Category: Cinerama

A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS

Close-Up: The Cinerama Singles #10 – LP Tracks Imaginary Compilation Album Takeover

Almost there.

This Cinerama ICA complements and completes the singles/B-sides posts. Perversely, only LP tracks were permitted entry. Why? Because it takes the singles series up to an even ten entries and also provides an excuse to air a broader scope of Cinerama songs.

The banning of numbers previously covered across the singles series made this ICA significantly easier to compile, albeit 16 tracks had still to be whittled down to the ten that follow. They’re all drawn from the three LPs of original Cinerama material: Va Va Voom, Disco Volante, and Torino.

Here goes – and I promise, I’ll try not to sound like ChatGPT.

Side 1

And When She Was Bad (Torino 2004, Scopitones)

This opens the Torino album with an intake of breath that called way back to George Best’s first song Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft. And for Cinerama fans this may have been the track that most directly announced a shift to a more familiar, more guitar-led era. It’s a quiet/loud/quiet mini-epic, and a terrific statement-song with which to begin the 2004 album.

As an addendum, just missing this ICA’s cut was Two Girls, the rampant belter that, with barely a pause, follows And When She Was Bad. That song would further confirm Cinerama heading in a predominantly faster, darker and noisier direction.

Après Ski (Disco Volante, 2000, Scopitones)

Looking for an elegant song about awkward, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it age-gap sex? Well, you’re in luck. Here it is, complete with that adventure’s consequent complications, frustrations and disappointments. These are perhaps most pointedly referenced in the line She thought she’d turn a boy into a man, but in real life some things don’t go to plan.
Musically, chopping strings and warm brass sections contribute to making Après Ski, like a lot of the songs on Disco Volante, quite the defining Cinerama number.

Ears (Va Va Voom, 1998, Cooking Vinyl)

An oddity for this ICA given that this Va Va Voom track appeared, in an acoustic version over at the singles series. That was via its B-side status on the 2002 Quick, Before It Melts single. This is the proper, organ-heavy LP version though. As pondered earlier in these posts, Ears is arguably the finest cut on that first record and recounts the almost-comical Jarvis-style situation of listening, through the wall, to an ex-partner enjoying a new adventure. The addition of Emma Pollock’s opposing vocals – placed intentionally across David Gedge’s own delivery – lift this song high among the band’s ten best.

Close Up (Torino, 2004, Scopitones)

A kind of masochism and self-flagellation takes the lead in the diminutive Close Up. Here, a wronged lover demands to be told, in detail, of his partner’s infidelities. Though not precisely X-rated, the language in which these various requests are made doesn’t pull its punches either: Again, oh please just tell me again, and this time don’t fail to give me every last detail. I’m sincere, I really do wanna hear what was in your head when you had a stranger in our bed.

From the same LP, Tie Me Up is maybe one of Gedge’s most lyrically direct love songs, and it’s equally frank in its language and imagery. Both songs somehow manage to reference such matters in a mature way though – one that I reckon avoids being salacious or creepy.

Heels (Disco Volante, 2000, Scopitones)

On this Disco Volante track a slow build across strings and piano arrives at a zappy chorus – one led by the sing-along line I don’t really care that you’ve found another lover. (Translation: I do really care that you’ve found another lover).

For me, this song, which stars a magnetic but cruel femme-fatale casually crushing lovers beneath those eponymous heels, distils and defines Cinerama perfectly. Lyrically, it’s all here: glamour and sex. Obsession and rejection. Musically too, amid the strings and keys there’s even room to sneak in a smidgen of distorted guitar. Plus there’s that terrace stomp of a chorus. And all on the LP in which it’s arguable that the band, and the band’s ideal, became fully formed and perfectly presented.

Side 2

Maniac (Va Va Voom, 1998, Cooking Vinyl)

Rejection via ansaphone. Murderous introspection. And a kind of lyrical riddle: you’ll only see how much I’ve changed if you come back.

Maniac, the first track on Va Va Voom, might have opened the Cinerama LP account with a familiar theme, but gone were the Wedding Present’s overt guitars. Instead keyboards and orchestrated strings took the lion’s share.  Well, this was a different band after all.

A slower-paced, rather more world-weary version is found on the group’s first John Peel Sessions collection (1998, Scopitones).

Hard, Fast and Beautiful (Va Va Voom, 1998)

Aired in the singles series in its Spanish-language B-side version (Dura, Rapida y Hermosa) this English original provides Va Va Voom’s huge, soaring heart. That’s thanks mainly to its consciously dramatic piano-led opening and lofty, kick-the-air chorus about that reliable pop trope: locating, then losing, The One.

Get Up And Go (Torino, 2004, Scopitones)

One of the finest Torino tracks, Get Up And Go begins, perhaps appropriately for the film-influenced Cinerama, with a tentative intro reminiscent of a Danny Elfman number. Lyrics then recount the irresistible and inconvenient trappings of infidelity: instant, unstoppable attraction. A swiftly deleted text. The emergency change of bedclothes the message instigates. Then the coldness of post-coital post-rationalisation.

Of particular note also is the song’s absolutely massive chorus. It combines, to great effect, strings of both the orchestral and distorted guitar variety.

Get Smart (Torino, 2004, Scopitones)

A corking Torino track. Its lyrics speak from the point of view of a cheated-on partner. But it refuses to offer a traditional pop response of broken-heartedness or even hatred. Instead, the wronged partner is imploring the song’s subject to conduct his/her clumsy and regular affairs with more care. That way, the adored relationship can at least continue via a sort of don’t ask/don’t tell arrangement.

Interestingly, this plea for subtlety is in direct opposition to Close Up’s demand for the unvarnished truth. No wonder people tell me all this love stuff is way too complicated to be bothering with.

146 Degrees (Disco Volante, 2000, Scopitones)

Of interest to, well no one really, this was the last track chosen for this ICA. It had come down to a car-park fight between Torino song Cat Girl Tights and this one: 146 Degrees, the Disco Volante opener.

The mundane truth is that going with Cat Girl Tights would have made the ICA too Torino-heavy. Also, 146 Degrees – so-named after the composite angle view of the Cinerama projection system that gave the band its name – is actually, production-wise, a pretty big, high-concept track. So its last-to-hop-on-the-bus status shouldn’t be seen as a comment on its quality.

Here, the lyrics pay homage to the song’s title, and concern themselves with a woman whose presence beguiles and bewitches onlookers by demanding, albeit unintentionally, that every eye in the house be trained upon her.

This idea of an effortlessly attractive female, around whom events revolve, occasions disrupt and arguments begin, is visited also in lyrics present in the fellow Disco Volante tracks Your Charms: So I’m always amused whenever you are left confused at being centre of attention and the playful Because I’m Beautiful: Everybody wants to know how every party seems to become my show.

Carried by a shimmering soundscape of flute, keys and what might be bongos – and with some fine Sally Murrell backing vocals – 146 Degrees was a grand way to kick off the second LP.

It’s also an appropriate track to accompany the flipping-up of seats and the sweeping-up of popcorn on this Cinerama journey. Next time, Jim returns to take us through the post-hiatus Wedding Present singles – an adventure that commenced in 2005.

So, for the final time, thank so much to JC for the space, and to anyone who’s taken the time to read all or some of this series and/or post a comment.

strangeways

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

A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS

Close Up: The Cinerama Singles #6 :  The Torino singles

Album-wise, where debut Va Va Voom had been the sound of a project finding its feet, its follow-up Disco Volante had perfected the Cinerama formula. So which way would Torino, the next LP, jump?

Let’s find out via the three releases from that third and final Cinerama album (although there’s a bit of a twist in that tale). In this post we’ll look at just one single, though, then wrap-up the remaining Torino releases next time.

Health and Efficiency (2001, Scopitones)

Health and Efficiency, named after the long-established British naturism magazine, was the first Torino-featured single out of the block. Released in 2001, its sleeve notes don’t reference the 2002 LP at all so it’s possible this was technically a standalone release. It does actually close the album though, so in my book it’s OK to lump it in under the Torino banner.

Anyway, Health and Efficiency is a beezer of a song and, if you’ve not heard it, is worthy of the six-plus minutes this task requires. Predicated on the passing of time, it’s one from the trusted quiet/loud stable and was recorded by the late Steve Albini. Here, the engineer mixes orchestration with absolutely huge guitar parts – almost as huge as the Weddoes’ own Bewitched, Dalliance or Niagara – to thrilling effect.

In keeping with much of Torino, Health and Efficiency signalled a significant shift towards the bigger, darker sounds that characterised Wedding Present albums like Bizarro and Seamonsters. It was a record also that welcomed back the Weddoes’ Saturnalia-era guitarist Simon Cleave.

mp3: Cinerama – Health and Efficiency

The track opens and closes with speech, covertly captured via MiniDisc recorder, by David Gedge on the streets of New York City. At the tail-end of the piece this voice, which the book Sleevenotes tells us is providing a nostalgic commentary concerning urban loss, asserts that We have become a very cold society – prior to a will-o’-the-wisp plink that abruptly ends the number.

On the LP, so long as you’re listening to it in intended sequence, this shrill, resonating little note provides a full-stop, really, to Cinerama as a band. It’s almost as if, job done, into the ether they disappear.

Looking at Torino’s tracklisting now, the lilting Cinerama sound is certainly across it, most notably via moments of lightness like the feathery Airborne and the ecstatic, bawdy-as-it-sounds Tie Me Up. But for the most part the guitars are back, and Health and Efficiency was the single that announced this.

Your B-sides are Swim, a sprightly number – one I hadn’t heard in such a long time – and Diamonds Are Forever. That’s, of course, a cover of the John Barry-composed, Shirley Bassey-sung theme from the 1971 James Bond film of the same name.

mp3 : Cinerama – Swim
mp3 : Cinerama – Diamonds Are Forever

Diamonds are Forever is built, really, for what the idea of Cinerama was possibly all about: a bit of glamour and nostalgia, quiet scandal and sophistication. Here, a somewhat throaty David Gedge – a delivery heard throughout these three tracks – delivers a respectful take that doesn’t overdo things or camp it up.

It’s a version that popped up again – on Not From Where I’m Standing, the LP of Bond-related covers we referenced a while back in this series. This was a release whose sales raised funds for the mental-health initiative CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably.

Wrapping up, an eye-catching sleeve, one of Cinerama’s best, may well be a clipping from an issue of Health and Efficiency itself. Upon the cover an elegant lady strikes a graceful pose, whilst the band name, splayed across her chest, artfully preserves her modesty.

Tune in next time for a double feature: those two remaining Torino-era singles.

strangeways

A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS

Close Up: The Cinerama Singles #5 :  Disco Volante singles (2)

The year 2000 had been a prolific and highly creative year for Cinerama. LP #2 Disco Volante had been backed, as was usual, by fairly extensive touring across the mainland UK and out to the USA. In addition, a compilation of John Peel sessions had been released.

The DJ had been an enthusiastic and instrumental supporter of The Wedding Present from the band’s earliest days and this patronage had carried across to the new group. Now Peel got just what he always wanted: a song that, beyond his incalculable influence as a broadcaster, he himself had directly made happen.

Your Charms, inspired by a chat/challenge between Peel and David Gedge on the nature of old song titles, had begun life as a Peel session track in June of 2000

mp3: Cinerama – Your Charms (Peel Session, June 2000)

Subsequently re-recorded and appearing on Disco Volante, Your Charms was effervescent and catchy, lifted by a sing-along chorus and therefore absolutely prime single material. Resplendent with a summery sheen, there’s an argument that this song, and not Lollobrigida, should have been announcing the new LP.

mp3: Cinerama – Your Charms

B-sides? First up was Reel 2, Dialogue 2 – its title a subtle nod to the origins of the bleeping Star Wars droid R2D2. The space references begin and end there though, with David Gedge and bandmate Sally Murrell swapping lead vocals in a sort of call-and-response dialogue concerning the familiar foibles of the heart. It’s solid enough, and it’s good to hear Sally M’s plaintive vocal unfettered by harmonies or battling with instrumentation amid which it could be easily lost.

mp3: Cinerama – Reel2, Dialogue 2

Girl on a Motorcycle – another of a zillion Gedge titles pinched from films – is ace. A winner of a chorus stays with you long after the song has zoomed off into the distance, plus Murrell’s accompanying ahhhs are so much more the sum of their parts.

mp3: Cinerama – Girl On A Motorcycle

Finally, for reasons of trainspotting and pedantry, it’d be remiss at this point not to mention that the single version of Your Charms clips a short pre-song patch of dialogue heard on the album take.

mp3: Cinerama – Superman

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Superman. The fourth and final Disco Volante single from Cinerama.

The likes of Lollobrigida had tried its best to stretch and pull at my own shamefully narrow musical preferences. But in short order Superman, clothed in a more recognisable and comforting get-up, swooped down as if to scoop me far from the accordion.

To be honest, good song that it is, I’ve always found the words and overall sentiment of Superman to be a bit too self-pitying. That said, I do admire the entrance into the plot of the Man of Steel and the applying of the familiar comic-book phrase ‘that’s a job for Superman’ to a breakup issue rather than to one of global significance. Illustrating again a real purple patch for Sally Murrell contributions, her backing harmonies add texture throughout, whilst more substantial, if brief, vocals are latched onto the closing seconds.

Flips are Starry Eyed, its tinkling keyboard sections, its pace and prominent distorted guitar parts perhaps previewing what would be a switch in Cinerama’s sound.

Segueing on the CD single with little or no break from Starry Eyed is a corker: a cover of Yesterday Once More, the lovely song made famous by The Carpenters. This Cinerama take introduces things with several seconds of crackling, channel-hopping radio and the whole thing, with guitars-a-plenty is how you might imagine The Wedding Present tackling such a task. It’s recommended if you haven’t heard it.

mp3 : Cinerama – Starry Eyed
mp3 : Cinerama – Yesterday Once More

Worth mentioning is the Spanish-language version of Superman (Superman Versión en Español to give it its nombre del domingo). This was released on Scopitones as a limited seven-inch – all pressed up on thick green vinyl: the colour, it now strikes me, of Kryptonite.

mp3: Cinerama – Superman Versión en Español

Your B-side was Dura, Rápida y Hermosa (known in another life as Hard, Fast and Beautiful – one of the key tracks from debut LP Va Va Voom). This studio take – again in Spanish – is preceded by a clip of amusing gig banter.

mp3: Cinerama – Dura, Rápida y Hermosa

The four Disco Volante singles, their B-sides, and those Spanish-language takes are collected on the Cinerama Holiday compilation. This was released by Scopitones in 2002.

Trivia Time : Chansons dans d’autres langues

Superman, with is comic-book connection, and those Spanish versions of a couple of tracks, was only continuing tradition, really, where Gedge compositions are concerned.

As early as 1988, The Wedding Present – disguised as Cadeau De Mariage – released another limited seven-inch: Pourquoi Es Tu Devenue Si Raisonnable? – a French-language version of Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now? Since then, other non-English-language takes, in a list unlikely to be exhaustive, have included:

In French, Cinerama, 2001: Health and Efficiency

In French, Cinerama, 2002: Lollobrigida

In German, Cinerama, 2004: Erriner Dich

In French, The Wedding Present, 2012: Deer Caught in the Headlights, End Credits, Metal Men, and Mystery Date

In German, The Wedding Present, 2013: Back A Bit… Stop!, The Girl From the DDR, You Jane and 524 Fidelio

In Welsh, The Wedding Present, 2014: 1000 Fahrenheit, Meet Cute, Journey Into Space, and Can You Keep a Secret?

And of course, a whole LP of Ukrainian-language folk songs (Wedding Present, 1988)

Pow!

As for comics and superhero references, I wouldn’t even attempt a full list, but in addition to Superman, connections across either LP/song titles or within lyrics have offered:

Bizarro – (Wedding Present, 1989)

Brassneck – (Wedding Present, 1989)

Dan Dare – (Wedding Present, 1991)

Catwoman – (Wedding Present, 1994)

Flame On – (Wedding Present, 1994)

Real Thing – (Wedding Present, 1996)

Cat Girl Tights – (Cinerama, 2002)

Santa Ana Winds – (Wedding Present, 2008)

Spider-Man on Hollywood – (Wedding Present, 2008)

Hulk Loves Betty (Wedding Present, 2008)

Metal Men (Wedding Present, 2012)

Connected, kind of, with these is Tales From The Wedding Present – billed as David Gedge’s autobiography in comic-book form. Recounted by the band and associates, and illustrated by Lee Thacker, these are well worth a read.

The separate issues have all but sold out, but gathering and supplementing all of the original comic material, an anthology has been released.

You want it darker? Next up, Cinerama enters a new stage. One that would bring Gedge closer than ever to territory largely unvisited for six-plus years. It was the beginning of a phase whose sound was increasingly glancing back whilst moving forward and would eventually, logically, culminate in the return to the indie scene of a very familiar name.

And on that unnecessarily dramatic note, thanks as ever to JC and all readers.

strangeways

A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS

Close Up: The Cinerama Singles #4 :  Disco Volante singles (1)

September 2000 would see the release of second Cinerama LP Disco Volante (yet another Bond reference, this time named for the luxurious yacht used by the villain Emilio Largo in the 1965 film Thunderball).

Two singles warmed us up for the new LP – we’ll cover those in this post – and a further two went out post-release. It was an unusually high number, but one that would provide space for some high-quality B-sides.

mp3: Cinerama – Wow

Wow indeed. An absolute must-listen, Wow hit the racks in June 2000. Theme-wise we were on hardly new ground here, but musically this was ferocious and graced by a really robust sing-along chorus. Wow was possibly the first Cinerama-song-that-could-have-passed-as-a-Wedding-Present-song. It also featured the greatest use of flute in a pop tune since My Bloody Valentine stuck one on When You Sleep.

Not to be deliberately a nuisance, but it’s well worth noting that an extended mix of Wow is found on Disco Volante. Thanks to a thrilling must-hear instrumental coda, it’s almost three minutes longer than this single cut and in my view is the finer of the two tracks.

B-sides here contributed to a terrific single release. Whereas for me Wow leaned towards The Wedding Present, 10 Denier went the other way and possibly perfected the Cinerama sound. Piano-led and elevated by harmonies and strings a-go-go, was 10 Denier the greatest Eurovision song there never was?

mp3: Cinerama – 10 Denier

Gigolo, the final track on the Wow single, was a harder counterpoint. Fragmented and angular, it was closer in tone to the material that would present itself a couple of years later on Cinerama’s next LP.

mp3: Cinerama – Gigolo

Wow also marks the point at which bass guitarist Terry de Castro would join Cinerama. Formerly of the Nude Records band Goya Dress, de Castro is well worth a mention as she would become a long-time creative collaborator, make the switch to guitar, and contribute backing vocals (and one lead) across -spoiler alert – subsequent Wedding Present output.

From Wikipedia:

Luigia “Gina” Lollobrigida (4 July 1927 – 16 January 2023), known professionally as Gina Lollobrigida, was an Italian actress and photojournalist. She was one of the highest-profile European actresses of the 1950s and early 1960s, a period in which she was an international sex symbol.

If we count the admittedly different version of Wow as a Disco Volante single, the second track taken from the LP would be Lollobrigida. It emerged in late August 2000, just a few weeks prior to the album’s release. Like all eleven Disco Volante tracks, Lollobrigida was recorded by Steve Albini, the producer and sound engineer hardly noted for the gauzy, accordion and keyboard-accented confections that characterise this song.

mp3: Cinerama – Lollobrigida

Beginning with a trademark intake of breath, this is one of Cinerama’s most delicate compositions. Sleeve-wise, Lollobrigida was wrapped in a rosy, harshly cropped image of the eponymous actress. A version, sung in French, featured on a Peel session broadcast on 17 September 2000, just a day prior to the release of Disco Volante.

mp3: Cinerama – Lollobrigida (French Version – Peel Session)

B-sides? See Thru is another of Gedge’s quietly bawdy Cinerama titles (see also 10 Denier, Unzip, Quick, Before It Melts, Tie Me Up and Sparkle Lipstick). It’s antsy, restless and concerned with the perennial topic of deception. Here the offender does his best to make lemonade with lemons by asserting that You say I never tell the truth, at least you know when I am lying. It’s an admirable comeback, but one unlikely to prevail.

mp3: Cinerama – See Thru

On the Second flip, Sly Curl is a finer fit to its A-side. Here the pace drops, a dependable pop trope – ‘why do you have to go out with him/her when you could go out with me?’ – is expressed before the late comedian, actor, writer and Weddoes nut Sean Hughes’ affectingly delivered spoken words close a gentle, very Cinerama number.

mp3: Cinerama – Sly Curl

It’s tracks like Sly Curl, and several on Disco Volante (the chorus-monster Heels, plus Après Ski and Let’s Pretend) that make me think this was the point at which Cinerama perfected its sound and hit the sweet spot: far enough from The Wedding Present, familiar enough to connect. Hey, it’s just my take on it, but it strikes me that this was a band with, broadly speaking, three distinct eras, each one defined by its LP and by extension those records’ associated singles and B-sides.

Purely for trivia: it’s been edited out, but once upon a time Wikipedia’s Gina Lollobrigida entry, under the In popular culture section, referenced a group that’s been featured right here on the (New) Vinyl Villain. Here’s what Wikipedia noted: English rock band Cardiacs included a song titled “Gina Lollobrigida” on their 1984 album The Seaside.

With customary thanks for making it this far, our next post will focus on the remaining two singles of Cinerama’s Disco Volante era.

strangeways

A GUEST SERIES by STRANGEWAYS

Close Up: The Cinerama Singles #3 : The pre-Disco Volante singles

After the singles around Cinerama’s 1998 debut LP Va Va Voom, 1999 saw just one release, the double A-sided seven-inch Pacific/King’s Cross.

Released on the mighty Spanish indie Elefant, this was pressed up on beautiful pink vinyl. Its sleeve, also in tones of pink and lilac, complemented the disc, whilst its cropped image of a woman filing her fingernails against a large pink emery board might have been one for Freudian scholars.

mp3: Cinerama – Pacific

Pacific had Cinerama further establishing a sound several fathoms from The Wedding Present. This track saw Sally Murrell taking the lead, her ultra-soft – sometimes sung, sometimes spoken – vocal was a terrific match for an equally languid musical bed of keyboard, strings and flute. In summation: Brassneck it wasn’t.

mp3: Cinerama – King’s Cross

Preferable, to me, was the flip. King’s Cross moves the dial a bit closer to David Gedge’s previous band. Here, strings are high in the mix too, but where Pacific’s lyrics are quite slight – describing in very few lines a couple’s lazy day by the eponymous ocean – at King’s Cross the setting is urban, the situation more familiar.

Here, there’s talk of phone boxes and betrayal, and of a fleeting entrance and exit summed up in the line I crashed into your life without asking, then suddenly I was gone… As comforting as that was to WP traditionalists, King’s Cross was 100% Cinerama though: carried by those shimmering strings, and ending on a last-minute harmony. I’ve always had a soft spot for this song, and it’s well recommended if you don’t know of it.

With previous label Cooking Vinyl out of the picture, Cinerama’s records would now be self-released on the band’s newly founded own label, Scopitones, named for, and I’ll just quote from Wikipedia …a type of jukebox featuring a 16 mm film component. Scopitone films were a forerunner of music videos.

This was a move that emulated early Wedding Present days, when that band’s formative releases began going out on the Weddoes’ own Reception Records. Its Middleton – Bramley – Gateshead – Hassocks line poked fun at the dazzling geographies trumpeted by the likes of high-fashion houses and big-name publishers.

First out of the traps, and given the catalogue number TONE001, came in February 2000:-

mp3: Cinerama – Manhattan

This seemed then, and still does now, a big production with lots going on in it, including a novel spoken-word section. There, we were ostensibly listening in on a bar conversation in which a group of female friends discuss one of their latest – and most perplexing – romantic entanglements. That makes the device sound creepy, but it’s innocent enough, slots effortlessly into the song and gives Manhattan a bigger, more interesting story.  In conclusion, it was a very fine A-side with which to launch the new label.

mp3: Cinerama – Film

Flips here were Film – a speedy, organy number that cleverly likens a real-life obsession with an imagined film incessantly playing in the protagonist’s head.

mp3: Cinerama – London

London is a cover of the Smiths B-side and was a real curveball. It’s murderously slow and at just over four minutes long is almost twice the length of the original.

The song’s duration is due not only to the overall pace and delivery, but also to some odd-sounding effects/soundscapes that close the cover. By way of explanation, liner notes state that The short wave radio transmissions on “London” were recorded for The Conet Project and are included here with the kind consent of Irdial Discs.

I looked this Conet Project up and it’s quite intriguing: thought to be concerned with spies – and specifically with communicating with these agents via short wave radio stations. London’s fine – and it would of course have been a snap for David Gedge, a person intimately acquainted with a fast guitar – to go the other way and accelerate the already thrashy original.

While we’re here, this take of London appeared also on the 2011 American Laundromat Records LP Please Please Please: a Tribute to The Smiths, alongside The Wedding Present’s cover of Hand in Glove. The single’s sleeve notes speak of London’s inclusion on a tribute LP named I Know It’s Over on The First Time Records of Michigan. But I draw a blank on any further evidence of this record.

At this juncture, anyone looking to acquire the full set of singles and B-sides up to this point will find them on the This Is Cinerama compilation. The Wedding Present is one of the most anthologised bands I know of, and Cinerama would carry this on.

Next up, the singles connected with the band’s second LP, Disco Volante. Would this be the point at which the Cinerama sound reached perfection?

Thanks, as ever, for the space, go to JC, and to those reading.

strangeways

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.

mp3: Cinerama – Kerry Kerry

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.

strangeways

It’s been a while since I actually came up with an ICA.  I thought it might be an idea to get one in before the blog turns 16 (Oh, and many thanks for all your kind words and wishes yesterday).

Those of you who followed the old series on the Cinerama singles back in April -June 2016 will be very familiar with much of the contents of this particular post.  I offer no apologies…..

For those who don’t know, Cinerama came into being in 1997 as a result of David Gedge deciding he wanted a different sort of sound from the guitar-pop he had been making with The Wedding Present. This new band was conceived as a duo with his girlfriend Sally Murrell with the addition of all sorts of collaborators depending on the music they came up with.  Over a six-year period there would be three studio albums and twelve singles.  There would also be eleven Peel Sessions/live performances, all of which would subsequently be gathered in one place and made available via a box set.

Lyrically, the songs remained everything that fans had come to love about TWP, while the music, once you got your head around the fact that David Gedge was now composing complicated arrangements with strings, woodwind and all sorts, was delightful and immensely enjoyable to listen to, as I hope I can prove with what this ICA (and bonus EP).

SIDE A

1. Maniac (from Va Va Voom, 1998)

The opening track from the debut album seems as good a place to start as any. Aside from David Gedge and Sally Murrell, there are a further fourteen musicians who make some sort of contribution to the album, with cellos, violins, flutes, oboes and trumpets to the fore alongside the standard guitar/bass/drums and keys. There was also a very special guest vocalist whom I’ll return to later on.

Subject wise, it’s another of the many Gedge classics about the aftermath of a relationship coming to an end.  One in which the protagonist is unable to let go, and over a lovely, almost pastoral tune, gets scarily unhinged.

2. Health and Efficiency (Peel Session, May 2001)

“Health And Efficiency isn’t exactly the catchiest of Gedge’s tunes, but it is probably his most ambitious. It proved once and for all that he was no one-trick pony.”

That was the very astute comment left behind by The Robster when I posted the single version of Health and Efficiency during that series back in 2016.  It was the ninth single and would later be used as the closing track on the third and final studio album, Torino.

I think it’s fair to say it is an epic, taking over 90 seconds of music and sampled dialogue before a very sad, reflective and ultimately depressing vocal about how time and the ageing process impacts on relationships. And just as it took ages for the lyric to begin, there’s as equally a long process involved as the tune continues and stretches out post-vocal, again with the aid of sampled dialogue, right out to almost six and a half minutes. Not for the faint of heart.

3. Lollobrigida (from Disco Valente, 2000)

By the time Cinerama had gone into the studio to record Disco Valente, their second album, they had expanded to a five-piece band with the addition of Terry de Castro (bass) and Simon Pearson (drums) who had been the rhythm section of indie-band Goya Dress, as well as Simon Cleave who had played guitar with The Wedding Present in the mid-late 90s.

There was a further connection to the old days with the decision to engage Steve Albini on production/engineering duties for Disco Valente, but anyone anticipating something akin to Seamonsters would have been sorely disappointed.  Lollobrigida was also released as a single.It starts off sounding a little bit like a quieter number by TWP, and just as you perhaps are being lulled into a false sense that it really isn’t going to go anywhere or do anything, the accordion kicks in, and it transforms itself from an ugly duckling of a tune to the most graceful swan.

And if you want some proof of how happy Davod Gedge seemed to be with his lot, then consider that here he is presenting his long-term girlfriend and muse with a song in which he compares her favourably to a famously stunning Italian actress.

4. Quick Before It Melts (single, 2002)

It’s a tale about infidelity via a one-night stand.  It is up there with the very best of the songs that David Gedge has ever composed.  I really should have kept it back for the songs which make great short stories series.

And when you said: “I’ve got nothing on beneath this dress”, that was such great flirting!
I usually find such candidness sort of disconcerting
But you said: “I don’t wear underwear because it leaves a stripe
People sneer, but do you think I care? They’re usually not my type!”

And soon we’re reeling from the beer that we keep buying
You ask me what I’m doing here and I start lying
You’re wondering what is on my mind is it a one night stand?
You laugh and say: “Baby I’m not blind!” and then you squeeze my hand

But please, let’s be quick before it melts
Please, let’s just be quick before it melts

The next thing I know we’re in the street and we’re being sleazy
You ask me if I want to eat, but I’m too uneasy
You put your hand onto the very place my girlfriend’s hand should be
You haven’t exactly got the kind of face that invites honesty

But please, let’s be quick before it melts
Please, let’s just be quick before it melts
You said: “If it feels right I just might let you sleep with me tonight
And then tomorrow, if you do go, you have my word, no-one will ever know”

An extended version was recorded and included on Torino. It consists of an extra two minutes of plaintive piano over church bells and chirping birds. I’ve often wondered if this is meant to represent the following morning when they wake up, and it becomes more than a one-night stand; or is it, perhaps, set in the future when the male protagonist is on his way to church to get married to his long-term girlfriend, but he reflects on a previous but unmentionable night of passion?

5. Love (b-side, 1998)

Cinerama announced themselves with the release of the single Kerry Kerry in July 1998.  It was issued as two separate 7″ singles and a CD single, offering up four additional songs as b-sides, all of which were every bit as wonderful as the a-side, which itself was voted in at #15 in the Peel Festive 50 at the end of the year.  I’ve long had a soft spot for this wonderfully sexy and occasionally kinky duet in which the guest vocalist is Emma Pollock of The Delgados.  It starts off with a spoken vocal, in French, before a happy couple then describe to one another just what it is that makes them fall head over heels.  Emma clearly had great fun with this one as she returned to the studio to add a vocal to one of the tracks on Va Va Voom.

6. Honey Rider (from Va Va Voom, 1998)

This side of the ICA began with the opening track from the debut album, and it ends with its closing track.  There are flashes of the Cinerama sound on this one, but it could equally have fitted well as one of the quieter numbers on a piece of vinyl released by TWP.

SIDE B

1. Wow (extended version) (from Disco Valente, 2000)

By rights, given this is another of my all-time favourite David Gedge song, this should have been placed somewhere on Side A.  It’s on this side simply for the reason that having already offered up Health and Efficiency, I wanted to separate the two lengthy numbers on the ICA.

I’ll just repeat what I said when I posted the single version back in 2016:-

“It’s another of the songs about infidelity. What I love about this lyric is how the protagonist spends the first two and half minutes detailing all the nagging doubts about cheating on his girlfriend, even as he climbs the stairs to a bedroom. And then…..

……he utters “But don’t close the door because I’m still not sure.”, after which there is a gap as he makes his mind up. A gap that is about two seconds in length…………….just long enough to let the listener know he’s feeling guilty but just short enough to let the listener know that lust has again triumphed over love.

Songwriting of the raw and brutal variety.”

The single fades out after four minutes as the guitars are reaching their crescendo.  The album version goes on for another almost three minutes during which time some brass comes in over the top of the tune, building up to what can only be described as a huge climax before bang!!!!……and a final 45 seconds to contemplate what you’ve just been party to.  Or am I reading too much into it?

2. Ears (from Va Va Voom, 1999)

Hello again Ms. Pollock.  The twisted indie antithesis of Elton John & Kiki Dee………..

3. Apres Ski (from Disco Valente, 2000)

A lot of the Cinerama material does seem to recall film soundtracks from the 60s, with the occasional nod to John Barry.

Apres Ski, the very sad tale of an older woman’s one-night stand with a younger man (possibly, and indeed most likely from her workplace), not only leans on the music from that decade but has a lyric in which said music is heavily referenced in the lyrics as a reference point for said woman.  It’s one of the cleverest of all the David Gedge compositions.

4. Superman (live version, June 2000)

Superman was the eighth single to be released by Cinerama, released in early 2001, but was already well-known to fans as one of the most popular tracks on Disco Valente which had been released the previous year.  It had also been part of a set that had been broadcast by BBC Radio 1 back in June 2000, when the five-piece band, backed by two cellists, two violinists, a flautist and a trumpeter descended on the famous Maida Vale studios and played before an invited audience, including their old friend John Peel.  Included here instead of the studio version to give an idea of how good they were in the live setting.

5. Comedienne (from Va Va Voom, 1999)
6. Careless (from Torino, 2002)

Two tracks deliberately chosen to close things off to offer up evidence that the remnants of TWP were there at the beginning of Cinerama and, by the time what proved to be the final album was being recorded, the guitars were again increasingly to the fore.

Was Careless a sign of the direction the band were going and perhaps that Cinerama had run its course? In all honesty, it’s hard to say.

It was shortly after the Torino tour that David and Sally, after a 14-year relationship, broke-up, and she took her leave of the band. During 2003 and 2004, there were further Peel Sessions and the idea was that a fourth Cinerama album would be recorded and released. In the end, almost all the songs first heard on Peel did make it into an album, but it was Take Fountain by The Wedding Present, which was released, to huge critical acclaim, on 14 February 2005.

It was tempting to include some of those Peel session songs on this ICA, but in my mind they are associated with the ‘comeback’ TWP album.

BONUS EP

TWP were famed for cover versions. Cinerama proved to be no different, coming up with all sorts of things for b-sides and/or Peel Sessions

A. Yesterday Once More (Peel Session, July 2000)
B. London (b-side, 2000)
C. Elenore (Peel Session, August 1999)
D. Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) (Peel Session, November 2003)

Originals by The Carpenters, The Smiths, The Turtles and Spiller (featuring Sophie Ellis-Bextor). All of them turned into something akin to a Gedge original.

JC

There was just one release from Cinerama in 2003 and it was in the shape of a three-track CD single:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Don’t Touch That Dial
mp3 : Cinerama – The One That Got Away
mp3 : Cinerama – On/Off

It later emerged that the romantic relationship between David Gedge and Sally Murrell had ended around the time of recording this single. The band still continued to tour into 2004 at which point it was announced that Cinerama would be no more and that when they next went into the studio, the resultant music would be the first releases in eight years by The Wedding Present.

The next single was Interstate 5, released in September 2004, followed by the LP Take Fountain in February 2005, both of which are among the finest records of the very many recorded by TWP. The band was, with the exception of Sally Murrell, identical to that of the latter-day Cinerama. The new material was picked up by the media in a way that none of the Cinerama stuff had enjoyed and the gigs began again to be played in larger venues.

You couldn’t make it up!!

Cinerama still exist in that David brings them out of storage every now and again for gigs while he released an album under the band name in 2015, which in fact was a re-recording and re-working of Valentina, the LP released by TWP in 2012…

Hope you’ve enjoyed this short but I would say essential dabble into the lesser known band on the Scopitones label.

I mentioned last time round that you could do worse than track down a second-hand copy of Torino, the third studio LP from Cinerama that was released back in 2002. Here’s further evidence of how good a record it is, with this the third and final flop single lifted from it:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Careless

This was a low-key release which is no real surprise given that the world continued to more or less ignore Cinerama. David Gedge must have been pulling his hair out at the fact that bands whose four or five members had less collective talents than he had in his pinky finger were making fortunes while he was now playing venues that he could have filled three and four times over a decade earlier with his old band. The two new songs were seemingly cut around the same time as those that had made it on to Torino:-

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

The fact was, Cinerama in a five-year period, had now released 3 albums and 11 singles of a very high standard to absolutely no avail. The fact too that the band, when playing live, were now sneaking the odd TWP number into the sets perhaps gave an inkling that David was mulling over what to do next……

I know from the always welcomed and appreciated comments that a number of you are only discovering just how great a band Cinerama were in their own right and just as worthy of the sort of lavish praise and attention that had and has always been given to The Wedding Present.

The band’s tenth single came out in 2002 and is a shorter version of an outstanding pop song from the LP Torino, a record that you can pick up relatively cheaply out there on the second-hand market via the internet. It’s well worth it.

mp3 : Cinerama – Quick, Before It Melts (single version)

Ten singles in and still no hits. Worse than that, very little acknowledgement of how good the band is with too many still harking back to the era of TWP. Criminal.

Two b-sides this time round, but no vinyl release meaning we weren’t given any foreign language takes:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Ears (acoustic version)
mp3 : Cinerama – As If

The former is a re-recording of a track that had originally featured the lovely and talented Emma Pollock on co-vocal. Sally Murrell does a very good job on this version which makes very fine use of a cello and other string instruments. Yet another wonderful song about infidelity from the pen of the boy Gedge.

The latter is, for once, a little bit of a let-down. Strictly b-side material.

Bonus time. Here’s the original version of Ears together with the extended version of today’s single:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Ears
mp3 : Cinerama – Quick Before It Melts

Enjoy. I’ve no doubt you will.

The next single is arguably the most Cinerama-style release that the band ever came up with. The title track borders on the epic, taking over 90 seconds of music and sampled dialogue before a very sad, reflective and ultimately depressing vocal about how time and the ageing process impacts on relationships. And just as it took ages for the lyric to begin, there’s as equally a long process involved as the tune continues and stretches out post-vocal, again with the aid of sampled dialogue, right out to almost six and a half minutes.

mp3 : Cinerama – Health and Efficiency

There were two other songs on the CD single, one of which is an original and the other a cover. The original is one of those great long-lost numbers that for many other bands would have made a great 45 or at very least one of the highlights on a much-lauded album. But such was the quality of the output at the time that Cinerama were able to make available only as a b-side….and even then only on the CD single.

mp3 : Cinerama – Swim

The cover is David Gedge coming to accept that he was never going to get the call from the producers to come up with a new theme for the next movie and so he does a top take on one of the best-known Bond songs:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Diamonds Are Forever

The single also came out on 7″ vinyl, but as with the release of the previous Superman single, it offered up something quite different:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Health and Efficiency (version francaise)
mp3 : Cinerama – Lollobrigida (version francaise)

The french versions aren’t the most essential of tracks to have in your collection, but I’m guessing the band would have enjoyed performing them whenever they played in the likes of Paris. It also harked back to the early TWP days when a number of tracks were re-recorded with French lyrics.

 

Cinerama slipped out an album in April 2001. It contained no new material and simply brought together the two Peel Sessions from 98 and 99 along with the tracks specialy recorded at Peel Acres and for the DJs 60th birthday party in August 1999. It wasn’t however, seen by fans as a cash-in as there was a demand for the acoustic and live versions in particular as they were quite distinct from the studio recordings.

At the same time, a further single was lifted from the previous year’s LP Disco Valente. This time, it was issued on vinyl which was a first for Scopitones, although there was also a CD single too. But it all came with a twist.

Here’s the CD single:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Superman
mp3 : Cinerama – Starry Eyed
mp3 : Cinerama – Yesterday Once More

The release of Superman rectified what had been a bit of an oversight as it had proven to be the most popular track on the album. But it was really just the vehicle for testing the water with what was the most TWP thing in terms of guitars that Cinerama had done so far. Starry Eyed did hark back to an earlier era (and little did we know prove to be a staging post on the way to TWP coming back into being).

The other track was another brave stab at a cover. David Gedge has never been afraid to cite influences which the indie cognoscenti would turn their noses up at throughout his career. In this instance, he took on and delivered one of the biggest hit singles that had been written and recorded by The Carpenters.

There were more surprises for those who bought the 7″:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Superman (version en Espanol)
mp3 : Cinerama – Dura, Rapida Y Hermosa

The sleevenotes were completely in Spanish which I take it was a nod to the fact that the Madrid-based Elefant Records had issued a single back in 1999 when the band had been unable to do so in the UK due to issues with labels.

The a-side is completely in Spanish….I’ll leave it others to determine if its a decent delivery or not. But it sounds a tad forced to me to get the lyrics to fit the tune.

The b-side is a hybrid…..opening with a live partly-stumbled through recording of Hard, Fast and Beautiful from a gig at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City in October 2000, before seamlessly becoming the Spanish language version.

File under obtuse.

The next release on Scopitones was the album Disco Volante. The fact that The Wedding Present had metamorphosised into Cinerama was seemingly still lost on quite a few folk – my copy of that particular CD has a sticker in the top right hand corner which has the words ‘THE NEW ALBUM BY DAVID GEDGE FROM’ followed by, in type that is twice the size, ‘THE WEDDING PRESENT’.

It’s eleven tracks didn’t include Manhattan while Wow had been re-recorded in an extended form. Lollobrigida was there as was what turned out to be the fourth single of the year in November 2000:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Your Charms

The single version is a little shorter than the album version, dispensing with the opening fifteen seconds or so in which the musicians on flute, cello, violin, trumpet and french horn are warming up in that way they do when you go to a classical concert, opera or ballet. It’s as rich sounding as you’d expect with that amount of instruments involved. And it’s a classic Gedge lyric about falling head over heels.

As ever, two b-sides:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Reel 2, Dialogue 2
mp3 : Cinerama – Girl On A Motorcycle

The former had been aired a year earlier via a Peel Session with its title more than a nod to the fact that many of the songs were really soundtracks for movies being imagined by David Gedge and his bandmates as there’s a co-credit for Simon Cleave on this one.

The latter, is for once, a bit of a throwaway number. I’m guessing it was written and recorded for possible inclusion on the album but didn’t make the cut. It was the first b-side in which the quality noticeably dipped.

Two albums down. Six flop singles and gigs being played to small audiences in venues half the size of those that had hosted TWP. Was it time to rethink things?

The third of the singles to appear on Scopitones in 2000 came out in August. This one starts off sounding a little bit like a quieter number by TWP, and just as you perhaps are being lulled into a false sense that it really isn’t going to go anywhere or do anything, the accordion kicks in and it transforms itself from an ugly duckling of a tune to the most graceful swan:-

mp3 : Cinerama – Lollobrigida

How great must this have made Sally Murrell feel? She was David Gedge‘s long-term girlfriend and muse, and here he was presenting a song to her in which she is being compared favourably to a stunning looking Italian actress.

Again there were two new songs for the b-side:-

mp3 : Cinerama – See Thru
mp3 : Cinerama – Sly Curl

The former was probably the first of the signs that certain songs were just not really suited to the Cinerama set-up. It wouldn’t have been out of a place on a TWP record – the first two-thirds of it anyway – and just where you would expect some loud guitars, in come some synth strings. But not for long….that bottled-up guitar solo that hadn’t been played for about five years is committed to record.

The latter was another which caused much surprise as it featured a guest spoken contribution from the Irish comedian Sean Hughes, who was known to be a huge fan of all things Gedge and indeed indie. It’s a rather lovely number which again offers up a quality b-side.

Enjoy.