[Live MP3s] The Wedding Present in Cambridge, MA 2005
Posted on May 2, 2005 at 10:21 pm | No Comments
Pretty hard for any band to live up to the overblown expectations I had for last Thursday’s Wedding Present appearance at the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge, MA. The best shows are the ones that surprise you, and there was no way that David Gedge, Simon Cleave, and their recruited rhythm section were gonna do that for me. Still, they didn’t exactly disappoint, and there’s nothing quite so good as a triple-shot of ‘Dalliance’ into ‘Dare’ into ‘What Have I Said Now?’. An amazing end to a 90-minute set that touched on nearly every phase of Gedge’s 20 year songwriting career, including a bunch from his years in Cinerama.
The sound at the MidEast Down can be tricky (I’m being diplomatic), and I think some of the set suffered from a muffly mix and a weak drum sound… but it all depends on where you were standing. I’ll also diplomatically note that their current drummer is just… adequate. Not bad, but certainly not as impressive as others that Gedge & co. have played with, like the fantastic Simon Smith from the Bizarro / Seamonsters days, or Cinerama drummer Kari Paavola. I guess I’m a little picky about the drumming details, being one and all, but there were lots of little fills and accents and hits that were noticably absent, especially on the older stuff. Then again, I’m so familiar with those songs that maybe no new drummer could live up.
Speaking of Cinerama, I think their last Boston appearance is the main reason I wasn’t completely blown away this time… that 2003 TT’s show set the bar very, very high. It was essentially the Wedding Present (Gedge and guitarist Simon Cleave along with Cinerama’s Sally and Kari), and I was just stunned. They brought new energy to the Cinerama songs, and threw in four or five Weddoes ones (including a killer version of Dalliance) that just knocked me out. So even though this tour marks ‘the return of The Wedding Present’, it’s almost in name only… in 2003 they were on stage in front of me. Not only that, but since the current setlist includes Cinerama songs, the difference lies soley in the drums and bass. I kinda wonder where the huge crowd at the Middle East was when Gedge was next door at the much-smaller TT’s… but I guess you can’t beat the lure of nostalgia, and the press that a perceived reformation can garner.
Still, I got to see one of my favorite bands (maybe the favorite), so far be it for me to complain. Everything’s relative, right? Anytime Gedge comes to town is a gift, and I’ll be hoping for another show this year.
I recorded the set, so here’s the 21 songs for ya (oh, and I quite enjoyed openers Crystal Skulls, so I turned on the recorder for the last five songs of their set. I’ll hopefully be sharing those up later on this week)….
live at the Middle East Downstairs
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Thursday, April 28th, 2005
[ download the set in one .zip file ]
01. Interstate 5
02. Crawl
03. Drive
04. Queen Anne
05. Go Go Dancer
06. Starry Eyed
07. Spangle
08. My Favourite Dress
09. Venus
10. Health and Efficiency (spliced)
11. It’s For You
12. The Queen of Outer Space
13. Careless
14. I’m From Further North Than You
15. Kennedy
16. Perfect Blue
17. Once More
18. Ringway to SeaTac
19. Dalliance
20. Dare
21. What Have I Said Now?
I was torn between getting near the stage vs. getting a good recording, so I compromised a bit. Unfortunately I ended up between an overly chatty trio and a guy who was competing for American Idol in his mind. I mean, at least the enthusiastic air-guitar guy in front of me wasn’t louder than the band. Still, the recordings don’t suffer too badly, despite the occasional unrequested vocal stylings.
Oh, and you’ll no doubt notice that the mp3 of ‘Health and Efficiency’ is kinda messed up. Blame my relative inexperience with my new mini-disc recorder… the second half is lost to the digital ether. I ended up grabbing a chunk of mjlauf’s torrented recording of the same show and spliced ’em together. Not ideal, but better than not including it at all, right?
If you’re into the torrent thing, head on over to dime a dozen and grab the entire set as flac files (thanks again, mjlauf).
As long as I’m sharing, here are a couple more mp3s for Wedding Present fans…
I’ve been in a bunch of bands who rarely, if ever, did covers… but happily for me, two of them learned and recorded Weddoes songs.
In 1997, The Four Color Manual (Dan Scinta, Colin Clary, & myself) recorded the song ‘Niagara’ (a b-side of ‘Dalliance’) at a studio in Vermont for a Wedding Present tribute record that never came together. At least I don’t think it did. Anyway, here ’tis…
And in 2002, the Also-Rans (who were this guy, this girl, this guy, this guy, and me) decided to take a stab at ‘Dare’ (off Seamonters), and ended up recording it in the basement for kicks. I think we played it out just once, maybe twice? Anyway, I think it came out pretty good, so here ya go…
Alright, I s’pose I should get some work done. Enjoy the mp3s… and don’t forget, I’ve still got a vintage 1992 Wedding Present set (part 1, part 2) shared for download. It’ll only be up for a little while longer, so grab it while you can.
This Boy Can’t Wait
Posted on April 28, 2005 at 3:12 pm | No Comments
Hoo boy. Long week, feels about a month long. A nagging cold and an unending workload keeping me down, but other stuff is liftin’ me back up. Time to escape into the blog for a bit…
The Independent Film Festival of Boston came and went, and I caught a couple more films since opening night last Thursday. Friday night we got in to see Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story, an improved fake-umentary about the comeback of a former superstar paintballer played by The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry. He was surrounded by a great supporting cast of familiar names, with members of the Upright Citizens Brigade and Naked Babies sketch comedy groups, including Dannah Feinglass, Paul Scheer, Ed Helms (also from the Daily Show), Billy Merrit, and SNL’s Rob Riggle, who was a hilarious standout. You’d probably recognize some of those faces if you watch VH1’s Best Week Ever, too.
Boston local-boy Corrdy (who seemed to know most of the audience personally), co-star D.J. Hazard, director Brant Sersen, and executive producer Darren Gold, and a craft services guy had a Q&A after the screening, and here’s an excerpt (I had to guess at Darren and Brant’s voices)…
Audience: Yeah, I’ve got a question for ya…
Rob Corddry: Yeah (pointing) Brian!
Brian: What inspired you to do what you do?
Rob: It’s interesting that you, in particular, would ask this… he might have set me up, actually (laughs). I was a boy scout… I grew up with these guys in boy scouts in Weymouth (MA), and my favorite part of boy scouts, aside from sneaking out of our tent and going to the girls side, was the campfires. We got to do a gong show every year, where we’d perform and act like idiots… that’s pretty much where I got the taste for it. (pauses) I need attention, basically. All the time.
Rob: Next question… ok, John Fleming! (laughs) From Watertown, Massachusetts… and from the Daily Show…
John: I’m just wondering if you did anything to get ready for this movie… because in four years of college I never even saw you walk fast…
Rob: I actually did, it’s funny, because I started about two weeks before, I started losing weight… I was a fat person. I was a fat man (laughs) before we started shooting. I started losing weight two weeks before we started. By the end of the film I had lost 30 pounds. But you’ll notice, if you watch it again, there are times when Fat Rob is acting, and times when Skinny Rob is acting. I’m a little in between now.
Random Corddry friend: Nah, you’re still fat.
Rob: Let me take my shirt off, I’ll show ya…
Audience: How did you do it?
Rob: I just started drinking light beer.
Audience: Are there any plans for a theatrical release?
Darren Gold: We’re actually in many negotiations right now… we’re hoping it’ll come out within the next six months. If any of you want to buy it, talk to me afterwards. Check out the website, BobbyDukes.com, and we’ll have postings and stuff as we find out when it’s coming out.
Brant Sersen: On our website all the actors wrote their own bios in character… they’re long and really, really funny…
Rob: And long…
Audience: Yeah, I wanna know where and when (comedian and Blackballed co-star) D.J. Hazard will be performing next locally…
DJ: I, uh… I’m doing some private thing next week, don’t even know where it is… um… I don’t know! Check DJHazard.com… I, uh, go there to find out where to go… (laughs)
Audience: How about a sequel?
Brant Sersen: Sequel, Rob?
Rob: Yeah… I… reeeaaallly busy (laughs)…
Darren Gold: We had a couple spinoff ideas, a Lenny and Eddy story…
Audience: Yeah, what happens the day after?
Rob: What happens the day after? Um, he actually gets hit by a car. (laughs) Really tragic. Yeah, Bobby Dukes dies the next day, and that’s why we can’t do a sequel. Just not funny.
Audience: Do you consider Bobby Dukes a Jesus figure… I have no serious question.
Rob: Good question, good question… can you dim the lights a little?… um, no.
Darren Gold: I thought of him more as, um, Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz?
Rob: Yeah, he’s a Dorothy figure.
Brant Sersen: I just want to point out that the Burkes Boys’ parents are here (points to them). Owen and his brother Brendan are Pistol Pete and Bryan Adams… they birthed them. They’re awesome. They made the movie possible… they made like half the cast…
Mama Burke: We have more at home!
Saturday evening brought the premiere of a very special, and very important, new documentary called Same Sex America, which screened at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Filmed last year here in Massachusetts during the fight over the legalization of same sex marriage, it was a completely heart-wrenching, fairly hope-filled, and at times totally engraging look at both sides of the issue. It follows seven gay and lesbian couples, their journies towards marriage, and the struggles as our legislators debate an amendment banning their big day. As May 17th, 2004 approached, and our despicable governor tried to block the legalization at the last minute, we see the planning, the hopes and fears, the family and friends around them. It was a beautiful, heartstring-pulling film, one that everyone on both sides of the issue really needs to see.
Being the Boston premiere, the creators and much of the cast were in attendance, and it was a real pleasure to see them gather together on stage. To have had such an intimate, seemingly unfiltered look into their personal lives, and then have them stand up and appear before us… it was just something really touching. I wanted to thank every one of them for their bravery, their candidness on film.
Showtime funded the filming, so keep an eye out for it there eventually. There’s hope that it will see a theatrical release, and it will definitely be on DVD at somepoint, whether through Showtime or another distributor. I’m telling you, do not miss Same Sex America.
Moving on from movies to music…
It was a costly week for new releases… stopped by Newbury comics on Tuesday and grabbed all three of those new Cure album reissues, along with the Stereolab three-disc-one-dvd boxset. Ouch. And yet, hooray!. There was really no free will involved… they all fell into my ‘must own’ category.
Speaking of costly, I got my Dinosaur Jr. tickets, thank you very much. Again, free will not a factor. Gotta go. That’s July 15th, Avalon, Boston. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, the pre-sale was here. Not sure if it’s still going on, but Next Ticketing should have tix on sale on the 6th, too.
Oh, and on the off chance you didn’t hear/see them on the Late Late Show a couple weeks back, here’s an mp3 of Dinosaur Jr. doing ‘The Lung‘.
Looks like I’ll be watching that show for the second time ever, since the Futureheads will be on it tonight. My TiVo won’t be able to skip through the Rosie O’Donnell interview fast enough.
Thanks to Becky for letting me know that The Field Mice were featured on BBC6 Music’s Dream Ticket last night. I missed the broadcast, but it’s archived here. Not sure how many live songs were played, or how old the session was, but I’m psyched to listen later.
Emma from Lush’s current project, Sing Sing, has some news on their site about their upcoming single (called ‘Lover‘, out June 27th, and mixed by demi-god Alan Moulder) and full-length (‘Sing Sing and I’, out July 11th). But that involves some waiting.
For immediate Lush-style gratification, check this out. On a Resonance FM program called Full Circle, host Mark Braby interviews Emma and asks her to ‘re-work’ one of her earliest musical compositions for the show (thus the show’s theme of circularity). She chose to re-do the early Lush b-side ‘Sunbathing‘ with Sing-Sing, and Braby not only plays an early demo (with future Pale Saint Muriel, Lush’s first vocalist) and some Lush/Sing-Sing excerpts, but interviews Ms. Anderson about her entire career. Coolest part? You can download a zipped mp3 of the broadcast, even though it just aired earlier today. It’s in my headphones at this very moment.
In case you missed it: A great Ida interview on Gothamist.
Really glad to read that Bob Mould is doing the full band thing on his next tour, and with Fugazi’s drummer, Brendan Canty at that. Great guest list on the upcoming album, too.
The latest Asaurus Records newsletter says that the next Colin Clary record, “Sweater Weather or Not, These are the Songs I Got” is out soon, and they’ve shared up one of the songs ‘The Mixtape on My Mind‘. You can either stream it or download the mp3. Go Colin Go!
Behold: The packaging for the upcoming Season 3 DVD set of HBO’s THE WIRE. No details on a release date yet, but you’d better damn well rent or buy the first two seasons by then. Or else I’ll, well, feel sorry for you? Yeah, pity’s easy.
In the “two favorites collide” department, comics writer Warren Ellis will be releasing a one-shot comic called Velocity Girl as part of his Apparat2 series. Infamous for often using song titles in his work, do you think he got it from the Primal Scream 7”, or from Velocity Girl, who themselves took it from that 7”? Either way, cool title. According to Ellis’ Bad Signal description: “VELOCITY GIRL takes early TV like HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL and nails it on to the Japanese chambara form, exemplified by the likes of ZATOICHI.” If it’s Ellis, I’m buyin’ it.
Glad to hear that the full-length feature film starring Sascha Baron Cohen’s Borat character is back on track. The original director, Todd Phillips (Old School / Starsky & Blech), bailed out, but they’ve got a replacement in Larry Charles (Seinfeld / Curb Your Enthusiasm). Much better fit, I think.
For nostalgic fans of the now-deceased Screen Savers technology show on the much-missed TechTV, check out this recent podcast called ‘Revenge of the Bleep‘ (Bleep as in ‘Screen Savers‘, to avoid G4-fueled lawsuits), which features former TSS co-conspirators Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, and Robert Heron chatting about what they’re up to. Hopefully it’s the first of many. Oh, when you lick that link, make sure you scroll waaaaay down, as it seems Leo’s page formatting is a bit messed up at the moment.
Amie and I made our first visit of the 2005 season to Fenway Pahhk on Tuesday night, and it happened to be the brutal four-hour marathon that ended in another nasty Red Sox loss to the Orioles. Yeah, we blew a five run lead, twice. It’s an understatement to say that the Sox have ‘pitching issues’ at the moment, and boy does Bellhorn need to buckle down in the clutch. Watching him stare at strikes as they blow by him is pretty painful, especially with guys on base.
Still, we had a great time… not much beats a spring night at Fenway. The place exists inside a magic bubble that makes everything a little mo’ better… the too-expensive Bud goes down so smooth (and I never drink Bud, says the beer snob), the salted peanuts are near perfect, the pretzels are even more… pretzely? Lost for adjectives there. Since the game was a long slooooow one, a lot of people bailed early, and we were able to work our way down to the very front row, a little past third base.
And who was sittin’ only a couple seats to our left? Why, none other than Mr. Doug ‘Gimme Fouls’ Flutie, just being a Sox fan like the rest of us. Between him, his son, and his two buddies, they have a collection of 10 foul balls this season, and added another last night. Talk about ball hoggin’. Mr. Flutie was gracious to every single fan who asked for a picture or an autograph, although I didn’t feel comfortable intruding. Came close after a little cell-phone-nudge from Chris, but couldn’t follow through. Amie did snap a quick phone-photo, though.
Hey, here’s a new Red Sox blog I’ve been readin’ lately: Red Sox Reality Check.
Oh, and regarding the title of this post… TONIGHT: The freakin’ WEDDING PRESENT. On stage in front of me. At last.
Oh, and in a couple hours, at 6:30pm, Weddoes main-man David Gedge will be on Petrina’s WZBC radio show for a little interview action. The listening link can be found here.
If my show recording goes well, and I’m too hyped up afterwards to sleep, you’ll see some live Wedding Present mp3s here tomorrow morning. Unless, of course, I end up following them across country for rest of the tour. Sigh, don’t I wish.