Wedding Present

There are people who think that the real meaning of Christmas has been lost...and that the real meaning of Christmas is Peel’s Festive 50 crammed with that year’s entire output by the Wedding Present and The Fall. I’m not quite that bad but I do have a soft spot for Wedding Present.

They were in many ways the archetypal Peel band. Where Peel listener becomes Peel performer and then inspires a whole new set of bands...and keeps fanzine writers busy.

David Gedge had been writing to Peel for years before, sending him tapes of new projects and fledgling bands and Peel had said that he liked the letters but not any of the music until 1985’s Wedding Present debut single Go Out And Get ‘Em Boy.

Their early trademark was the breakneck speed they played at, with a frantic clattery rhythm guitar that was more banjo than Bon Jovi. The lyrics were a catalogue of courting carnage. Heartbroken, love sick, dumper and dumpee and were often based on English sayings, or stock phrases.

Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft, What Did Your Last Servant Die Of? Anyone Can Make A Mistake. Almost stereotypically northern. The Smiths were at the height of their powers and then here comes David Gedge. Just what was needed ...a less flouncy Morrissey who didn’t talk about celibacy but did sing about having a lot of Girl Trouble.

The single Once More and the double A side You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends/This Boy Can Wait was released in 1986 on the bands own Reception label. They kept to their formula. Fast, thrashy and heartbroken.

I first saw them at Manchester Boardwalk and remember Gedge was wearing a Frankie Goes To Hollywood Relax T shirt and they covered Gang Of Four’s I found That Essence Rare.

I also saw them at The Barrel Organ in Digbeth in early 87. My favourite song from that time was My Favourite Dress. For a start it was a touch slower but it had a powerful, grinding, churning rhythm that could mix concrete.

The bass was filthy, distorted, clicky and relentless. The guitars alternately piled layers on and then held back so you could hear the bass and drums in the gaps...it really complemented Gedge's lyric “There’s always something left behind.”

In the Carry On tradition I always liked the title My Favourite Dress, and of course in the David Gedge tradition it was a song about jealousy betrayal, disappointment and..“A drunken kiss. A stranger's hand on my favourite dress”.

I liked the way that Gedge’s voice rose up through the verses and like so many of his songs there’s that great teenage feeling of “It’s not fair.” I also liked it for more obvious reasons though, namely it’s line “A long walk home, The pouring rain” .

I’ve spent a lifetime thinking about Pop and during the 80’s went to loads of gigs where I ended up walking home in the rain, without really minding too much. Sometimes a reason for liking a song can be alarmingly literal....as Great Uncle Bulgaria and Tobermory once told me whilst litter picking on Wimbledon Common. Can’t remember what their favourite song was though...

1987’s George Best lp is probably the best loved lp; it’s got the singles and the iconic photo of Best on the cover. After the recording they shed the drummer. The first in a long line of shuffling line up changes.

Reception Records released an odds, sods singles and Peel sessions compilation Tommy in 1988 while Bizzaro, the second studio album came out on RCA in 1989.

The songs were similar in sound and approach to the first, and they used producer Chris Allison again, who had produced George Best. Many songs featured lengthy endings where the vocals have got their coats and gone home but the music just wants to stay out and go to a club or at least the chippy.

Some of these songs really do go on and on. It’s got that “we don’t know how to stop this” feeling, like the Velvet Underground’s 3rd lp or the Stooges debut. And with the Weddos scrubby rhythm guitar you can definitely feel the musical link back to Lou Reed’s peerless rhythm playing. The single Kennedy was an indie floor filler for years. Literally years....like I said, it did go on a bit.

I liked the band a lot but I was staggered by the huge leap they took with 1991’s Seamonsters. Steve Albini produced it, the banjo rhythm playing was binned, the tempo slowed down and the sound became huge in some areas but defiantly lo fi in others.

Biscuit tin drums would sit under soaring guitars that could have sounded U2 and epic, but were actually harsh and scraping. All the songs had one word titles, Dare, Dalliance, Suck, Rotterdam (Rotterdam scores extra points for not even having its title in the lyric)...and Gedge was still unlucky in love.

The sound was immensely powerful even in the quiet bits as you could feel the band holding back. You knew and they knew, that the next wave was coming and then you were going to get flattened. Blonde has Gedge howling an anguished “Yes I was that naive”...while the guitars sound even more traumatised. It’s bleak.

I saw them in Birmingham in ‘91 just before the album was released. I didn’t know any of the songs and my impression of the gig was that they’d played the album from start to finish. I’m not even sure they did any of the old songs and they certainly didn’t play an encore because they never do. Maybe not a crowd pleaser then, but I thought it was fantastic.

At the time the sound was new and breathtaking...but Nirvana were just about to erupt, Steve Albini would get to produce Nirvana and David Gedge would get slapped by Courtney Love backstage at the Reading Festival....and there'd be another line-up change.

They started January 1992 in the way they meant to carry on....a limited edition single a month for 12 months, with a new song on the a side backed with a cover version. Amongst the covers were the theme from Twin Peaks, UFO and songs by Altered Images, Neil Young....and for the December single’s b side, Gedge turned in a really effective but terse sounding version of Elton John's Step Into Christmas.

They used various different producers and overall the sound was warmer. I found it difficult not to warm to songs with titles like Queen Of Outer Space, Love Slave, Silver Shorts or Go Go Dancer.

Single sales generally were starting to dip and so the Wedding Present were able to break Elvis Presley’s record for the greatest number of top 40 singles in the UK chart in a year. The singles were compiled on Hit Parade Vol 1 and 2.

I’d promptly and smugly bagged 11 out of 12 of the originals, I liked them, and I played them. The band took some time off to regroup as the pressure of that year's release schedule had apparently taken it’s toll on Gedge as the band’s songwriter.

My interest ended pretty much there though...and I’m not sure why. I just didn’t get round to buying anything new or going to see them. There were more line up changes, the band issued an album Watusi on Island in 94 and a car themed album of love songs called Mini on Cooking Vinyl in 1995. The album Saturnalia came out in 96. They still cropped up in Peel’s festive 50 though.

David Gedge started recording as Cinerama with his girlfriend Sally Murrell. Now comes the bit where art becomes life. The standard line about Wedding Present lyrics is that David Gedge’s girlfriend left him and then he spent 20 years singing about it.

Indeed the beginnings of the Wedding Present were in the messy ending of his previous band The Lost Pandas where his drummer girlfriend ran off with the guitarist. In the Wedding Present he always played down the questions about whether the songs were autobiographical by saying he had a long term girlfriend and that he just had a bit of imagination, and some miserable friends.

In 2002 Sally Murrell and Gedge split up after 14 years and he moved from Leeds to Seattle. The songs he wrote from that period became the album Take Fountain and in 2004 the Wedding Present were relaunched. The new line up of the Wedding Present was the old line up of Cinerama. Behold...Marathon becomes Snickers.

Take Fountain came out in 2005. It’s a good album alternating between orchestrated sections (Cinerama) and more recognisable WP style songs. Obviously he’s still heartbroken but I’m glad he’s still around. If there’s anything to vote for in anyone’s end of year polls, then I’m sure some Wedding Present fans will be trying to get back to the True Meaning Of Christmas.