It's funny how pop history works. Artists and even entire genres can live in obscurity until they influence the band of the moment, and then, the spotlight of critical re-evaluation is shone upon it.
One minute ?post-punk? was simply ?the bit between punk and new-romanticism?, and the next it was eclipsing both and hailed as the most fertile creative period for British music. And all thanks to the way a few rock bands played guitar in 2005.
The way pop eats itself means that if an artist creates something unique or special, it'll inspire someone else to form a band. Eventually someone with a keen ear will recognise the original influence and shine a light on it. Then others can have the joy of discovering an often long-forgotten act.
Sadly, the pavement of pop history has massive cracks and there's only so many people shining lights into these cracks onto the pioneers of the past. Even the most exploratory of music fans has to accept that they may never even hear their favourite band.
So with that in mind, let us take you back to the mid-eighties for our re-evaluated history. The culture war was being fought on two fronts. The Western ?rock? front was dominated by an embarrassing display of rock n? roll clich? and LA posing. There were groups of musicians, most notably in Boston, Seattle, Chicago and New York working to rectify this but right now we're more concerned with the war being fought on the Eastern front.
In Thatcher?s Britain, the pop landscape was dominated by immaculately coiffured singers who had taken the genre of synth-pop but made it ?sophisticated? by using wine bar saxophones and handed-down Motown lyrics (for a while love became a purely geographical phenomenon defined only in terms of low valleys and high mountains). Like the government policies of the time, the music was supposedly ?aspirational?, but many found it alienating, London-centric and vacuous. The music on the radio as Morrissey famously said on ?Panic? said ?nothing to me about my life?.
So, as always happens when they are disenchanted with the mainstream, people picked up instruments so they could make music for people like themselves. Across the country, musicians sang about what they cared about, taking cues from the bands that had inspired them and, in doing so, jump-started the live scene. Through necessity (and sometimes principle)? they either self-released or signed to independent labels which allowed them to get some recognition through the ?indie chart? which had been started in 1980 in response to the explosion of smaller record labels during the DIY punk years. Despite the enormous variation between many of these bands, a genre was born. In time it transcended and sometimes betrayed its origins to the degree that nowadays the financial structure of the record labels is an irrelevance as to whether something is described as ?indie?.
The behemoths and fathers of the scene in the eighties were the ever present Smiths, but in the late 1980s one of the bands to become most synonymous with the term ?indie? were the Leeds-based fretboard-punishing Wedding Present. Led by singer/guitarist David Gedge, they conquered the hearts of sensitive young men and women, with their frantic strumming and plain-spoken tales of heartbreak and jealousy. Gedge made bitterness sound poetic and communicated the feelings of a generation of music-lovers, or at least the minority that weren't listening to Curiosity Killed the Cat.
Gedge has been making music since then and although he is still writing and recording,?tonight we?are gathered in Manchester to see the band take us back in time to 1989 and play us their second album Bizarro in its entirety.
After a selection of more recent songs, they launched into Bizarro?s opening track Brassneck. Bands playing their old albums make for a strangely credible form of musical nostalgia. Album tracks speak to fans in ways that greatest hits sets don't. When you fall in love with an album, the end of each song is as exciting as the start because of what's coming next. Admittedly the best song of the set was the single – ’90s indie-disco mainstay ‘Kennedy’, but what a single!
There are two points in a band?s career when they were at their most enjoyable to watch live. At the start when they're hungry and excited and much later on, when they've realised that just playing music was the point the whole time. It must help that tonight they're not trying to win new converts and everyone knows every word. You could almost see the memories drifting up from the thirty and forty-somethings in the crowd like thought-bubbles. Smiths fans don't get to hear The Queen is Dead played live, or be this close to Morrissey or chat to him at the merchandise stall.
Of course that's the point, Gedge?s whole appeal is that he's ordinary- if he were actually on a pedestal then the relationship would be unrecognisable and the dynamic would not be so effective.
It's enough that they have been through the industry machine and are still here, perhaps wanting them to get their deserved place in rock history is greedy and pointless. You can buy the albums, still see them live and they're making a living.
That's a far happier ending than most bands get.
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Lolly says
I bloody love Wedding Present. I cried when I saw them at Leeds Met a few years ago, purely by watching the audience’s reaction to them – 40yr old men jumping up and down at the front, screaming every word with their arms round each other. It was superb.
Jen Green says
Wow, thank you so much for this post and brief history. I thoroughly enjoyed reading and watching. I think I may have to look into this “Wedding Present” — they may not have been looking for new converts, but you may have just earned them one with this blog! :P Thanks, again.