THIS COULD NEVER BE A CINERAMA NUMBER....

I really do appreciate it when comments are left behind at postings. I get a real buzz from the fact that I've said something or posted a song that has made someone, usually a complete stranger often from a place far far away from Glasgow, want to respond in some shape or form.

It was one such comment after a Cinerama single was posted a couple of weeks back that inspired today's offering. I'm only sorry that the individual left it as an anonymous comment as I would like to have been more personal today....

Anyway, the view expressed was:-

"Surely the Wedding Present and Cinerama are now exactly the same group! Hasn't Gedge said that the only difference now is the very slight change in musical style? I personally don't think he should have brought back the Wedding Present name at all. He did it for commercial purposes, and I don't blame him for that, but chopping and changing now between Weddoes name and Cinerama is ridiculous and a waste of time I reckon!"

It's a very fair point, and yes David Gedge has always said that the difference between the two bands was a style more than anything else. But having gone with Cinerama for a number of years during which the tunes became more ambitious with an emphasis on arrangements across a wide range of instruments rather than a reliance on loud guitars, the singer/composer felt that what was coming from his pen in 2003/4 were tunes that were more akin to his old line-up. And while it may be annoying to some folk, I don't think that the comeback single that was sneaked out without a great deal of fuss in November 2004 could have been anything other than a Wedding Present number:-

mp3 : The Wedding Present - Interstate 5 (single edit)

I think that this is one of the best songs the band have ever recorded in a career that now stretches back more than a quarter of a century. But it has an unusual lyric in that the male is on the receiving end for once......

About a year after the single and subsequent LP Take Fountain were released, the band and label issued Search For Paradise which not only brought the singles and b-sides together on one disc but also gave fans the chance to own a DVD with all the promos, plus some rare live material. And having watched the video, it is now something that always goes through my mind whenever I hear the song.....it is one of those strangely compelling and mesmerising bits of film that has become one of my all time favourite pop promos:-



See.....it doesn't need fancy tricks generated by computer or a huge expensive budget to make a classic.

And here's the rather excellent two tracks that were also on the CD single:-

mp3 : The Wedding Present - Bad Things
mp3 : The Wedding Present - Snapshots

Happy Listening