The Wedding Present in Concert
If I go to a concert these days, I invariably end up feeling a little sad. This is not a declension narrative, where I bemoan the decline of rock. I think that there is more good music available to me now than at any other point in my life so far, and I have trouble keeping up with the cd purchases I constantly want to make.
No, I simply mean that I wish I had a mobile phone with camera back at some of the old gigs I went to back in the 80's and 90's. I wish I had been able easily to take pictures of Fields of the Nephilim, Public Enemy, the Cure on their Disintegration tour, Pop Will Eat Itself and more. I never worry that I will forget things that I have enjoyed in my life. But I do worry that I will forget to remember them once in a while. Photos act to me as aides-memoire: they prompt me to remember.
Anyway, the point is that I took pictures last night. And I love the New, the Modern, that many old people and ecologists find so threatening. I adore the fact that I am posting, only a dozen hours later, about a gig I went to last night, and that I am able to add pictures I took. To those who didn't grow up before the internet gave a platform, and before digital photography put instant iconography in the hands of everybody (and not just a few newspaper professionals), this is unremarkable. To me it is a dream.
Enough meandering. The long and the short of it is that I went to see the Wedding Present in concert last night. I tend not to see bands from the 80's and early 90's that often when they tour: I saw most of them at the time and have no desire to remember them later as glorified pub bands, belting out their three singles to balding nostalgites. There are exceptions: I went to see Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Pogues and the Wonder Stuff over the last couple of years, and all were enjoyable, to greater or lesser degrees. But usually I see new stuff.
The Wedding Present, however, I did want to see. Partly because I missed them at the time. Partly because I've found their recent work to be excellent. And partly because Dave Gedge was always a fairly awkward, uncompromising character:
The venue - the Liquid Rooms - is an atmospheric little place. Being in an Edinburgh Old Town basement, the task of supporting several thousand tons of 16th century high-rise building means that the space is limited and awkward: massive stone pillars take up about 20% of the space, but they bring the crowd forward and make a really claustrophobic, bear-pit atmosphere that even support acts can make feel full and busy.
Lee, Jenny, Lee's bf and mate and I turned up in time to catch the first support act - how unfashionably early! - who were suprprisingly good. The lead singer was from the highlands, and frankly sounded a little too much like Brian Molko, the lead singer of Placebo. But their drummer looked like he would go far in rock and roll, with extensive tattoos and a face that suggested heavy heroin use.
The second support act were well suited to the gig, since they sounded like a (consistently upbeat) version of the Wedding Present, complete with semi-spoken asides in a dryly sardonic style. Perhaps a little too similar for me, but they were popular with the crowd.
Then it was on with the Boy Gedge and the main attraction. We headed up to the front, and some of us stayed there the whole time, thus the Extreme Closeup(tm) photography:
What a set. I have the problem that I come away from most concerts sweatily exhilarated, enthusing wildly. But I was really suprised at how much I enjoyed the Wedding Present. They didn't come across as 15-year veterans of the circuit, other than a complete sense of relaxation and confidence in Gedge's dealings with the crowd. Of course, judging by the average age and the exchange of banter, the relationship was a long-standing one, and had every right to be in the comfortable phase.
The setlist was wisely chosen: rather than throwing in any of their truly slow tracks, the band merely interspersed mainly their trippier, more Sonic Youth-ish songs to alter the pace between the rawer, fastpaced numbers that they do so well. I appreciate this strategy, since I have to like a band a lotto wish to hear some sort of slow jam mularkey at a gig.
The full list of songs was:
- Interstate 5
- Crawl
- Drive
- Don't Talk Just Kiss
- Queen Anne
- Go Go Dancer
- Spangle
- My Favourite Dress
- Venus
- It's For You
- Queen of Outer Space
- I'm From Further North Than You
- Kennedy
- Perfect Blue
- Ringway to Seatac
- Dalliance
- Dare
- Flying Saucer
As usual for the Wedding Present, there were no encores. Why bother doing a planned encore, anyway? It's just Ritual de los Habitual... And yes, my memory is incredible to remember all of those. Or maybe I got Dave's setlist at the end, complete with notes to dedicate Perfect Blue to Hugh and Pascaline's anniversary. You decide.
The real high points for me were My Favourite Dress (obviously, I admit), Kennedy and Dalliance. Kennedy in particular had the crowd in a real frenzy. No really, look:
Trust me, they were really a bit frenzied.
The tracks I mention were from the Reception and RCA periods: 87 to 91 in fact. I admit that this makes me a bit of a stuck-in-the-past early era fanboy. But Interstate 5 and I'm from Further North... were both released in the last 12 months or so, and were also excellent. I had a vague hope they would play Come Up and See Me, but it was, unsurprisingly, not to be.
Cracking show. Shame about discovering this morning that Eminem had cancelled the Edinburgh gig. You just know that Gedge wouldn't have baled on the fans... tsk. Oh, and there were other band members as well.
