal and a recurring, haunting dream, the content of which results in the song’s title. It’s well worth a listen.

mp3: Cinerama – I Wake Up Screaming

Either by accident or design, this is another track that shares its name with that of a film: this time a 1941 noir. Either that or it’s a homage to the 2011 Kid Creole and the Coconuts album of the same title (and itself named after the film).

Your B-side here was a live version of the slinky Disco Volante track Unzip. It’s taken from David Gedge’s annual-when-there’s-not-a-plague-on At the Edge of the Sea Festival held in Brighton.

mp3: Cinerama – Unzip (Live At The Edge of The Sea)

Sleeve-wise, a couple of portrait shots recall the majority of the covers from Cinerama’s heyday.

Thanks for reading this far. Next up we’ll be almost all done…

strangeways

A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS

Close Up: The Cinerama Singles #7 :  The Torino singles (2)

It’s 2002 and new Cinerama LP Torino is in the can and ready to go. So perhaps it’s safe to call Quick, Before It Melts – and not 2001’s Health and Efficiency – the album’s official lead-off single.

mp3: Cinerama – Quick Before It Melts

Either way Quick, Before It Melts is a winner, performing a similar trick to the previous single in terms of balancing orchestrated strings with a big, distorted guitar sound. Perhaps appropriately for a song whose title may well nod to the challenges around male virility, an extended version is found on the album.

Flips were, firstly, an acoustic version of arguably the finest track on debut LP Va Va Voom: Ears. This take works really well here and benefits greatly from some fine string arrangements and even a smidgen of Spanishy-sounding guitar plucking.

mp3: Cinerama – Ears (acoustic version)

Second B-side As If is terrific and a personal favourite, not least because of its crunchy lead guitar parts and lengthy instrumental coda. Your lyrics are the kind of exchanges you’d hear, so I’m told, through a juice glass pinned towards your neighbours’ bedroom walls. And who in all of indiedom writes that kind of stuff better?

mp3: Cinerama – As If

This was a busy old time for the band: a squint at Cinerama’s concertography reveals a fairly extensive tour in support of Torino, with the UK, Ireland and USA visited in the early autumn of 2002.

mp3: Cinerama – Careless

With its recurring slower-then-faster tempo and powerful blast of chorus-accompanying guitar, Careless was fine single material and, really, the natural option from the Torino tracks on offer. This then was the release that brought an end to the songs taken from Cinerama’s final album of original material.

But it wasn’t the last hurrah, as our next post will testify.

Back to Careless for now though. Your B-sides here were This Isn’t What It Looks Like and Sparkle Lipstick.

The former’s pleading title locates it deep inside a platonic relationship and the inevitable suspicions it’s provoked from the third party. Despite its slow start, This Isn’t What It Looks Like quickly becomes a breezy number, and one that benefits from some pleasant, leaping strings.

mp3: Cinerama – This Isn’t What It Looks Like

Listening to it now, after a while away, second B-side Sparkle Lipstick is quite the production. Strings and brass (synthesised or not) are present, although the star of the show is a huge, fuzzy-guitar-driven chorus.

mp3: Cinerama – Sparkle Lipstick

If you’ve not heard them, and even if you have, both these Bs are worthy of your time.

Of note on all of these Careless tracks is the contribution, her last for the band, of Sally Murrell. Here, SM’s backing vocals and accompaniments, as they did across many Cinerama releases, added something special and in a big way helped to define the group’s sound.

Next up will be a post that details the final Cinerama single on Scopitones – an A-side that bridged the present with both the past and the future. Not bad going for a pop song. We’ll also sweep up the singles material that would emerge several years after what you might call the official canon.

Do I need to thank JC and readers again? Of course I do.

strangeways