This weekend I am going to see The Wedding Present in Leeds, the city where bandleader David Gedge was born. He actually grew up in Middleton, just north of Manchester on the other side of the Pennines. But later he returned to the city of his birth to attend Leeds University and that’s where the band were formed. The cassette version of their debut album “George Best” I had as a teenager proudly displayed the catalogue number LEEDS1C.

This will be the 5th time I’ve seen The Wedding Present in 2023 and they have recently overtaken Elvis Costello as the artist I’ve seen the most times.

The Leeds gig will be the 34th time I’ve seen them and to celebrate this milestone I’ve made this lovely bar chart. The colour scheme is based on the “Bizarro” album cover which was released the week before I first saw them at Kilburn National Ballroom.

The most I’ve seen them at the same venue is 3 times at The Live Rooms in Chester. When they played there in June this year, David said how much he likes the venue so hopefully I’ll be seeing them there again soon.

There are quite a few venues where I’ve seen them twice: Liverpool Academy 2, Sheffield Leadmill, Manchester Academy, Manchester Ritz, Holmfirth Picturedrome and Concorde 2 in Brighton.

Technically I saw them twice at another venue in Brighton but I don’t know if that counts. That’s because it was called Top Rank for the gig I went to in 1990 but by the time I saw them there again in 1992 it had changed its name to The Event. Exactly the same venue though.

The 4 times I’ve seen them in London have all been at different venues: The Forum, Cadogan Hall and the much-missed Astoria and Kilburn National Ballroom. I also saw them at Dingwalls at one of the Camden Crawls in the mid 90s too, but I only caught the last couple of songs so I’ve not counted it.

Some data analysis carried out via setlist.fm seems to point towards “Brassneck” being the song I’ve heard them play the most times. Here’s a video of them playing that from the Liverpool gig I went to last year. Filmed by the semi-legendary “seajohnster” who attends way more Wedding Present gigs than I do and has shedloads of amazing live videos on his Youtube channel.

In case anyone’s interested here are the 12 bands I’ve seen the most times:

  • 34 – The Wedding Present (first time 1989, most recent 2023)
  • 31 – Elvis Costello (first time 1989, most recent 2022)
  • 21 – Billy Bragg (first time 1987, most recent 2019)
  • 14 – Tindersticks (first time 1993, most recent 2022)
  • 13 – Nick Cave (first time 1990, most recent 2021)
  • 12 – Manic Street Preachers (first time 1994, most recent 2019)
  • 11 – The Wave Pictures (first time 2015, most recent 2023)
  • 11 – PJ Harvey (first time 1992, most recent 2023)
  • 10 – Super Furry Animals (first time 1996, most recent 2015)
  • 9 – Radiohead (first time 1995, most recent 2017)
  • 7 – Joe Strummer (first time 1988, most recent 2001😢)
  • 7 – Thousand Yard Stare (first time 1991, most recent 2017)

For the full origin story of how I became an obsessive Wedding Present fan, read this article which was included in the recent book about the band “All The Songs Sounds The Same” [buy it here]

More Wedding Present articles on this website:

Wedding Present live reviews on this website:

Podcast episodes where we have played The Wedding Present / Cinerama songs:

Posted by on December 2, 2023 in Blog posts and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

1 Comment

Unknown's avatar

About chorizogarbanzo

One of the Wizards on the legendary Trust The Wizards podcast. www.trustthewizards.com

One response »

  1. kickerofelves1's avatar kickerofelves1 says:
    December 6, 2023 at 5:21 pm

    I think this counts as a shedload of gigs. However, is that enough gigs to fill a shed or the amount of gigs that might be shed by a gig carrying lorry? These things, as I’m sure you will agree, matter.

    Reply

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