The Wedding Present

I seem to be spending an awful lot of time at the Zodiac these days. In the month of February I managed to visit it at least three times and I'm back there tomorrow night for the ladies slam. Last Friday visit saw me going to see shoe gazing band 'The Wedding Present' with Chris. Have to confess that I didn't know a great deal about them before I went. I'd heard their new singles on Radio 6 (we do adore that radio station, don't we?) and liked them. I also knew that the lead singer is David Gedge and I went to university with a Darron Gedge, which still amuses me. That was it. Now that I own a couple of studio albums, Take Fountain and Hit Parade (more a greatest hits than an album) I must observe that their live performances are a far superior beast. Without wanting to sound like a music wanker, this is a band that work really hard and they enjoy what they do. Lots of guitar and a very cute girl who replaces the guitar that Gedge has just used with a shiny new one. She then sits at the back of the stage and retunes the used one. All of this is, of course, irrelevant to this entry. What is slightly more relevant is that I stood next to a woman who was on her fifteenth visit to one of their gigs.

There was a final oddity when Gedge announced before the start of the final song that they don't do encores. He wasn't lying. I like that. There seems to be that ridiculous game we play at concerts where the band leaves, we refuse to leave, the lights don't go on and then the band comes back to 'treat' us to the couple of hit singles we were expecting and they haven't played. Then we all leave happy. I enjoyed not playing that game on Friday night.