Wedding Present - Tower Lounge,Blackpool, 27/7/2008

  by Dixie Ernill

published: 31 / 7 / 2008

intro

In a rare appearance in Blackpool at its Tower Lounge venue, Dixie Ernill watches David Gedge's durable the Wedding Present play an energetic, excellent set

Fresh from headlining the Saturday night of the Indietracks Festival weekend in Derbyshire the night before, David Gedge and his youthful cohorts take to the stage in good spirits to make a rare appearance in Britain’s best known and probably most soulless seaside resort, Blackpool. It may be a Sunday night in a sticky nightclub at the base of the tower, but it hasn’t deterred a near sell out crowd from making the effort to pay homage to one of music’s most undervalued bands. Despite the fact that the band was formed nearly a quarter of a century ago, it is refreshing to see that, mixed amongst the balding beer-bellied disciples of old, are a new breed of street-wise indie kids keen to see a band worth 10 klaxons of anybody's money. Stranger too, a mother and heavily pregnant daughter sing along to nearly every word! The set is suitably varied with a decent sprinkle of tracks from current long player, 'El Rey', alongside older songs from the group's earlier days. Of the new stuff, it is ‘Don’t Take Me Home Until I’m Drunk’ that sounds best to trained and virgin ears alike, while current single ‘The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend’ and ‘Spiderman On Hollywood’ ensure that 'El Rey' is as essential as any of The Wedding Present’s albums. With such a vast canon of fine songs to choose from, Gedge wisely mixes in lesser known b-sides, such as ‘Gone’, ‘I’m Not Always So Stupid’ and ‘Don’t Talk, Just Kiss’ along with crowd pleasers, ‘Brassneck’, ‘Suck’ and ‘Ringway To Seatac’. Elsewhere a bruising ‘Loveslave’ and ‘You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends’ are well received and the excellent ‘Wow’ is a perfect reminder that Gedge’s other group, Cinerama, were more that just a stop-gap between Wedding Present stints. As is tradition, there is no encore, but the closing twin assault of ‘Dalliance’ and ‘Dare’ from 1990’s stunning 'Seamonsters' LP more than make up for it. Excellent.

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