The Lost Pandas fell apart in 1984 when guitarist Michael Duane (later of dustDevils) was sacked, and Panda's drummer Jaz Rigby followed in protest. Gedge and the Pandas' bass player, Keith Gregory, decided to continue the band, renaming it The Wedding Present.
Gedge wanted to use the name "The Wedding Present" in honour of one of his favourite bands,The Birthday Party.
Gedge and Gregory recruited an old schoolmate of Gedge's, Peter Solowka, to play guitar and auditioned a string of drummers, including Mike Bedford, with whom they recorded a demo tape, before settling on Shaun Charman. The country's clubs and bars were toured as the band prepared for the recording of their first, self-financed single.
After some consideration, "Go Out and Get 'Em, Boy!" was chosen over early favourite "Will You Be Up There?". The A-side features drumming by hired hand Julian Sowa with Charman on its B-side. The single was released on the band's own Reception Records label with distribution through Red Rhino. Although Reception was only intended to be a vehicle for the release of their own material, it also released a number of singles by This Poison! and Cud.
Two more singles followed that did well on the independent charts and the band was spotted by veteran BBC radio DJ John Peel, who immediately started championing them and invited them to do a radio session, starting a long collaboration.
By the time the band started work on their debut album, a number of independent and major record companies showed interest, but the band declined all offers and decided to keep releasing their material themselves. The album was released in 1987 and titled George Best after the well-known Northern Irish football player. Disagreement on production values with the record's producer, Chris Allison, led to the product being remixed by the band and their engineer, Steve Lyon. The larger part of these conflicts seemed to lie with the personal and musical incompatibility of Allison and Charman.
Upon its release, the album was critically acclaimed and the band were soon lumped in with some of their peers as the 'shambling' or C86 scene, a categorization that they vehemently declined (although they were featured on the original C86 compilation). Musically, the album featured fast-paced rhythm guitar attacks; lyrically, apart from a few tentative excursions into social critique ("All This and More") and politics ("All About Eve"), Gedge's main concerns (which would become his trademark) were love, lust, heartbreak and revenge. Soon after the release of George Best, the early singles and radio sessions were compiled and released as Tommy (1985-1987).
With the departure of Charman very early on in 1988, Simon Smith took up the drum stool and follow up album, 1989's Bizarro was again popular with the music weeklies.
When Solowka, who has Ukrainian roots, started fooling around with a Ukrainian folk tune during one of their many Peel sessions, the idea arose to devote some of their radio time to recording their versions of Ukrainian and Russian folk song, encouraged by Peel. To this end, two guest musicians were invited, singer/violin player Len Liggins and mandolin player Roman Remeynes, and three Peel sessions were recorded with Gedge temporarily limiting himself to playing rhythm guitar and arranging the songs.
The band planned on releasing eight cuts from the Ukrainian sessions on a 10" LP and an initial batch was pressed when Red Rhino went into receivership. Rather than trying to find a new distribution company, the band decided to fold their Reception label altogether and sign with a regular record company: RCA. Solowka, Liggins, and Remeynes later split from the band to concentrate on the Ukrainian material as the band The Ukrainians.
Seamonsters is the third studio album by English rock band The Wedding Present. It was recorded in ten days in 1991 by American producer Steve Albini at Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. Albini had previously recorded two EPs with the group, Brassneck and 3 Songs and, like those records, Seamonsters has a rougher, harsher overall sound than the group's earlier two albums.
Solowka was replaced by Paul Dorrington and the band in 1992 released a single every month, and each of these songs charted before being released as compilations of both the A and B-sides. Each of these 12 singles hit the UK Top 40 and the band tied Elvis Presley's record of most Top 40 singles in the span of a year.
Following a quiet 1993 in which Gregory left and was replaced by Darren Belk, they followed up their record-breaking 1992 year with a new LP in 1994 called "Watusi". Following this, Dorrington left, Belk moved to guitar and they temporarily became a 3-piece before Jayne Lockey arrived. A mini LP, helpfully called "Mini" drove up early '96 shortly before "Saturnalia" zoomed in Summer '96 (along with the addition of new guitarist Simon Cleave after Belk's depature).
Following a gig in January 1997, Gedge decided to rest the Wedding Present name and started performing as Cinerama however while recording a new Cinerama album in 2004 he decided to resurrect the name the Wedding Present.
The first Wedding Present single in 7 years was released in November 2004 followed by an album in February 2005. This line-up was Gedge, Cleave, bassist Terry de Castro and drummer Kari Paavola. Paavola declined to tour and subsequently left replaced by Simon Pearson and then Graeme Ramsey. Simon Cleave left early 2006 but rejoined in 2009. His 3 year void was filled by guitarist Christopher McConville.
In more musical chairs, guitarist Cleave departed again later in 2009 due to ill health. The vacant guitar position was actually snabbed by the drummer, Ramsay, who was replaced on the drum stool by Charlie Layton (who had previously served for a very short time in 2006). Following this in Summer 2010, long-serving bassist, Terry de Castro, also vacated to be replaced by Pepe le Moko. A year later, in late 2011, after the recording of the band's 8th studio album, Valentina, Ramsay departed to be replaced by (ex-The Young Playthings and The Pipettes), Patrick Alexander.
The band emerged in February 2013 with yet another new line-up after the sacking of le Moko and Alexander - bassist Jen Schwartz (from Me of a Kind) and guitarist Geoff Maddock (from Goldenhorse).
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It's Not Unusual
The Wedding Present Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
It's not unusual to have fun with anyone
But when I see you hanging about with anyone
It's not unusual to see me cry, I wanna die
It's not unusual to go out at any time
But when I see you out and about it's such a crime
If you should ever want to be loved by anyone
You'll find it happens all the time
Love will never do what you want it to
Why can't this crazy love be mine?
It's not unusual to be mad with anyone
It's not unusual to be sad with anyone
But if I ever find that you've changed at anytime
It's not unusual to find out I'm in love with you
The lyrics to The Wedding Present's song It's Not Unusual describe the feelings of unrequited love, jealousy and heartbreak. The singer acknowledges that it is common for anyone to be loved by someone, to have fun with anyone, to go out at any time, and to be sad with anyone. However, when he sees the person he loves with someone else, he feels a deep sense of pain that makes him want to die. He recognizes that it is not unusual for the person he loves to be loved by others, but he wishes that they could be together.
The second verse of the song reinforces the singer's feelings of jealousy and frustration. He sees the person he loves out and about, and it feels like a crime to him. He acknowledges that it is not unusual for people to be loved by others, but he wants the person he loves to know that he is there and willing to love them. The chorus repeats the theme of unrequited love, with the singer expressing his frustration at love never doing what he wants it to do. He wonders why he can't have the person he loves.
The final verse of the song takes a slightly different direction. The singer acknowledges that it is not unusual to be mad or sad with anyone, but if he ever discovers that the person he loves has changed, he will realize that he is truly in love with them. The song ends with the repeated chorus, emphasizing the pain of unrequited love.
Overall, the lyrics to It's Not Unusual represent a common experience that many people go through - the pain of loving someone who doesn't love you back. They capture the sense of envy and heartbreak that comes with seeing someone you love with someone else, and the constant hope that things might change.
Line by Line Meaning
It's not unusual to be loved by anyone
It's a common occurrence for people to be loved by anyone
It's not unusual to have fun with anyone
It's normal to have fun with anyone
But when I see you hanging about with anyone
But when I see you spending time with others
It's not unusual to see me cry, I wanna die
It's not uncommon for me to cry and feel miserable when I see you with someone else
It's not unusual to go out at any time
It's not strange to go out at any time
But when I see you out and about it's such a crime
But when I see you in public, it feels like a crime
If you should ever want to be loved by anyone
If you ever want to be loved by someone
It's not unusual it happens every day no matter what you say
It's a common occurrence that happens every day, despite what you may say
You'll find it happens all the time
You'll discover that it happens frequently
Love will never do what you want it to
Love cannot be controlled to do what you want
Why can't this crazy love be mine?
Why can't I have this unpredictable love for myself?
It's not unusual to be mad with anyone
It's not out of the ordinary to be angry with anyone
It's not unusual to be sad with anyone
It's not unusual to feel sad with anyone
But if I ever find that you've changed at anytime
But if I discover that you've changed at any point in time
It's not unusual to find out I'm in love with you
It's not uncommon to realize that I've fallen in love with you
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Gordon Mills, Les Reed
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind