» Music: David Gedge and The Wedding Present
Curated by The Wedding Present’s David Gedge, At The Edge Of The Sea promises to be festival heaven for Brighton indie fans. Jeff Hemmings reports.
Now based on the South Coast, Wedding Present frontman David Gedge has firmly devoted himself to the area by curating and co-promoting At The Edge Of The Sea. This ‘festival’ has become a family affair, as it also involves alter-egos of the band (Cinerama), off-shoots (The Ukranians), solo sets by members past and present (Terri de Castro, Paul Dorrington), and many friends. “To be honest I feel like a fraud,” says David. “It’s a Wedding Present concert with a load of mates and former colleagues… It’s my festival, so I can do what I want I suppose!”
This year, The Wedding Present will be performing in its entirety Bizarro, their second album which came out in 1989. “It’s nice to hear it in that form. I wasn’t convinced when the idea was first suggested to me. I kind of look forward to getting new stuff out there, but I really enjoyed doing it. From the artist’s point of view it’s interesting to put yourselves back 20 years.
“It’s quite an extreme record – in my memory it’s just this collection of jangly pop songs, but it’s actually quite edgy and layered and a bit dark and so it’s been an interesting revelation to me.”
Last year saw the inaugural At The Edge Of The Sea. “The first year was brilliant – I don’t really make any money out of it and it’s quite a lot of work and after it was over, I thought: ‘Thank God! that’s over’; but straight away I said, ‘Let’s do it again’!
“People saw it as a meeting point; they came from all over the country – they were coming for bands, then going out to the beach and getting a sandwich; It was a really great atmosphere… I genuinely enjoyed it.”
Also on the bill are Dutch band Persil (who do a cover of the Wedding Present song ‘Kennedy’), Hefner’s Darren Hayman, Klee (who have done a number of remixes for The Wedding Present and Brighton’s colourful The Half Sisters. “I was recommended them by my drummer, so I checked them out on MySpace…”
In addition there will be readings of Wedding Present and Cinerama themed short stories specially written for the day by the Brighton-based Short Fuse. “The stories are based around the titles of Wedding Present songs, and then just running with it.”
During their 25-year career the Wedding Present and their various affiliations have largely remainded an independent, self-sufficient band. “It’s hard for me to envisage a situation as a creative person to have people dictate to me what we should create… I’m a little bit obsessed with it; It started off as a hobby, then it became a job, and now its gone beyond that.”
At The Edge Of The Sea, Concorde 2, 28 August
March 4th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
[...] to strip off naked to join them in the studio and perform a spoken-word piece for their new EP, and David Gedge of the Wedding Present, who brought them down to the At the Edge of the Sea festival but mercifully kept his clothes [...]