The Wedding Present
The Wedding Present are an English indie rock group formed in 1985 in Leeds, England, by members of the Lost Pandas. The band has been led by vocalist and guitarist David Gedge, the band's only constant member.
Closely linked to the C86 scene, the band has charted a total of eighteen singles in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart, including a historic run of twelve singles – one for each month – in 1992, which tied Elvis Presley's record for most top 40 hits in a single year.
History
Early stages and the Reception era (1985–1989)
The band has its origins in the Lost Pandas, which folded in 1984 when Janet Rigby, the drummer for the band, left following departure of guitarist Michael Duane. David Gedge and the Lost Pandas' bass player, Keith Gregory, continued the band, renaming it the Wedding Present. The name was jointly conceived by Gedge and his girlfriend at the time, as they were both avid fans of the Birthday Party and it was an homage to their favourite band.Gedge and Gregory recruited an old schoolmate of Gedge's, Peter Solowka, to play guitar and auditioned a string of drummers, including John Ramsden, and Mike Bedford, with whom they recorded a demo tape, before settling on Shaun Charman. The band played at clubs and bars as they prepared for the recording of their first, self-financed single. "Go Out and Get 'Em, Boy!" was chosen over early favourite "Will You Be Up There?" Charman felt somewhat insecure about his drumming abilities and so the A-side features drumming by hired hand Julian Sowa. The single was released on the band's own Reception Records label with distribution through Red Rhino.
Two more singles followed that did well on the independent charts helped by veteran BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel who was one of their first champions. He invited them to do a radio session, starting a long collaboration. By the time the band started work on their debut album, a number of independent and major record companies showed interest, but the band declined all offers and decided to keep releasing their material themselves. The album was released in 1987 and titled George Best after the well-known Northern Irish football player. It was produced by the band and Chris Allison.
Upon its release, the album was critically acclaimed and the band were soon classified, with some of their peers, as members of the 'shambling' or C86 scene, a categorisation that they vehemently declined. Musically, the album featured fast-paced rhythm guitar; lyrically, apart from a few excursions into social critique and politics, Gedge's main concerns were love, lust, heartbreak and revenge. Soon after the release of George Best, the early singles and radio sessions were compiled and released as Tommy. When Solowka, who has Ukrainian roots, started fooling around with a Ukrainian folk tune during one of their Peel sessions, the idea arose to devote some of their radio time to recording their versions of Ukrainian folk songs, encouraged by Peel. To this end, two guest musicians were invited, singer/violin player Len Liggins and mandolin player Roman Remeynes, and three Peel sessions were recorded with Gedge temporarily limiting himself to playing rhythm guitar and arranging the songs.
Between the recording of the first and the second 'Ukrainian' session, Charman was fired from the band. His replacement was Simon Smith, who remained the band's drummer until 1997 and for a long time was, next to Gedge, the only other stable factor in the shifting line-ups. The band planned on releasing eight cuts from the Ukrainian sessions on a 10" LP and an initial batch was pressed when Red Rhino went into receivership. Rather than trying to find a new distribution company, the band decided to fold their Reception label altogether and sign with a regular record company: RCA.
The RCA era (1989–1993)
Although the band were criticized by some quarters for 'selling out', under the terms of their contract they were allowed their own choice of producer and singles. They also had the option of releasing any singles rejected by the label independently without breach of contract. The band's new record company bought the initial Reception stock of the Ukrainian record from the band, pressed another batch, and released the record in April 1989 under the name of Українські Виступи в Івана Піла.The first proper album that the Wedding Present recorded for their new label was released in the same year 1989 and reunited them with producer Chris Allison. Bizarros lyrical themes were largely the same as before and the songs featured the same three-chord structures, but its production values had increased due to a larger recording budget. The album was recorded at Jacobs Studios by Steve Lyon and mixed by him and Chris Allison. The album's companion single, "Kennedy", provided the band with their first British Top 40 hit.
In 1989, the band covered the song "Box Elder" by a then-unknown American indie rock band named Pavement. Gregory had found Pavement's limited-pressing debut single during a trip to the United States and the Wedding Present's cover inspired John Peel to promote Pavement on his radio show, a key step in Pavement's breakthrough.
Seeing that they were growing more popular in the American college radio scene, the band turned towards America for their next project. The band decided to re-record Bizarro track "Brassneck" with the former Big Black frontman Steve Albini. It was the start of a two-year collaboration: the next single, "Corduroy", and album, Seamonsters, were also recorded by Albini at Pachyderm Recording Studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota.
Melody Maker likened listening to the record to sandpapering your ears. End-of-year readers polls, however, showed the opening track and lead single of the album, "Dalliance", amongst the top of the favourites list. Almost directly after recording the album, the band announced that they had sacked Solowka. His replacement was Paul Dorrington of local band Tse Tse Fly. Solowka teamed up again with Liggins and Remeynes to form The Ukrainians, and continued to blend post-punk with traditional Ukrainian music.
The Hit Parade (1992)
The next year saw the band release twelve 7" singles in one year. Each single had a limited pressing of 10,000 copies which all reached the Top 30 in the UK Singles Chart, equalling Elvis Presley's record for the most UK Top 30 hits in one year. To economise on songwriting, the B-sides consisted of cover versions of songs including Julee Cruise's "Falling". The singles and their B-sides, produced by various producers such as Ian Broudie and Jimmy Miller were collected on two albums, Hit Parade 1 and Hit Parade 2.The demand in the United Kingdom for the Wedding Present's singles was so high that distributors began poaching from a separate 5,000-copy stash meant for sale in all other markets to sell in the UK. The Wedding Present had the distinction of having all 12 hit singles be solely original material, whereas Elvis reached his record through archival re-issues. The Hit Parade effectively served as the band's third album under the RCA contract, and the band played Top of the Pops four times in the same year.
Seamonsters, Hit Parade 1 and Hit Parade 2 were released in the United States in 1991 and 1992 by New York-based pseudo-indie label First Warning Records. Shortly after the 1992 singles scheme had ended, the band announced they were leaving RCA.
The Island era (1994–1995)
The band spent most of 1993 taking time off, occasionally playing gigs. A stopgap compilation of three more archive radio sessions, Peel Sessions 1987–1990, was released by Strange Fruit. When they re-emerged in early 1994 with the news that they had signed to Island Records, it was quickly followed by the announcement that Gregory had left the band, due to lack of enthusiasm, and was replaced by Darren Belk. For their next album, the Wedding Present again left for the United States and enlisted Steve Fisk. The result was Watusi. The album's songs ranged from warm lo-fi pop to semi-psychedelic, Velvets-like workouts.No further albums were recorded for Island, and the best part of 1995 was spent the same way as 1993: touring, writing new material, no recording. Paul Dorrington quit the band; no replacement was made as Belk doubled on bass and guitar. In the autumn of 1995, the Wedding Present released "Sucker", a self-financed single that was sold at their gigs only. Shortly after, the band signed with independent label Cooking Vinyl.
The Cooking Vinyl era (1995–1997/99)
The band, still a three-piece, recorded their newly written material and issued the car-themed six-track mini-album, Mini. Belk played both guitar and bass on the songs. Shortly after releasing the album, Jayne Lockey, who had already sung backing vocals on Mini, was announced as the band's new bass player. Belk quit the band and was replaced by Simon Cleave. Both Lockey and Cleave were former members of Tse Tse Fly, along with Paul Dorrington and Mark Goodham.The band still had material from their sabbatical year and went into the studio again to record Saturnalia. This proved to be the last new material by the Wedding Present for a long time. After playing a number of gigs to support the album, the last one in Liverpool on 18 January 1997, the band took a long sabbatical.
Contractual obligations and Cinerama (1997–2004)
To fulfill contractual obligations, two more compilations were released by Cooking Vinyl: another Peel sessions volume, John Peel Sessions 1992–1995, and Singles 1995–1997. Additionally, Strange Fruit offered another radio sessions compilation, Evening Sessions 1986–1994, and the band's American label released Singles 1989–1991, a 2CD package which added rarities and live tracks. Gedge recorded an album, Va Va Voom, in 1998 under the Cinerama band name with his girlfriend, Sally Murrell, and some session musicians. The project became a full-time band.Following Gedge's split from Murrell in 2003, and with the increasing inclusion of Wedding Present songs in Cinerama's live sets, Gedge effectively renamed Cinerama in 2004, keeping the line-up, reflecting the change in sound over the years to the more familiar territory of the Wedding Present.