I’ve just got home from seeing The Wedding Present perform the ‘George Best’ album on the 30th anniversary tour at The Roundhouse.
I go to quite a lot of these things now, anniversaries of albums I bought when I was younger and still love today. In fact, this is the third time I’ve been to a Wedding Present one (a different album every time, I should add). They’re always joyous occasions, several thousand men and women “of a certain age” joining in to sing-a-long to a bunch of songs which mean so much to us, and which have stayed with us for so long.
Needless to say, it was a glorious night, and so I wanted to play something from that album here, but as main man Gedge pointed out tonight: “There aren’t any slow songs on this album.” So instead, here’s an acoustic version of one of them; I think I first had this on a cassette given away free with a magazine in the late 1980s (any suggestions, folks…?), but it got an official release as a bonus track on the wonderful “Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now?” single:
The Wedding Present – Give My Love to Kevin (Acoustic)
On the tube on the way home, I got chatting to a group of people, maybe a little older than me, one of whom was wearing a couple of Wedding Present badges on the strap of her handbag. We exchanged the usual post-gig pleasantries, and I asked them what they were going to do next.
“Go home and listen to ‘George Best’ again, really loud,” was their response.
Me too, me too.
More soon.
A History of Dubious Taste 
I only know Seamonsters – worth checking out their other stuff?
Most definitely, although I don’t think any others sound like the Albini-produced Seamonsters, if you like Gedge’s lyrics then you can’t really go wrong. I’ve posted plenty of stuff on here, but the links may have expired. Feel free to send me a comment and I’ll happily re-up the link.
Great song. Great album. Great cover.
Sounds like a bloody good night out to me.
Yes sir it was. The Weddoes live is always a great night, but watching them last night was almost spiritual (if that’s not too wanky a thing to say), truly magnificent
Magazine suggestion: think it might have been issued with Underground magazine in April 1988, cassette entitle “Strum + Drum”? Maybe. I don’t have it, so can’t be sure.
Yes, I think you may well be right