"Anything you want to do,
I just know,
That I’ll want to do it too.
But we must go."
The completist
in me is not happy. Twenty years ago, The Wedding Present had the ingenious idea
to release a single a month. An original song on the A-side and a cover (from the
Twin Peaks theme to an Elton John festive classic) on the reverse. Each limited
to 10,000 copies on 7-inch vinyl only. It’s a novelty that would most probably
have little impact today. But in 1992, it gave the Weddoes 12 Top 30 hits in
one year – matching the record set by Elvis. And, as a result, it meant Top of the
Pops became immensely enjoyable, as David Gedge would now make regular appearances to mumble and fumble around the stage.
But the
combination of me being on the dole that year and away from my beloved London indie
stores meant that I only managed to pick up a couple of these wonderful singles
– June’s ’California’ (produced by The Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie, fact fans)
and December’s ’No Christmas’ (produced by Brian Paulson, er, Slint fans). For
the other songs, I had to make do with the CD compilation – boo.
‘California’
was one of those rare Weddoes songs that wasn’t about searing heartache, and a
few years later I managed to annoy my friend Charlotte by continually singing
it on our way to the Golden State. "Let’s go to California, noooooooooow…"
 |
| Me. California. 1998. In my summer wardrobe of black and more black |
Spotify linky:
No comments:
Post a Comment