The Wedding Present open their set with End Credits. I like that for so many reasons, mostly cos it's a great tune but it also just fits with how I've always seen The Wedding Present and Dave Gedge's staunch refusal to do what's expected of our music industry stars. Therein is the point. Dave Gedge isn't a star and I doubt he ever wanted to be. He's a musician and one of the finest this country's ever produced.
I was ill on Tuesday and probably should've stayed in bed. I once saw an interview with Joe Strummer talking about The Pogues and why, though he had flu, he'd come out to see them live. 'Staying in bed when The Pogues are in town? That's a mad man thing to do.' That's how I felt about The Wedding Present Tuesday night. Plus Dave Gedge had kindly consented to an interview and offered guest list spots all for a comic book! I was lucky enough to catch The Wedding Present soundchecking and recording an exclusive video for The Mouth Magazine. They sounded amazing. Check it out here.
http://themouthmagazine.wordpress.com/
Dave Gedge Interview.
SS: Sounding absolutely brilliant out there.A lot rockier than last time I saw you.
DG: Rockier? Yeah, it's a couple of things. Cos we're doing Seamonsters so we're in a rockier mode but also I think this line up is probably the rockiest line up we've ever had. It changes all the time. You get new members in and they bring something different to the band but it's just by chance more than anything that this line up seems to be rockier.
SS: So you've toured George Best, you've toured Bizarro, now you're touring Seamonsters. Does that mean we'll get another 5 tours at least for the other studio albums?
DG: Seems to be the way it's going.
SS: Was it a deliberate thing to tour the albums in order or is it just what you felt like playing at the time?
DG: I didn't really feel like doing it at the time. 2007 was the 20th anniversary of George Best and a label called Sanctuary, who sadly don't exist any more wanted to do a 20th anniversary re-release of it. And it was their idea actually, why don't you play it live? And I said no, I don't fancy that at all because obviously as an artist you're thinking about your new songs and the next album and moving forward, but everybody I spoke to, the band at the time, friends and fans all said I'd love to see you play George Best. So I said OK we'll try it and to my kinda surprise really I actually found it an interesting project, it's a bit surreal really to go back 20 years and look at what you were doing at that point and then kinda re-analyse it and re-invent it in a way.
SS: Cos I've always found The Wedding Present, more than most bands to me, don't sound dated in any way.
DG: I'd kinda dispute that. Of all the albums I think George Best sounds the most dated.
SS: And Bizarro?
DG: Well it's funny you should say that cos after we did George Best, and I kinda enjoyed it, and it's actually my least favourite album, I felt then we really should probably do Bizarro. So then it was well let's do Seamonsters. So by default almost we seem to be working our way through them now.
SS: You famously released a single a month in 1992.
DG: The Hit Parade.
SS: Would you tour The Hit Parade albums?
DG: I think so, yeah. To be honest we've already decided to do that. We're playing in North America early next year then Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the idea there is to do The Hit Parade so there's no reason why we couldn't do it over here as well.
SS: Speaking of New Zealand you did a cover on the 2001 Seamonsters re-issue of New Zealand Band The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience
DG: It was actually the B-side to one of the singles and the re-issue included B-sides
SS: How do you come up with covers, cos someone like The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience, not many people outside of New Zealand would have heard of?
DG: Occasionally we'll hear something, I think it was probably our bass player at the time, Keith Gregory, who suggested that one. He just played it, we thought it was interesting so we had a go at it. There's no real process or reason behind it, it's just totally random.
SS: Any covers in tonight's set?
DG: We do do covers occasionally, not tonight obviously with Seamonsters being quite a big portion of the set, it doesn't leave much space. Well it leaves 40 minutes but it's kind of a weird tour this one cos it's Seamonsters but then it's Valentina as well. So we'll probably do 3 or 4 of them as well. It was gonna be a Valentina tour but I thought at some point I want to do Seamonsters, and it was should I do it next year, or the year after then I thought why cant we do it now and just combine it. We play for 85 minutes so Seamonsters is only half of that.
SS: So do you get more of a thrill from playing the new songs or do you still enjoy the buzz from playing something like Kennedy when the crowd really goes for it?
DG: I think if you play a song a lot you can get a bit jaded with it so you drop it from the set for a while and when it comes back a few years later it's fresh and exciting. To be honest we don't really tend to play songs a lot because, well there's plenty to choose from really. You say Kennedy but there's no kind of songs that have to be there. OK Kennedy and Brassneck are more well known but then so's Dalliance, My Favourite Dress, there's loads...
SS: Corduroy
DG: Which you will hear tonight. There's plenty to go at.
SS: So was there ever a time, kinda like when you were doing Cineramo, that you thought there wouldn't be any more Wedding Present or was it always on the back burner?
DG: Well it's funny you should say that, when we started doing Cineramo, in 1997 I think, I originally thought it would be a short project, 6 or 8 months, but I did enjoy doing it, writing all the stuff myself, doing all the orchestral work so it kinda expanded into 8 years. At that point I was thinking at the back of my mind will The Wedding Present ever do anymore but at the same time, almost subconsciously it was sounding more like The Wedding Present.
SS: Was it Take Fountain you were recording and thought this is more Wedding Present?
DG: Totally. It crept up on us really. The guitarist in Cineramo was also the guitarist in The Wedding Present before, and he started writing more and it became more guitar based so by the time it came to Take Fountain it was almost as if the two bands had merged together.
SS: 18 members I think since you formed in 85, you're obviously the only constant member, would there ever be a solo Dave Gedge project or would it always come under The Wedding Present banner?
DG: Well Cineramo was at the time cos when I started doing that it was just me on my own, with my girlfriend at the time. For the first LP we just got random musicians in so it wasn't a band as such but then it became a band to play live with so that was my little solo project really.
SS: I read in an interview recently that you don't actually enjoy this. Is that true?
DG: Well kind of. People always say you must love your job and I don't really. I find it quite hard work.
SS: I guess as a touring band as well you don't really have a base as such which must be hard.
DG: No, it's one reason why we've had so many line-up changes. It sounds great, I'm off to America, I'm off to Japan, I'm Off to Australia, I'm playing music for a living. And it is great but then the third time you do it starts wearing thin and you miss your friends at home and you miss your girlfriend or boyfriend and I think after a while, some people last 4 years, some people 12 years. I'm the only one, and it's different for me cos obviously it's my baby, I'm willing to give up more.
SS: Do you think you'll ever reach a point when you'll stop doing it?
DG: Yes, it's weird again. Kinda yes and no. Obviously there will be a point.
SS: You're not gonna do a Rolling Stones and keep going for fifty years?
DG: I wouldn't have thought so but I've been doing it 25 years already, and that's flown past really. I wouldn't like to put a date on it.
SS: You've never played the record company game, from the early days when you had the big companies chasing you, and you decided no, I'm gonna do it myself. You were really a fore runner to the way the business works now. So many up and coming bands have the must get signed, must get signed thing going on and record companies don't work like that anymore.
DG: Well there's no record labels left to sign them really. It's kinda come full circle were everybody's like that now. like I was back then.
SS: So you'd recommend bands self finance themselves?
DG: Well it's worked for me but I don't think they have a choice anymore. Every year there's less labels and they just want people who can make money for them. Nowadays if you don't have a hit in the first year that's it.
A massive thank you again To Dave Gedge for agreeing to waste his precious time with me and I really hope he didn't get my manflu.
Simon Saynor
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