THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

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