Category: Wedding Present

 

Given how long he has been making music, I think David Gedge can be allowed the occasional moment of self-indulgence.

2016 had seen the release of Going, Going…., the ninth studio album by The Wedding Present.  It was an incredibly ambitious release, consisting of 20 tracks, as the frontman explained in media interviews at the time:-

I’d already decided [soon after the 2012 release of their last album] that I didn’t want to make the next release just ‘another album’ and so I came up with the idea of twenty ‘interconnected’ pieces of music. Then, in the summer of 2014, I travelled across the USA with photographer Jessica McMillan, and we made some atmospheric short films to accompany the tracks. Since then it’s been a case of progressing through the music, trying all sorts of ideas, seeing how they work set against the visuals.

The album opened up with four instrumental numbers. One reviewer (Simon Tucker, writing on Louder Than War), sums things up nicely:-

Going, Going… is an album that is full of left turns, sudden bursts of feedback-drenched guitars and luscious soundscapes. It is schizophrenic and unsettling yet full of beauty and melancholy. A hard album to grasp as it is constantly going through gear changes (even within the confines of one song) Going, Going… is the sound of a band throwing everything they have into the mix which has in turn created a work that is at once familiar yet progressive, homely and disturbing.

It was released on Scopitones on CD, but also on limited vinyl with additional bonus material via DVD, a 7″EP and a book.  A couple of songs were identified as ‘singles’, but were only promoted as such via videos and not with any separate physical release on vinyl or CD. 

It was all a bit strange, as some of the songs on the album were among the best that David Gedge had come up with in a very long time, with this being a particular favourite here in Villain Towers

mp3: The Wedding Present – Rachel

It took until May 2017 for an actual single/EP to hit the shops.  Here’s the promotional blurb:-

The Wedding Present release a four track instrumental EP called ‘Home Internationals’ on the El Segell del Primavera record label.

‘Wales’ is taken from The Wedding Present’s recent and critically acclaimed album ‘Going, Going…’ while the other three tracks have been specially written and recorded for this release.

David Gedge was inspired by the challenge of writing a number of instrumental tracks for ‘Going, Going…’ and decided to use ‘Wales’ as the starting point for an EP of further instrumental pieces.

Freed from the restriction of a lyrical narrative the music frequently becomes more experimental and delves deeply into David’s love of pop, rock and film scores for inspiration.

England also features poet, playwright and novelist Simon Armitage reading his poem The English. The EP was also inspired by the ‘Home Internationals’ which was an annual football competition between the United Kingdom’s four national teams: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (the last of whom competed as Ireland for most of the competition’s history). It started in 1883 and is the oldest international football tournament in the world. The competition ended in 1983.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Scotland
mp3: The Wedding Present – Northern Ireland
mp3: The Wedding Present – England
mp3: The Wedding Present – Wales

All in all, it’s one of the more unusual offerings across the series.

Things do sort of return to normal next week in that the songs have lyrics.  But in keeping with all that was going on with TWP releases at this point in time, it will prove to be a bit different.

JC

 

 

So…. Part 42 of this series had a 4-track 10″ EP on clear vinyl for Record Store Day in 2012 on which The Wedding Present played and David Gedge sang in French.  Part 44 had a 4-track 10″ EP on clear vinyl for Record Store Day in 2013 on which The Wedding Present played and David Gedge sang in German.

I think you can guess what’s coming next……….

I don’t actually have the EP for Record Store Day 2014, but digital versions of the tracks have been sent to me by my dear friend The Robster.  I had an idea that this was a release Rob might have in his collection, given that this time around, the songs were sung in Welsh. 

The EP was named the 4 Cân EP.   And Rob, in his accompanying e-mail, made sure I wouldn’t mess this up as the accent above the ‘a’ is crucial

“……the little accent above the a (known in Welsh as a ‘to bach’) is important as it extends the sound of the letter, so it’s pronounced like “carn” without accentuating the r, rather than as in a can of beer. Also, Welsh for 4 is pedwar. Cymraeg lesson over…

I can’t thank him enough for the files and for keeping me right.

mp3: The Wedding Present – 1000 Fahrenheit (Welsh Version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Meet Cute (Welsh Version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Journey Into Space (Welsh Version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Can You Keep A Secret? (Welsh Version)

It turns out that this was the third and last time TWP went down the road of EPs for Record Store Day with the vocal being delivered in a language other than English.

The next two vinyl ‘singles’ released by the band will, I’m sorry to say, not be featuring in this series.  These took the form of EPs, and were given the titles of Hove Sessions 1 and Hove Sessions 2. 

They were only made available to anyone who purchased the complete bundles of the 2014 CD reissues of all the Wedding Present studio albums being issued by Demon Records.  Both EPs contained four acoustic tracks, with EP 1 having songs from George Best, Tommy, Bizarro and Seamonsters, while EP2 had songs from Hit Parade, Watusi, Mini and Saturnalia.  They are incredibly difficult to find on the second-hand market, and when they do come up for sale, the prices tend to be on the stupid side.

Instead,  I’ll be leaping forward to 2017, and a themed EP about the UK that was issued on a Spanish label connected to the annual Primavera Festival.  I hope you’ll tune in.

JC

 

At long last, the series emerges blinking and slightly bewildered from the many different limited edition/Record Store Day releases that accompanied the album Valentina.

Discogs has this one down as being released on 21 October 2013.  If so, and I’ve no reason to doubt the info, it makes perfect sense as the following day would see The Wedding Present go out on a UK tour taking in Wolverhampton, Cardiff, Leeds, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leicester, Northampton and Liverpool to commemorate the 21st Anniversary of The Hit Parade LPs, which you might recall were two volumes compiling the 12 singles released throughout 1992.

As you can see from the artwork above, a new 7″ single had been recorded and made available for sale during the UK tour. I don’t recall seeing it for sale in Glasgow, but then again, I may have got myself to the merch stall a bit too late as the numbers each night were likely to have been limited as only 1000 copies were actually pressed up.  Many years later I would pick up a second-hand copy of the single housed in a blue sleeve, and I have read on-line (so it must be true!!!)  that every single copy has a different sleeve due to the printing proces that was used, with the variations in colour being due to ink running out.  “The colours vary from black to blue to red, orange, turquoise, green, brown and probably more in between.”

Oh, and the  Latin text on the sleeve front translates as ‘Thirty Years of The Wedding Present’.

Enough background stuff, what about the actual song?

mp3: The Wedding Present – Two Bridges

It’s a bit different, almost as if there are two and maybe three tunes with different tempos all battling for attention across its four minutes.  It starts off perhaps a bit derivative of the increasingly harder-sounding edge that the band had been bringing to their songs over the past few years. But then there’s some hand-claps and a sing-along chorus to make things kind of pop-like, before  a quiet section which is followed by a lengthy middle section that goes all sort of experimental for a bit and then segues into a fade-out that comes complete with a touch of feedback. It’s interesting enough and probably took a few fans out of their comfort zones.

There’s an indication that David Gedge may have had a bit of regret that he made Two Bridges available in such limited numbers, as he revisited it in 2016, and a re-recorded version was included on the album Going Going…

The sleeve indicates that the b-side was called Whole Wide World.  And yup, it was a cover of the new wave classic recorded by Wreckless Eric back in 1977.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Whole Wide World

It’s up there with the usual high standards of TWP covers, although the sudden ending feels a bit premature.

JC

Hands up if you can remember back a couple of weeks to Part 42 of this series? 

Well done if you do….but don’t be too concerned if you don’t as it featured 4 Chansons, a 10″ EP on clear vinyl for Record Store Day 2012, on which The Wedding Present played and David Gedge sang in French.

We are about to go on a similar journey today, (and will do so again in the not too distant future). 

There were two worldwide releases for Record Store Day 2013.    One was a 7″ single, released via This Will Be Our Summer, a label based in Athens, GA.  The single was called 2 Chansons, and it comprised, you won’t be surprised to hear, two of the songs that had been included on 4 Chansons EP, a release that hadn’t made it across to the other side of the Atlantic.

The UK release for Record Store Day was another 10″ single, again on clear vinyl, and once more offering up four other language takes on tracks from the album Valentina. Given the title of 4 Lieder, these were sung in German.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Back A Bit…Stop (German Version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – The Girl From the DDR (German Version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – You Jane (German Version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – 524 Fidelio (German Version)

I sent away for a copy of this via Discogs, and to my surprise, it came back from the seller with David Gedge’s signature on it.

It’s a Ronseal Woodstain sort of release…….

JC

The fact that this series is going off in all sorts of direction is down to my comrade-in-arms,  strangeways.

I had all the things nicely set up in my head to get on with highlighting and bringing to you any singles and EPs by The Wedding Present that were widely available; strangeways really dug deep to bring you everything that was connected with Cinerama, both back when that group was going strong in the early 00s and the later, more occasional releases.  I felt I was given no option but to look to do the same with TWP.

Which brings us to the 4 Songs EP, a release I had no idea whatsoever about until I was digging around on Discogs.  It’s not even mentioned anywhere on the TWP/Cinerama website. 

It is, and I quite from the notes over at Discogs:-

Available via download only through buying the book ‘Valentina – The Story of a Wedding Present Album’ (Scopitones, TONE BOOK 043). The book also provided downloads to all the tracks from the Valentia album, plus a 30 minute video documentary of the making of the album, which includes interviews with the band.

I have, by hook and by crook, managed to find copies of the songs on this EP, which I’m totally relieved about after last week’s debacle.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Journey Into Space
mp3: The Wedding Present – 1000 Fahrenheit
mp3: The Wedding Present – Pain Perdu
mp3: The Wedding Present – Can You Keep A Secret?

For such a low-key release, this is a very fine collection of songs….all of them, (in my opinion), would have improved the quality of Valentina if they had been included in its running order.  The final track, at more than seven minutes in length, is one of the longest ever recorded in the band’s history.

JC

Around the time that Valentina was released (March 2012), The Wedding Present issued a 7″ single on vinyl.

As mentioned last week, this was a time when I wasn’t paying much attention.  I’ve now learned that this 7″ single was given out to the members of ‘Club 8’, so called as its members were those who had provided financial support for the recording of Valentina, the band’s eighth studio album.

500 copies were pressed up on clear vinyl, specifically for those loyal fans without whom etc.  The folk who got the single are the type who (mostly) wouldn’t dream of parting with it.  Just two copies have ever been sold via Discogs, with the last occasion being back in 2016.  No copies are presently on offer.  And just when I thought there was no chance of tracking anything down, our dear friend The Robster sent across a very helpful email with a couple of digital attachments:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Metal Men
mp3: The Wedding Present – Unthinking

A couple of songs that are better than quite a few on Valentina???  I certainly think so…..

Next up was a limited edition 10″ single on clear vinyl that was issued for Record Store Day on 21 April 2012.

The 4 Chansons EP involved four songs being sung in French. The original versions of three of the songs had been recorded for Valentina, while the other was of Metal Men, one of the two tracks made available only to the members of Club 8.

This one was a bit more readily available on Discogs, albeit a bit pricey, but given that until The Robster stepped in to help out I thought I was going to miss out on two successive releases for this series, I did send off for it a couple of weeks back.  

mp3: The Wedding Present – Deer Caught In The Headlight (French Version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – End Credits (French Version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Metal Men (French Version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Mystery Date (French Version)

It’s the Wedding Present, and it’s David Gedge doing his stuff in French.  Qu’y a-t-il à ne pas aimer ?

JC

 

2012.  This is where I’m very likely not only to lose track with everything that was going on in terms of what was being released by The Wedding Present, but I really run the risk of losing everyone’s interest!

An album, Valentina, was released in March 2012.  A few months prior to this, in the period between Christmas and New Year, I’d gone to see the band play a show in Glasgow at a venue called The Garage.   It proved to be rather a disappointing evening, the first time I’d come away feeling I’d seen the band deliver a substandard performance.   Some new songs were aired, with David explaining they had already been recorded in the studio for the next album, but none of them jumped out as me as being anything special, far less having the possibility of becoming memorable and essential TWP tunes.

I didn’t rush out and buy Valentina.  Indeed, I think I bought it maybe 18 months or so after it was released, and that was when it was on sale in a shop. For the first time ever, I was bored by the new material the band were recording and releasing. I was still listening and loving loads of the old stuff, and writing about it on the original incarnation of The Vinyl Villain (born 30 September 2006 and wiped off the planet on 24 July 2013). 

It all means that a number of other releases from 2012, in addition to Valentina, passed me by.  Indeed, looking at the TWP vinyl and CDs that I have here in Villain Towers, there was a gap through to 2016 before my buying habits were re-ignited.  I have, as part of doing the legwork for this series, tried to track as many of them down as I can, and you’ll see in the coming weeks, just how well (or not) I got on.

Today, it’s just the one song.

Valentina was an album with ten songs – or eleven is you went for it as a digital download, as there was a bonus track available that way.  None of its songs were ever released as a stand-alone physical single, and indeed just one was made available in advance, seemingly as a digital single on 30 January 2012:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – You Jane

This had been aired at the Glasgow gig I mentioned earlier on. Looking back, the band just felt inconsequential in comparison to a lot of the exciting new music that was coming out of Scotland.  Maybe TWP in 2012 just didn’t stand a chance with me.

Thinking back to all the very long-running series in which I’ve looked at the singles by a singer or band, there’s always been a period when I’ve lost interest along the way, only to have it piqued again in later years.  It happened with James, it happened with New Order, it happened with R.E.M., it happened with The Fall, and it happened with the Pet Shop Boys. 

It’s really difficult to be a fan of a singer or band over many decades and remain totally committed to their output.

JC

 

You’ll hopefully remember from the 1992 series of Wedding Present singles that the year was rounded off with what seemed like a festive number in the shape of No Christmas.  But as I mentioned at the time No Christmas, other than its title, had very little to do with the festive season and was really just about the saddest and bleakest of all the break-up songs that David Gedge has ever written.

He later said in an interview that he maintained the hope and ambition of writing, recording and releasing a bona-fide single celebrating the (supposedly) most wonderful time of the year.  His ambition came to be realised at the end of 2008.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Holly Jolly Hollywood

This was the lead track on EP4 of How The West Was Won.  It’s a light, almost flimsy throwaway number in which a co-vocal is delivered by Simone White, a Hawaii-born singer/songwriter whose recording career began in 2003 and has, to date, encompassed eight albums with a similar number of singles and EPs.  A promo video was made:-

The promo actually has a big part to play in why I dislike this song.   David Gedge might only be ten years older than Simone White, but the age gap looks a lot wider in the video, three minutes of footage in which he appears stiff and wooden, not to mention he’s put just too much black in his hair dye prior to the shoot.

As with other songs in the box set, an acoustic version was offered up:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Holly Jolly Hollywood (acoustic version)

The digital download came, as with the box set CD, came with a cover version of possibly the most famous festive song of them all.

mp3: The Wedding Present – White Christmas

It’s delivered at a funereal pace.  I have no love for it, so I’ll leave it at that.

The record label did produce a few promotional CDs containing all three of the above songs for distribution to radio stations.  A copy is currently up for sale on Discogs for a little over £20, including postage and packaging.

The promo CD doesn’t have the fourth track that was included in the CD contained within the How The West Was Won box set.   It, too, was a cover version, and was the song that had been released as the bonus track with the ITunes download of El Rey some more than six months earlier.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Back For Good

Take that…….and weep.

The Wedding Present went into a bit of a hiatus for a few years, certainly in terms of recording. This was partly to do with David Gedge coming back to live in the UK after quite a few years on the west coast of America, and much of his time being taken up with planning, organising and curating his At The Edge of The Sea festival, the first of which was in August 2009 and which, other than when COVID restrictions prevented it, has been an annual event in Brighton at that time of year.  The band did continue to perform extensively, particularly in 2010 with shows celebrating the 20th anniversary of Bizarro. 

This series, however, won’t be having any similar hiatus.  Tune in at the same time next Sunday, when I’ll have jumped forward to 2012.

JC

 

The third EP inside the How The West Was Won box set contained an edited version of the opening track of El Rey along with three previously unavailable songs – in essence, this particular EP was what most likely made fans go out and buy the box set.

Santa Ana Winds is one of the strongest and most memorable songs on the new album, which is no doubt why it was selected as its opener.   It is a pounding rock number, one with a great bassline courtesy of co-writer Terry Di Castro as well as sorts of Albini trademarks throughout; the fact that a few songs afterwards failed to reach similar standards is very much a contributory factor as to why my overall reaction to the album was one of disappointment  – at this point I should add that I gave El Rey a fresh listen a few weeks ago when preparing these run of posts related to 2009, and there’s certainly more to like about it than I had been thinking all these years….but it’s still low down on my list of favourite TWP albums.

The edited version cuts out the 40 seconds or so from the album version, omitting the morse-code style intro and gradual build-up.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Santa Ana Winds (edit)

The other three tracks make for decent enough listening, but at the same time didn’t really offer too much in the way of truly memorable tunes. 

mp3: The Wedding Present – Hulk Loves Betty
mp3: The Wedding Present – Drink You, Eat You
mp3: The Wedding Present – Twenty Jackies

The box set, of which there were just 1,000 copies pressed, was released at the end of October.  EP#4, or at least most of it, would end up receiving a digital release before the year was out.

JC

Myself and Rachel headed down to Brighton last weekend to take in the annual At The Edge of The Sea festival (aka Gedgefest) at the Concorde 2 venue down on the eastern side of the beachfront. 

Three acts on the Friday night and ten on Saturday afternoon/evening.  We didn’t catch everyone on the Saturday – a mixture of having to take the occasional rest or getting ourselves into a prime spot inside the main indoor space (Le Bikini Stage) for the next scheduled act meant we didn’t always venture to the smaller outside space (the Swim stage).

While I could easily write 20,000 words on everything, I’ll do my best to keep things brief, but it still means splitting things into two pieces. 

Friday night’s show had two support acts I knew nothing about beforehand. I could have sought out their music before going down south, but I felt that hearing things fresh on the night was a better way to go about it.

Taffy turn out to be a four-piece band from Japan.  Much like Butcher Boy did last week at the Glasgow Weekender, they prove to be the perfect opening act for the festival, evoking memories of the very best of that decade between 1986 and 1996 when indie-music was very much in vogue.  Three blokes fronted by a female singer who was also very adept on guitar. My mind was wandering off to the Britpop era, and recalling that while there may well have been too much indie landfill associated with the ‘movement’, there were loads of radio-friendly poptastic tunes that have more than stood the test of time. 

mp3: Taffy – Tumbling

A mental note was made to seek out Taffy’s back catalogue (turns out there’s been six albums going back to 2012).

Projector are from Brighton, and are another four-piece band made up of three blokes and a female, but they prove to be quite different from Taffy, making more of a boisterous and noisy post-punk sound, with the set drawn from their debut album Now When We Talk It’s Violence that was released earlier this year.  It was an okay show, which I don’t want to sound as if I’m damning it with faint praise because I did enjoy them, but Taffy were a tough act to follow.

Friday night at The Edge of The Sea always closes with a set by The Wedding Present, with the audience knowing that Saturday night closes with a totally separate set by the band.  Friday was billed as them performing Watusi in full plus other songs across a 90-minute show.

I’ll cut to the chase – this turned out to be a show that, overall, felt a bit deflating for a few reasons.  By bit deflating, I meant it only merited a 7/10 rating in my book.

The line-up of the band has changed almost beyond recognition from this time last year, with Jonathan Stewart (guitar), Melanie Howard (bass) and Nicholas Wellauer (drums) all departing rather suddenly without explanation, which I found really sad as I felt this particular unit was as good as TWP had sounded at any time since they had come back into being almost 20 years.  

David Gedge now has, again, a completely new set of musicians comprising Rachael Wood (guitar), Paul Blackburn (bass) and Vince Lammi (drums).  The band have been out on the road a fair bit since last November, with many of the shows being centred around the 30th anniversary of Watusi, which was given the deluxe re-issue treatment on vinyl earlier this year across 2x LPs with b-sides from the era and a few alternative mixes being made available.  As such, they were more than ready to take things up a notch.

They opened with Brassneck. It was loud, boisterous and quite manic, but it certainly got the audience going.  We Interrupt This Programme, one of the highlights of the 24 Songs project from a couple of years back was next, followed by what can only be described as a blistering take on Dare, the closing moments of felt very much like an unsaid tribute to the late Steve Albini with the guitars cranked up to full volume and the drums pounded to the point where the skins must have been close to breaking.  

And then Watusi was played in full, from Track 1 to Track 12 in the same order as the album.  The problem here is that Watusi is, and I’m being generous, a tad on the patchy side.  Maybe inconsistent is a better description.  Fair play to the band, the songs I’m not so keen on came across well in the live setting – with a special mention to Catwoman which was stretched out to its full seven-minute length at an ear-splitting volume that My Bloody Valentine would have given their approval to. 

mp3: The Wedding Present – Catwoman

But there’s no doubt that the show lost all sorts of momentum, exemplified by what felt like a limp run-through of Hot Pants, the instrumental which closes the album.  I suspect David Gedge was fully aware as he put the show together that he ran the risk of annoying a fair bit of the audience as there proved to be barely a half-second gap between the final note of Hot Pants and the opening and unmistakable riff of Kennedy, long-regarded by most TWP fans as their finest song.

The rest of the evening passed in a flurry of excitement and much moving of limbs in a moshpit of folk who really should be old enough to better, while the rest of us just swayed and moved a bit less energetically to Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft, Once More, Take Me! and Bewitched.    Five closing songs that were just about all anyone could have asked for, although I still had a regret that this line-up didn’t quite do them justice in a way that Stewart, Howard and Wellauer would have. 

Outside into the still warm but breezy August evening for the 30-minute walk back through the city centre to our hotel close to the railway station and discovering that our ears were ringing, such was the sonic assault of the evening. 

Yes, it had been The Wedding Present, and while Rachel had thought it was a magnificent show (she has a penchant for loud music belying her years!!) , I couldn’t help but think I missed the old line-up.   I suppose, like Mark E Smith once famously said “If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s the Fall”, it’ll always be The Wedding Present when David Gedge is on stage with three other musicians on guitar, bass and drums. 

I was also already thinking ahead to the Saturday and wondering what sort of set would close the festival given what had been played on the Friday.  OK, there would be nothing from Watusi which was a good thing, but four of the best from Bizzaro had been aired while just one song from the 21st century catalogue had been played.    It was going to be intriguing.

Part 2 of the review will appear tomorrow, again as a bonus post later in the day.

JC

 

 

El Rey was released at the end of May 2008.  It contained 11 tracks, but rather annoyingly, there was a 12th track made available but only through a download via the ITunes store.

The CD was purchased.  And for the first time since The Wedding Present had ‘reconvened’,  I found myself rather underwhelmed.  Looking back, my expectations were far too high, thinking that El Rey, with the involvement of Steve Albini, was going to be Seamonsters Mark 2.  It does have a number of more than very decent moments, but overall it doesn’t quite have the consistency of most other albums.

As mentioned last week, the album was preceded by a digital release of The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend.  I was certainly anticipating a physical release for any future singles to be taken from the album, but that’s not how it turned out.  I genuinely can’t recall if there was a digital download made available for this one, but there was a promo video put out for fans to enjoy

mp3: The Wedding Present – Don’t Take Me Home Until I’m Drunk

Track 8 on El Rey, and one that was co-written by guitarist Chris McConville who had joined back in 2006 but was soon to leave again after the promotional activities around touring El Rey were completed at the end of 2009.   It’s the sort of song you could imagine Cinerama writing and recording, not least for all the references to Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the song title being akin to a line spoken in that film by Holly Golightly, played memorably by Audrey Hepburn.

Later in the year, a box set called How The West Was Won was issued by Vibrant Records.   If you want to buy a second-hand copy via Discogs, it is listed under the singles section of music by The Wedding Present.   If you head to the band’s website, it is listed under the albums section.  No wonder it is proving awkward to keep track of what should be curated as a single for this particular series.

My rule of thumb is that EPs should be included.  How The West Was Won contained four separate CDS, each being called as EP, and each with four tracks.  The first of them saw the first physical non-promotional release of the ‘Girlfriend’ EP, while the second was called the Don’t Take Me Home Till I’m Drunk EP.

In addition to the album version of the song, there was an acoustic take and a remix, which was the work of the song’s co-writer, Chris McConville:-

mp3: The Wedding Present -Don’t Take Me Home Till I’m Drunk (acoustic version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Don’t Take Me Home Till I’m Drunk (Team Wah Wah remix)

The former is, again, what you’d fully expect from its description. The latter has all sort of instrumentation and technical gadgetry thrown at it. It’s certainly different, but it really acts as a reminder that TWP songs don’t really benefit from any sort of radical type of remix.

The EP contained one entirely new song.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Pinch, Twist, Pull, Release

There’s no production credits given within the box set, so I’m not sure if this was one that was worked up in the Chicago studio with Steve Albini or at a separate session – the band had been in a couple of studios prior to making the trip to Chicago.  It’s kind of TWP by numbers, but I don’t mean that in a derogatory way.  It’s a slow, brooding and sad number, with quiet and loud moments throughout, with the protagonist trying hard to explain why this particular relationship has come to an end.   It wouldn’t have been out of place on many an album, and feels as if it was kind of wasted by being tucked away on this EP.

I’ll return again to How The West Was Won next Sunday.

JC

 

Single #35 was Ringway to Seatac, released on CD in October 2005.

The information on the official website for The Wedding Present and Cinerama doesn’t have any entries for singles between then and 2012……and yet, Discogs, the most popular ‘market’ for picking up second-hand copies of vinyl and CDs lists has three releases for 2008.  Here’s the opening part of why…….

2006 and 2007 were very busy years for the band in terms of going out on tour, firstly to further promote Take Fountain, while the following year saw shows which primarily celebrated the 20th anniversary of the release of debut album George Best.

2008 began with everyone heading over to Chicago to the studio of Steve Albini to begin work on what was going to be the seventh studio album.   Settling on the title of El Rey, the album was released in May 2008, initially in the USA on the LA-located indie Manifesto Records and a week or so later in the UK on a newly-established label, Vibrant Records,  based in the south of England.

This was the era when digital, rather than physical, releases seemed to be all the rage.  As such, the song issued as a precursor to the new album was a digital release only, albeit promo CDs were pressed up and sent out to radio stations. This was the info contained with the CDs:-

The obvious confusion is that Track 1, which most radio station producers/DJs would assume is the one to be aired is a remix, while the album version is tucked away as Track 4.  I’m not sure if it actually got much in the way of airplay – the label was incredibly small and certainly wouldn’t have had the resources in terms of finance and personnel to make strong and direct pushes – but if it did, I can only assume it was this version that was aired

mp3: The Wedding Present – The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend (Jet-Age Mix)

The unusual departure being that it’s of call and response number in places, while occasionally becoming a duet with Terry De Castro adding her fine vocal to that of David Gedge. 

It’s a decent enough song without being truly outstanding. It’s actually a rather creepy lyric when you break it down, with David singing that he went to all sorts of boring things with his (male) friend in the hope that his mate’s girlfriend would be there too.  For her part, Terry admits to having feelings in return, but states that her boyfriend would be devastated if she were to leave him for someone who is supposed to be a close friend.

I did buy a download, and was particularly keen, being a huge fan of the Seamonsters album,  to hear the Albini version as I was excited that he was working with The Wedding Present again. 

mp3: The Wedding Present – The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend (Santa Monica and La Brea version)

First thing to note…..it’s almost two minutes longer than the remix.  It opens with a lengthy and initially downbeat instrumental section in which an automated voice repeats the word ‘WAIT’, before the Albini trademark of loud guitars break in after about a minute. These continue for the best part of another minute before the same automated voice goes into a countdown from 12 to 1, at which point the song lifts off.  I immediately preferred this take to the remix, which got me quite excited about the forthcoming release of El Rey.

Here’s the two other versions made available via the download:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend (acoustic version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend (GR’s Man-Made Island Edition)

The former gets a nice touch from the inclusion of a quietly-played organ in the background, but otherwise is probably what you’d expect from its description. The latter is more experimental in nature and the production duties were undertaken by the band’s drummer Graeme Ramsay, who had joined in 2007 (and would, in later years, move to guitar).  It’s one that I like a lot…..but that could probably be down to the fact I have an inherent bias to Graeme Ramsay’s work as he’s a Raith Rovers fan!

JC

I finished off last week by referring to the February 2005 release of Take Fountain, the so-called ‘comeback’ record by The Wedding Present, their sixth studio album all told, but their first since September 1996.

It was perhaps a bit disappointing for all concerned that the album only reached #68 in the UK charts, which was a much poorer performance than any of the previous five efforts.  But then again, it performed way better than any of the three Cinerama albums that had been issued in the intervening years, as none of them cracked the Top 100.

I think that what makes it all the more disappointing is the fact that Take Fountain is an excellent record, packed throughout with great songs.  Sure, it is completely different in sound from the 80s and 90s ‘classics’, but David Gedge‘s songwriting skills and talents had matured considerably, and there was never really any chance of him churning out another set of tunes akin to George Best or Bizarro.

There is a (mostly) fine summary of the album over at allmusic, written by Andy Kelman:-

“From the start, Cinerama was not a drastic diversion from the Wedding Present. David Gedge rounded off whatever remaining edges were left in the Weddoes’ sound and developed a crack chamber pop group. Softer songs off Watusi and Saturnalia, such as “Catwoman,” “2, 3 Go,” and “Real Thing,” dropped hints.

Gedge’s gruff yelps vanished, replaced by bedroom whispers; roaring electric guitars were swapped out for delicate acoustic strums, with extensive use of strings, brass, woodwinds, and keyboards. After Cinerama released their first album, they began to sound more and more like the Wedding Present, to the point where the two groups were virtually indistinguishable from one another.

In 2004, Gedge and his associates began recording the fourth Cinerama album with Watusi producer Steve Fisk and resurfaced instead with the sixth Wedding Present album. To no surprise, Take Fountain sounds just like Cinerama and the Wedding Present. Opener “Interstate 5” gets it across right off the bat, its first six minutes an effectively repetitive chugging groove that shifts into a drifting hybrid of Ennio Morricone and John Barry for the final two minutes — a bracing zip up the West Coast turns into a restful gondola ride alongside an Italian village.

From then on, the album is populated by a range of three- to four-minute pop songs that you’re accustomed to hearing from Gedge. For every hushed, playful passage, there’s an explosive chorus, and for every verse dealing with some form of romantic frustration, there’s…a bunch of romantically frustrated verses. Most songs are of the standard that made Gedge one of the most loved indie figures of the ’80s and ’90s, though the bluntly sexual phrasings that repelled George Best/Tommy-era fans from Watusi, Saturnalia, and everything released by Cinerama remain. Take Fountain is a solid Wedding Present album, one that will satisfy those who have been following Gedge all along.”

While I take umbrage at his assertion that after Cinerama released their first album they began to sound more and more like the Wedding Present (a point of view which could easily be dismissed by reading all that strangeways has offered up on this blog in recent months), Kelman’s overall take is quite sound. 

One more single – a very low-key affair, was issued on CD, in October 2005:-

mp3 : The Wedding Present – Ringway to Seatac

Romantically frustrated indeed!!!

I’m thinking that the single was issued partly as a vehicle to finally release the one last song recorded during the Take Fountain sessions that hadn’t yet seen the light of day:-

mp3 : The Wedding Present – Shivers

No loud guitars or drums.  A slow and very resigned vocal delivery over what is almost a music-box style accompaniment.  More evidence that the musicians had gone into the Seattle studio prepared to make a Cinerama album.  And while it was mostly possible to re-arrange things so that everything now sounded like a TWP song, it just wasn’t feasible with Shivers.  It’s a real oddity, but one that has a certain amount of charm.

One other track was made available, but it was recorded separately and Dare Mason, who had been involved in all three Cinerama albums, is given a production credit.

mp3: The Wedding Present – American Tan

It’s a strange one.  There’s nothing remotely Cinerama-sounding about it, despite those involved in the production.  It’s only 95 seconds long, and it comes to a rather sudden stop, despite there having been a continuous lyric.  The lack of any instrumental break has me wondering if it was really a demo waiting to be worked up.  Either way, it’s kind-of TWP by numbers and I have no real strong feelings about it.

Next time around will see the series reach 2008….the year that the seventh studio album El Rey was released.  It’s a period of time when the TWP website makes no mention of any singles being released, but there’s three such items from 2008 listed on Discogs.   I’ll do my best to muddle through.

JC

I apologise for beginning the latest instalment of this series with a spoiler.

The 34th single released by The Wedding Present here in the UK has proved, thus far, to be the last time the band was credited with a chart hit in that particular format.

The ‘return’ of the band in late 2004, via the Interstate 5 single (see last week), led to a great deal of positive press, with many of the interviews and features taking the opportunity not just to have a backwards glance at the recording output of Cinerama, but to remind everyone that going back to the mid-80s, TWP had been responsible for the creation of some of the finest indie-pop/rock music of its generation.  There was, for the time being, much more awareness of the band than perhaps the period when the 12 singles in a year project had been undertaken, and so quite a lot was riding on the next single and the new album, both of which were due for release in February 2005.

The fact that the single had such a great title, one that a certain Manchester-born songwriter with whom David Gedge had often been compared would have been proud to have come up with, just added to the intrigue

mp3: The Wedding Present – I’m From Further North Than You

The song had originally been aired during some live Cinerama shows back in 2003.  Back then, the song was called Edinburgh.   Indeed, it was first recorded under the title of Edinburgh for a John Peel Session which aired in June 2003

mp3: Cinerama – Edinburgh (Peel Session)

David Gedge, in a on-line interview given a few years later, is very much the best person to explain:-

The original title was suggested by the story in the lyric… i.e. that the narrator had met someone with a Scottish accent but had initially mistaken them as being from the south of England. Edinburgh has always been one of my favourite cities and so I decided to use that as being where the other person was from. I think it sounded quite romantic to me.

But, later, I decided that, firstly, I wanted the title to be more literal but also, I wanted to reference that pride of being northern that would cause a northerner to feel appalled if someone mistook them for a southerner! Hence the outrage implied in “No, I’m not from the south, I am from further north than you!”

It’s a fabulous pop song, with one of his finest lyrics. There’s a world of difference in the way the two versions were recorded and produced, and in particular the guitar solos that come after the line(s) that end ‘and you needed a friend’, which certainly hark back in some ways to the Seamonsters-era.

The single came in at #34.  The last time TWP had achieved that high a chart placing without the gimmick of the limited edition singles had been fourteen years previously, when Dalliance came in at #29. 

Before I get to the b-sides etc, here’s your chance to enjoy the promo video:-

Yup.   Filmed in Edinburgh…..and I’ve walked in many of the locations used!  Oh, and the captions suggesting the conversation(s) are packed with snippets from Cinerama songs.  It’s all rather clever and brilliant.

The single was release on 7″ vinyl and CD.   The 7″ actually had a remix of the single on one side and a track that wasn’t included on the CD.

mp3: The Wedding Present – I’m From Further North Than You (Klee Remix)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Nickels and Dimes

It’s not so much a remix as a totally different version.  Klee are a band from Koln, Germany, and back in 2005 consisted of Suzie Kerstgens (vocals), Sten Servaes (keyboards) and Tom Deininger (guitars).   My understanding is that Simon Cleave of TWP lived in the German city in the early 2000s, and so he may well have been the conduit for getting Klee involved – it’s worth remembering that Simon co-wrote all of the songs that would appear on the new album.   Whether all of Klee played on this version or not, I’m not sure….but it certainly sounds as if Suzie is there on co-vocals.

Nickels and Dimes is another that Cinerama had previously recorded for a John Peel session, and yet in this version you would be hard pushed to identify it as being from the era of that band.  It’s not one that I find myself revisiting very often. 

Here’s the two songs to be found on the CD single:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Rekindling
mp3: The Wedding Present – The Girl With The Curious Smile

The former is a short mid-tempo number, at just over two minutes in length.  It’s decent enough, with a nice guitar solo and arrangement at its back-end, without being one that many fans would likely place in the top half of any rundown of TWP songs. 

The latter, and perhaps the title is a bit of a giveaway, is very much a Cinerama number rather than a TWP effort….from the whistling early on right through to the orchestral flushes via the keyboards.  It’s a bit of a hidden gem.

With the single appearing just a couple of weeks in advance of the new album, Take Fountain, the collection of songs on the b-sides, as well as the three songs that had made up Interstate 5, certainly created a fair bit of intrigue as to how it would actually sound.  I’ll try and cover that off next week………

JC

I have the unenviable task of trying to maintain the quality of the past ten Sundays during which strangeways wrote about the Cinerama era in such an eloquent, informative and entertaining manner.   I’ll do my best, but I have great reservations that I can match the quality that has been on show.

Last time round in this series, we reached 1997.   Time travel now takes us to 15 November 2004.

The first half of that particular year had seen Cinerama play some dates in Holland, Germany and the UK prior to the musicians heading into a studio to begin the recording of a new album.   A number of the new songs had already been aired thanks to a couple of John Peel sessions, the most recent of which had been in January 2004.  The decision was taken to record it in Seattle and to have Steve Fisk, who had produced the Wedding Present LP Watusi back in 1997, work with the band.

David Gedge has since said that it was only during the studio process that he began to think that it didn’t quite feel like a Cinerama record was being made, despite the fact some of the songs contained strings and had what could be described as cinematic touches or elements. The primary instruments were guitars, bass and drums.  After a fair degree of soul-searching, and taking on board what those involved in the recording sessions had to say, the frontman made the decision to have the new album released under the name of The Wedding Present. 

My first exposure to the ‘return’ of the band after a seven-year hiatus was seeing this video on one of the music channels.

As a promo film, it’s quite mesmerising.   David Gedge is singing about driving on wide American highways as he stands on a misty single-track road somewhere in the north of England, and all the while a bare-footed woman is running frantically around London and various other localities for reasons that are wholly unknown.

As a tune, with its loud/quiet/loud way of progressing and coming in at more than six minutes in length, it felt every bit as epic.  The lyrics were everything any fan could ask for

‘and yes, there was one particular glance that made me afraid that you were just seeing me as a chance of getting laid’

It was quite the comeback. 

mp3: The Wedding Present – Interstate 5

It was released as a CD single.   It sold enough copies to reach #62 in the UK charts.  It remains, to this day, one of my all-time favourite songs ever written and recorded by The Wedding Present. 

Here’s the two tracks that were offered up as b-sides:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Bad Things
mp3: The Wedding Present – Snaphots

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that the musicians who recorded these three songs, as well as the others that would make up the new album, Take Fountain, were four-fifths of the Cinerama line-up that had been involved in the 2002 album Torino.  They would have started work in the belief that it was going to be a new Cinerama album they were recording, and there’s certainly every indication with Snapshots that the songs were a continuation of the type that David Gedge had been composing for much of the previous decade.  It’s a lovely tune.

On the other hand, Bad Things feels a wee bit of a mess.  One of those tunes that I didn’t get my head round back in 2004 and still haven’t come round to liking it twenty years on.

JC

We’ve now reached 1997.   The Wedding Present had been on the go for almost 12 years.  1996 had been a frantic one, thanks to almost 100 live shows and the release of a new studio album, all while bedding-in a new guitarist.

January 1997 saw three dates in England In Portsmouth, London and Liverpool, a short burst of activity to support the release of a new 45:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Montreal

A quiet and reflective number lifted from Saturnalia.  It was one of the highlights of the album, and again offered evidence that not all TWP songs sound the same.

It was released across 2 x 7″ singles, along with a CD version, all of which offered up different b-sides.  This multi-format approach would have been a factor in helping the single reach #40, by far the best chart position since December 1992.

7″ single : FRY 053

mp3: The Wedding Present – Project Cenzo

Another of the tracks on which past-member Darren Belk is given a co-writing credit.  It’s one of the louder, rockier numbers in the entire TWP canon, during which David Gedge speaks a fair part of the vocal. 

The spoken part is in fact taken, word for word, from the opening narration of The Parallel, episode 11 of season 4 of the sci-fi series The Twilight Zone, originally broadcast on 14 March 1963.   It all makes for an unusual and intriguing song, one that I didn’t know anything about until I picked up, probably around 2006, a second-hand copy of Singles 1995-1997, a CD compilation released on Cooking Vinyl in 1999.

Cenzo?  Well, the band throughout 1996 had worked with Cenzo Townshend, one of the most prolific producers/engineers of the era, who has 800 credits to his name on Discogs.

7″ single: FRY 053X

mp3: The Wedding Present – Where Everybody Knows Your Name (Theme From Cheers)

The comedy series, which ran from 1982-1993, was very funny back in the day, but as with many TV and film comedy offerings, a lot of the humour hasn’t dated well. Maybe David Gedge was a fan – it’s the only treason I can think of as to why he went for this particular cover.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s a novelty that is thankfully all done and dusted in two minutes flat.    I know, however, that some regular readers of the blog don’t agree with my take on things.

CD single: FRYCD 053

mp3: The Wedding Present – Sports Car (acoustic version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – My Favourite Dress (live at Sound City, 1996)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Brassneck (live at Reading, 1996)

The first of these revisits one of the tracks from MIni, but in a clever way, changing the narrative somewhat thanks to the lead vocal being taken by Jayne Lockey.  Her delivery is really well suited to the acoustic take on the tune.  It also paved the way for what has become my favourite version of the song,  recorded for the Locked Down and Stripped Back album of 2001, on which the wonderful and now sadly departed bassist, Melanie Howard took the lead.

The two live recordings do exactly as they say on the tin.  The former is from the evening of 12 April in Leeds, while the latter was recorded on the afternoon of 25 August at the annual festival, and was one of the first live shows in which Simon Cleave had been involved.

And with that, we have reached the end of Phase 1 of the singles recorded and released by The Wedding Present….not that anyone knew that was the case back then.

David Gedge felt he needed a short break from band activities, initially thinking he would write some stuff on his own using samplers and sequencers.  He imagined it would be a short-lived thing.  As it turned out, The Wedding Present went on a hiatus until 2005, and it was under the name of Cinerama that the frontman would record for an eight-year period.

And starting next week, and for the next few months, this Sunday slot will be taken over by a guest contributor who will offer up some facts, info and opinions on all the 45s released by Cinerama.

JC

The Wedding Present more than made up for having been quiet in the previous calendar year. The release of Mini in January was quickly followed by 11 dates in the UK and 14 shows across North America, before the further gigs at Sound City, Leeds and France which were mentioned in last week’s part of this series.

The summer months involved a combination of studio time and 18 appearances on stages on both sides of the Atlantic and on mainland Europe (often on festival bills), but the period from 2 October–21 December saw then play 52 gigs in the UK, USA, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Germany in support of the new album Saturnalia, released on Cooking Vinyl on 9 September.

The first taster of the album had come a few weeks earlier, with a new single, the first on which new guitarist Simon Cleave had played.

mp3: The Wedding Present – 2,3, Go (single edit)

Again, this is one I didn’t pick up on for a few years, initially via its inclusion on Saturnalia, although in later years I did pick up the 7″ version from which the above is taken (the single edit is almost two minutes shorter and loses the feedback and sonic disturbance on the album version).

It’s not a personal favourite, which I think is a view shared by most fans. It did sell enough copies to reach #67 in the UK charts, and given that Saturnalia would enter at #36 (which was 11 places higher than Watusi had achieved back in 1994), it can be argued that it did its job.

Here’s the b-side to the 7″:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Up

A noisy effort that is in some ways reminiscent of the C87 era, and as such is a song I much prefer to the A-side. Worth noting that while the single was credited to all four current members of the band (Gedge/Lockey/Cleave/Smith), there’s a credit on Up for Darren Belk who had left the band a few months earlier. It would later transpire that a number of the songs that would appear on Saturnalia, as well as b-sides, had come from riffs originally worked up by Darren and indeed Paul Dorrington who had left the band as far back as early 1995, but credit (and royalties) were given.

The CD version of the single contained two additional tracks, acoustic versions of songs later included on Saturnalia, a 12-track album  primarily released via CD but also available across 2 x 10″ records

mp3: The Wedding Present – Real Thing (acoustic version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Jet Girl (acoustic version)

There would be one further single lifted from the album…..but that’s a story for next week.

JC