Track Listing

1. Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft
2. What Did Your Last Servant Die Of
3. Don't Be So Afraid
4. Million Miles
5. All This And More
6. Getting Nowhere Fast
7. My Favourite Dress
8. Shatner
9. Something And Nothing
10. It's What You Want That Matters
11. Give My Love To Kevin
12. Anyone Can Make A Mistake
13. You Can't Moan Can You
14. All About Eve
15. Nobody's Twisting Your Arm
16. Nothing Comes Easy
17. Don't Laugh
18. I'm Not Always So Stupid
19. Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now
20. Not From Where I'm Standing
21. Give My Love To Kevin (1)
22. Getting Better
23. Pourquoi Es Tu Devenue Si Raisonnable

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4887 in Music
• Released on: 2000-11-20
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Extra tracks, Original recording reissued
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

CD Description
Although the Wedding Present would go on to make more nuanced and refined albums later in its career, this 1987 debut full-length captures the band at its sweetly rambunctious best. Mixing a thunderous tidal wave of fuzzed-out guitars withclassic pop melodies played at a furious clip, GEORGE BEST is the sound of a precocious bunch of young hipsters trying to recreate Phil Spector's Wall of Sound with a limited musical arsenal--consisting of drums, bass, and guitars--and very little cash. Frontman David Gedge, who also writes the songs and plays guitar, sings about a variety of topics (most commonly love and its pitfalls) in what is one of the most unique and distinct voices in rock & roll: part aching wail, part brilliant lilt--a description not inappropriate to the Wedos themselves. Tracks like "Shatner", "All This And More",and "Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft" are gleefully rough around the edges, but posses an urgency and romanticism that isimpossible to resist. While the band would refine and perfect the sound found here (most notably on the Steve Albini produced SEAMONSTER), GEORGE BEST remains a quintessential document of a truly brilliant band.

Customer Reviews

The Smiths' only rivals?
David Gedge may have lacked the looks, charisma and downright strangeness of Morrissey but, for a time, his band The Wedding Present were The Smiths only serious rivals for the title of 'Kings of Bedsit Land.' Identifiably Northern, in the same way as Morrissey and Co, Gedge's flat singing and the hundred-mile-an-hour guitars mitigated against a broader appeal. That said, this album remains a classic of its kind, its kind being frantic, jangly, mid-80s indie pop.

Gedge could also turn a witty phrase or two. How about "At home she tells him little lies/Like onions always make her cry" or my favourite "You're not like anyone I've ever met....well, at least not yet." Twelve words that chart the trajectory of a love affair from initial starry-eyed romance to inevitable disappointment. "Ooh, he sounds like a right bastard!" said my then-girlfriend, with rather too much relish in her voice.

'Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft' will have you whistling its infectious tune a few bars in, 'A Million Miles' recalls the teenage excitement of meeting a new love at a party, and the sickening sadness of "Slowly your beauty is eaten away/By the scent of someone else, in the blankets where we lay" is the stand-out line from 'My Favourite Dress.'

On a more personal note, I also love it because someone with my name gets to play the cad in 'Give My Love To Kevin!'

The alternative to the alternative!
When I look back on the late eighties it seemed to me that most of my "alternative" peers were into nothing else but the Smiths. Strangely, they weren't my cup of tea and I gravitated more toward the jingly angst-ridden vocals of the Wedding Present. Each song tells a story. Whether it be your ex copping off with somebody else (My Favourite Dress), your (female) mate having a bit of hassle with her arsehole boyfriend (Shatner) or merely the nightclub pursual of a young lady you've had your eye on for a while (A Million Miles) each song relates to some experience you've probably had sometime in your youth and beyond. While the Smiths spoke to the more pensive and whingey of my gloomy friends, I looked towards Dave Gedge and the boys for moral support and sympathy...and wore out the grooves on my vinyl copy.
A classic album, easily their best and now the expanded CD has the extra tracks that I previously desperately sought after on vinyl in Manchester's Piccadilly Records or Vinyl Exchange and never found. Nobody's Twisting Your Arm, Pourquoi est tu devenu si raisonable... Will the Ukranian folk songs be re-released now too? And what about Tommy?
Marvellous stuff. Even if all the songs do sound the same!! Well worth buying if you're into the Smiths years after the event - see what they were up against!

Classic album
The Wedding Present are a bit of an acquired taste, although it's an effort well worth making. This album, their first, consists of fairly simple noisy guitar riffs accompanying David Gedge's brilliantly simple and bitter lyrics about awkward snogs and heartless girlfriends.

There are some real classics here, although the album as a whole is quite an effort to get through for the beginner, more so because of the addition of nine extra songs at the end. These are worth the effort though, with old favourites Nobody's Twisting Your Arm and I'm Not Always So Stupid instantly likeable tunes; the highlight, however, is the French translation of Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now - get that accent!