Some seconds with Kennedy: The Wedding Present

You have to wonder: if Zapruder hadn't been there with his camera, would Kennedy's assasination still hold quite the fascination it does today?

Anyway, the shot that was heard around the world has been reverberating through music ever since, and today, let us enjoy our breakfasts accompanied by some cheery songs about a man having his head smashed open by a bullet, shall we?

Kennedy gave The Wedding Present their first bona fide hit.



It's also been covered by Kerbdog

[Buy: Kennedy by the Wedding Present]

More Kennedy-related songs:
Human League - Seconds
Steinski's Mass Media - The Motorcade Sped On
Dion/Marvin Gaye - Abraham, Martin & John
Saxon - Dallas, 1PM
Tori Amos - Jackie's Strength
Luke Powers - I Saw John Kennedy
Inspiral Carpets - Saturn 5

One-a-month for the Lips

The Flaming Lips are doing a song-a-month throughout 2011. Which is the perfect chance for David Gedge to point out that The Wedding Present has done that, and to offer some advice:

August: If it's not working by now, stop

"They shouldn't lower their standards of songwriting and recording. We agreed that if we felt the music was suffering, we would stop because it wasn't that important to us."

The real delight is the Guardian readers slipping Weddoes song titles into the comments section.

George Best Week'end': You Can't Moan, Can You?

Rounding off the album, it's a performance from The University Of Latvia:



[Concluding George Best Weekend]

George Best Week'end': Anyone Can Make A Mistake

Nearly at the end of the album now - will this weekend never end, you might wonder? - and it's back to Glasgow for the penultimate track:



[Part of The George Best weekend]

George Best Week'end': Give My Love To Kevin

Oh, he buys you pretty things? And what does your mother think? I just can't bear to imagine you sharing a bed with him...

David Gedge's true songwriting talent was to deliver one side of a converation, like a kind of lovelorn madlib where you were asked to supply the other person's responses. Nowhere is this shown off to better effect than on Give My Love To Kevin.

And - surprise - this features a much younger Gedge than we've seen so far, as this is from back in 1990 - at a hometown date. Which would be in Leeds:


[Part of George Best weekend]

George Best Week'end': It's What You Want That Matters

From the dark in Edinburgh:



[Part of George Best weekend]

George Best Week'end': Something And Nothing

As we get deeper into the album, the choices for indivdual tracks are getting thinner - but here, for the first time, is something from the Stirling Fubar on the 20th tour. Something and, of course, Nothing:


[Part of George Best weekend]

George Best Week'end': Shatner

"Imagine girls behaving in that way...". Oddly, despite all the clips swimming round from the anniversary tour, hardly anyone seems to have bothered with Shatner. Luckily, the person who took their camera to Edinburgh did:



[Part of the George Best weekend]

George Best Week'end': My Favourite Dress

It's a little later than Sunday evening, and here we are, only just now reaching the end of side one:



[Part of the George Best weekend

George Best Week'end': All This And More

To Barcelona, now, for another slice of - ahem - crowd-sourced footage of the 20th anniversary tour:



[Part of the George Best weekend]

George Best Weekend: A Million Miles

A short train journey across Scotland, to catch a Million Miles in Edinburgh:



[Part of the George Best weekend]

George Best Weekend: Don't Be So Hard

You might need to squint a bit for this one - Don't Be So Hard, live at QMU in Glasgow in 2007:



[Part of the George Best weekend]

George Best Weekend: What Did Your Last Servant Die Of?

Acoustic, in a record shop in Hamburg:



[Part of George Best weekend]

Embed and breakfast man: George Best weekend

It's cold, it's raining, it's gloomy. What better response than to dip into an albums' worth of comfort food. The Wedding Present's George Best is the Heinz Big Soup of comfort food albums.

Originally released in 1987, and subsequently revised with extra tracks both on CD release and then in a 20th anniversary version. The first 3,000 were sold with the extra inducement of a free plastic bag. To be fair, this was back when you needed something to carry music home in.

Because these things are just flung together on a whim and contain no proper research at all, I'm not sure if all the original tracks will be available in performance on YouTube, but I'm feeling pretty confident with this one.

Track one, Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft, certainly is:



I'm guessing most of the live versions are going to come from the 20th anniversary tour.

Buy
George Best on CD
George Best on comparatively over-priced mp3

Hopefully the tracklist will grow over the weekend
What Did Your Last Servant Die Of?
Don't Be So Hard
A Million Miles
All This And More
My Favourite Dress
Shatner
Something And Nothing
It's What You Want That Matters
Give My Love To Kevin
Anyone Can Make A Mistake
You Can't Moan, Can You?

Wedding by the sea: Weddoes launch their own festival

What could be more pleasing than passing a day in Brighton, enjoying a festival curated by the Wedding Present?

The Wedding Present will be headlining their very own all-day festival at Concorde 2 this summer in Brighton on England's sunny south coast. The event, which is called AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA [in honour of the David Gedge song of the same name] will run from 3PM on Saturday 22 August 2009.

Original plans to name the event My Favourite Dress and make everyone come wearing summer frocks faltered when Gedge imagined what many of his hardcore audience would look like in a Laura Ashley frock, so At The Edge Of The Sea it is.

In other Weddoes-related news, the Big Band Concert recorded at Leeds the other week is going to be broadcast in two chunks on Radio 2 on June 1st and 8th.

David Gedge gets some brass for Brassneck

Interesting plans afoot for David Gedge: As part of the Fuseleeds Festival, he's planning to do some of his songs backed by the BBC Big Band. April 29th is the day set aside.

A small Present for the morning

Not too sure that you can rhyme "...Holly Golightly" with "...Breakfast At Tiffanys" with a straight face and get away with it, but David Gedge gets forgiven a lot round here.

Here's the video for Don't Take Me Home Until I'm Drunk, freshly made from the El Ray album:

Pure Hearts on the road

Here's some happy news: the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are going to be floating about the UK and Ireland making noises:

Dec. 2 - Colchester, UK - Arts Center*
Dec. 3 - Portsmouth, UK - Wedgewood Rooms*
Dec. 4 - Oxford, UK - Academy*
Dec. 5 - Leicester, UK - Princess Charlotte*
Dec. 6 - Manchester, UK - Academy*
Dec. 8 - Cork, IRL - Pavillion*
Dec. 9 - Dublin, IRL - Andrews Lane Theatre*
Dec. 10 - Belfast, UK - Limelight*
Dec. 12 -Glasgow, UK - Captains Rest
Dec. 13 - Leeds, UK - The Cockpit
Dec. 14 - Nottingham, UK - The Social
Dec. 16 - London, UK - “Twee as Fuck” @ Old Blue Last
Dec. 17 - London, UK - “Fortuna Pop”
Dec. 18 - London, UK - Forum*

The asterisk? Oh, that old thing * shows dates where they're supporting The Wedding Present.

1988 Festive Fifty Weekend: Number two

The Wedding Present's Nobody's Twisting Your Arm - here captured in a Chart Show indie chart top ten (from the fifth March 1988, if you're keeping notes).



Buy: Thank Yer Very Glad

[Part of the 1988 Festive Fifty Weekend]

1988 Festive Fifty Weekend: Number four

The version which got everyone excited - the almost never-ending Take Me by The Wedding Present - was the session version. This isn't that - it's live, recorded at Wolverhampton's Little Civic Hall (presumably for people who don't feel very civil?). You might not need to look at your screen during this one.



Buy: An Evening With The Wedding Present DVD

[Part of the 1988 Festive Fifty Weekend]