The Wedding Present: George Best

Gosh, don't the last two days' album covers — Cale & Dylan — look good next to each other! If you're reading this after November 2009, or via an RSS reader, see them together here. Every now and then little visual patterns and symmetries emerge on Music Arcades, but none so far as striking (I use the term loosely) as this one. But, having remarked on this passing fancy, George Best breaks the spell, and it's back to business…

It felt like an age before I "came round" to The Wedding Present, but I'm pretty sure I owned this record within two or three months of its October 1987 release. All of that comes back to John Peel, inevitably. The band had already done an amazing four Peel sessions by the time their first album came out. I don't think any of those impressed me much, but, well, that wasn't enough to stop me listening to the show. So a band could creep up on you slowly via Peel — as Herman Düne later did — whereas poor old Gordon Lightfoot yesterday got the benefit my ear for twelve songs before I marked his card, possibly forever.

I think the scales fell from my eyes/ears during Peel's 1987 Festive Fifty. Hell, 33% of this album made up 40% of the Top 10 in that chart. I don't think it was just that I felt thousands of Peel listeners couldn't be wrong, but who can say — perhaps I was just following the herd? But I think something happened when the light caught that riff and that line about a stranger's hand on my favorite dress; and things were never quite the same after that. I wouldn't want to hear George Best every week, but to hear it now after a few years, there isn't a single song I'd want to skip. Which is fortunate, because skipping songs on an LP is a pain.

Now, if you don't want to witness me rambling tangentially about age and change, then stop reading at this point. Because, you see, I can't help comparing that 1987 Festive Fifty with the recently revealed NME Top 50 albums of this decade. It's almost scary how many of the former I own: The Smiths, The Fall, New Order, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Eric B and Rakim, Colorblind James Experience, Bhundu Boys, even Prince. I think it adds up to about two thirds of the chart (and it would have been almost three quarters if I'd got the second Jesus and Mary Chain album). In contrast, I have two of this decade's NME Top 50: The Streets plus the chart's most significant departure from pasty-faced indie rock, Johnny Cash (even there they opt for the album which has a Nine Inch Nails link, instead of Solitary Man, which I'd argue is better by an, ahem, country mile). Although I exposed myself to unhealthy amounts of pasty-faced indie BBC 6 Music in the middle part of this decade, I blocked out the whiny guitars, and can only remember hearing four of the Top 50 albums all the way through (some of those are courtesy of Lucy, who follows that particular zeitgeist more closely than I do). From all of that, you'd never guess that I'm actually 28, would you?

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Comments

[Andy]

I was late to the game with TWP - I owned albums but something bothered me about them. It was working back from Cinerama when I truly 'got' them.

I have 10 of the NMEs 50 - although a fair few were bought based on the sort of critical-pressure I'd occasionally succumb to (and still do) (Radiohead/Wilco). And then there's some of that pasty-faced indie rock that I am still partial to!

[Alex]

what type of music they sing? wedding songs? blues? pop?

[David]

See the link to hear for yourself.