The Wedding Present and Girl in a Coma at 400 Bar, Minneapolis (04/17/10)

Tour Dates

The Wedding Present are a long-time British band, originally formed in Leeds in 1985. Although the only original member is David Gedge (he’s supported on this tour by a Scottish rhythm guitarist, a Hollywood bassist, and a British drummer), he is primarily The Wedding Present, as he introduced himself at the 400 Bar in Minneapolis last night.

 

Highlight of their set must be “Corduroy”, where the entire audience whipped into a frenzy as the first few bars were played. They seem to have one theme going for them: loads and loads and layers and layers of guitar long instrumental that often build up until a satisfactory climax. You can just see it in Gedge’s face as he violently strums his guitar, that he’s really enjoying being on stage.

So, I’ll try and tie this to their opening band, Girl in a Coma. In the early 90s, members of the Wedding Present band formed The Ukrainians, and released an EP called Pisni iz The Smiths. I think there were four songs on the EP, all Smiths songs, sung in Ukrainian. And you should know that Girl in a Coma got their name from the Smiths song, “Girlfriend in a Coma”. So the pairing of Wedding Present and Girl in a Coma seems just fine to me.

As many of you might already know, I have been stalking Girl in a Coma since 2004. I downloaded a few demos from their myspace (remember when myspace was cool?). As this was my third time seeing the band, I had already knew what to expect. Lots of high energy from this Joan Jett band.

Again, as with the previous two setlist, they mostly played songs from Trio BC. I noticed that they did not start off with the standard “BB”, but instead with “Baby Boy”.

They did a cover of Ritchie Valens’ “Come On, Let’s Go”, which I think will appear in a future Adventures In Coverland release*. Of course, the highlight of the show was the final Spanish cover song, “Ven Cera”. Always brilliant live, see video below.

• GIAC has an upcoming set of three releases called Adventures In Coverland (the first one was released April 13^th). If you collect all the singles, they form into a boardgame. They’re seven cover songs, including Joy Division’s “Transmission” and Selena’s “Si Una Vez”.