The Weddoes are playing the Cat on Saturday with the Jealous Girlfriends – an embarrassment of riches that continues that same night with Wire and Tone at the 930 Club. How to decide which to attend? Well, I think you should choose the Wedding Present. Why? If you’ve never seen them, you’ll fall in love with them probably instantly. If you’ve heard them before, from all reports, they’re in fine form, and it’s about time.
Now, who are the Wedding Present? Well, there was a time when the only band I knew from Leeds was the Wedding Present, commonly known in the British music press as the Weddoes. In the aftermath of the new wave (1985), they became instant legends – sort of a straight version of the Smiths. They were championed by the press, backed by John Peel’s fervent support and spread throughout the land by an unending streams of beautifully packaged 12”s. Every song was packed with emotion, detailing the painful moments of the horrible relationships of lead singer David Gedge, all delivered in his inimitable accent with a buzzing, insistent guitar and propulsive drumming. The marvelous storytelling of the songs is presaged by the titles, like, “What Did Your Last Servant Die of?” and “You Should Always Keep in Touch with Your Friends.” Absurd, marvelous semi-shoegaze of the highest order.
There are those who say their apex came with the stellar Seamonsters album, produced by Steve Albini in 1991. Others love the string of 12 7”s they released in 1992, one per month, equaling the record for the most chart singles in one year (“Silver Shorts,” in particular). I think their first studio release, George Best, is the sine qua non. Decorated with a great photo of that most celebrated of British footballers, it stands is perfect by itself, but the CD reissue, with nine additional tracks, is a happiness overload, like a guitar amp that goes to eleven, including an adrenalized cover of the Beatles’ “Getting Better” and the exquisite “Pourquoi Es-Tu Devenue Si Raisonnable?”
Jesus, I didn’t even mention Cinerama, or offshoot the Ukrainians and their amazing Smiths cover EP. Or the Peel Session box-set. All right, I’ll get together with John Foster and do a writeup for “lost records” or something like that later. Regardless, go. Here’s a set list from a couple weeks earlier in this tour, from San Diego, thieved from the Burning World blog:
It’s For You
Gone
Don’t Take Me Home until I’m Drunk
You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends
Lovenest
Blue Eyes
Pallisades
Snake Eyes
Sports Car/Spiderman on Hollywood
Crawl
You Turn Me On
Granadaland
My Favourite Dress
Nowhere Fast
Model, Actress, Whatever…
The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend
Dalliance/Dare
Flying Saucer
Boo Boo
The live photo is from another great live review I read from the Losanjealous blog.
Good point. No, but I heard Gedge is talking to the audience a lot between songs, so…well, that’s cool.
October 8, 2008 at 4:06 pmThe Wedding Present are one of my favorite bands of all time and that setlist has some real gems in it. You might be able to catch Wire with the early time slot at 9:30 and still make it to this. Gedge and crew have given DC some it’s finest bursts of guitar fury ever. Always worthwhile. Williams knows his shit people!
William - sorry you didn’t get to hear Brassneck close my first set on Friday. The only thing I love more than The Wedding Present is The Wedding Present at a high volume!
October 8, 2008 at 4:49 pmSemi-shoegaze? When? There’s nothing remotely dreamy about their sound. They were one of the most abraisive guitar groups to come out of that whole C86 era. Cheap Fender Mustangs and Broncos played at lightning spead w/the treble turned up HI HI HI.
October 8, 2008 at 4:50 pmpatrick - i think the way you described the wedding present is exactly what makes them semi-shoegaze. no?
abrasive guitar played at lightning speed. there are most certainly shoegaze elements to the wedding present. hence “semi-shoegze”.
also, of the bands who are called (or call themselves) ’shoegaze’, slowdive are the only ones who i would consider ‘dreamy’. definitely not jesus and mary chain, mbv, swervedriver, medicine, etc. just my thought.
October 8, 2008 at 5:15 pmPatrick, I don’t consider shoegaze to be dream-pop. In fact, I consider dream-pop to be a small sub-genre of shoegaze. Do you really consider all shoegaze to be “dreamy?” I think C86 fed into/gave rise to much of what we consider canonical shoegaze.
The modern re-definition of shoegaze as a dead thing with sharply-defined boundaries is disappointing. I like Ulrich Schnauss, but his “shoegaze” remixes are increasingly sounding like the sonic equivalent of a Photoshop preset.
Even discussions of the origins of shoegaze inevitably founder on earlier and earlier examples of the sound. I used to think that Cocteau Twins “Rococo” was a good place to start. Then I heard the frantic, massive guitar sound in the intro to Josef K’s Peel Session of “The Missionary,” which you can trace as a direct antecedent of “Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm.” Then, I went back and listened to the Birthday Party’s “The Friend Catcher”’s horrifying wall of feedback and thought, well, maybe that’s where Kevin Shields heard it first…
I mean, you will agree that MBV’s shoegaze, right? I mean, definitively, right? Well, what’s remotely dreamy about “Feed Me with Your Kiss?” Or how about JAMC? Are you going to say that they’re not shoegaze, despite the fact that they practically define the genre? “Upside Down.” Abrasive, or dreamy? Then listen to Earwig’s “Blind, Stupid, and Desperate” (compared to their later, majesterial “Out of My Hands, Over My Head”) or A.R. Kane’s “When You’re Sad”/”So Far Away” 12″. Abrasive, but shoegaze.
Or consider the case of Lush. Their debut, the Scar EP, was released in 89, in the midst of the shoegaze movement, but can rightly be described as “cheap fender mustangs and broncos played at lightning speed with the treble turned up high.”
All I’m saying is that to say “All This and More,” or “Felicity,” or “Go Out and Get ‘em Boy” are separate and removed from shoegaze strikes me as splitting a very, very fine hair.
That said, all props for being a fan. See you at the show!
October 8, 2008 at 5:33 pmShoegaze is one of those musical description that has taken on a life of it’s own and when you apply it to an act it implies some adventurous waves of sound (likely guitar-based) that can also be linked to a certain collection of effects pedals. At this point, there isn’t much in the way that has those pieces that you couldn’t justify placing the moniker on - even Schnauss and his electro compositions.
The Wedding Present have been through several journalistic scenes as it were, and never quite fit any of them - that is the utter joy in Gedge’s work. The early stuff (George Best era) was considered “jangle pop” in most reviews of the day and lumped in with the much slower playing of folks like Close Lobsters and The Waltones. The fact that that description was meant to encompass bands tackling a trebly sound with some Byrds records in their collection shows you how quickly things can go awry.
“Shoegaze” though is one of the funniest descriptions. As an ardent reader of the NME and Melody Maker during the 80’s and early 90’s I managed to see the first time these words were used in a review and how quickly they took off. In the beginning they were meant to decry the boring nature of seeing The Pale Saints and Moose among others. The journalists all decried this new wave of shy bands that spent all of their time looking down at their effects pedals - thus “shoegazing.”
As guitar bands reclaimed UK stages and airwaves once again, this sound filtered into 60’s leaners like Ride and so many others. It’s easy then to go back to the inspiring acts and link it all back together. At the same time, a number of bands were often sharing members and stages (Ride, Lush and Moose in particular) and then the press condemned them even further by referring to them as The Scene That Celebrates Itself - thank god that didn’t take off!
If you really want to go back to the roots of The Wedding Present sound though you need to hear old pop songs with shitty Sears Silvertone guitars with the treble to the max - Tommy Roe has a couple of easy spots - it’s also the sound Unrest was driven to even to the point of getting the same guitars. Tommy Roe’s “Sweetpea” is also one of the first hip hop break beats on record. It’s a throwaway AM radio song, but the production has the blueprints of a lot of stuff that followed. The beauty is that it doesn’t sound innovative what so ever - but you can almost see a young David Gedge sitting by the radio while he spies on the complex adult conversations going on around him…
Shit - sorry William - what I meant to say was everyone here is right in their own way - haha. I have a fever and can’t stop typing.
October 8, 2008 at 9:34 pmThis thread is the nerd.
October 8, 2008 at 11:45 pmThis thread is the tits. Classifying them is unnecessary– they were one of John Peel’s favorite bands of all time= they are punk fucking rawk. I’ll be there dressed like William Shatner.
October 9, 2008 at 9:28 amThank you John for setting the record straight.
October 9, 2008 at 9:42 amPedro you shouldn’t objectify women and their milk factories. View the PSA regarding “gay.” Same thing. You should say things like “This thread is very informative and helpful” or “I enjoy reading the information contained within this thread submitted by various persons who are knowledgeable about this particular band.”
You should not refer to things as “tits”
October 9, 2008 at 10:20 am
Wm., is this a make rock hands and stick your tongue out at cameras band or not? That’s all need be said in reviews.
October 8, 2008 at 4:02 pm