The Wedding Present Cup: Stage 1, Group 15

             

Group 15

• Marblehead
• The Girl With The Curious Smile
• Greenland
• Hulk Loves Betty
• Never Said
• Crawl
• Hand In Glove
• The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend 
• Rekindling
• Scotland
• Interstate 5
• Cattle and Cane
• Up
• Him Or Me (What's It Gonna Be?)
• You Only Live Twice 

The Results

An interesting group. If you evaluate each group by the average ranking on my blog, then this is the one that came out as the weakest - although it also contains two songs from the top ten. This certainly matched the general view of the panel. Gav M, for example, considered it a 'round where anything scoring below a 7 would ordinarily have been contenders for zero points.' Steve M was particularly succinct: 'Some right old tosh in this lot.' Kirk described it as a 'low quality round with a bunch of middling b-sides allowing a couple of the better covers to gain some points.' 

As for those covers, there were four in this round. The dreary plod through 'You Only Live Twice' was, unsurprisingly, almost universally panned (James was its solitary fan), with several comments along the lines of '...but you should only hear this once.' Gricey was reminded of Alan Partridge's rendition of 'Goldfinger'. TWP's version of Paul Revere & the Raiders' 1967 hit 'Him Or Me (What's It Gonna Be?)' almost certainly got a far higher total than it would have done in a different group. Gav M found himself giving it five points even though he thought it a 'dreadful racket.' John described it as 'an inoffensive thrash,' and Kirk gave it a six, commenting that DLG sounded like he enjoyed himself. In the end, it scraped through by one point, getting more zeros (nine) than any other qualifying song so far.

I was relatively positive about 'Hand in Glove' on my blog, but Ian thought it 'cack-handed'; Johnny was even less impressed: 'Making a sow's ear out of a silk purse... shocking and shameful.' Gricey reckoned that 'the intricacy of the original is snatched away and replaced by the sound of a ZX Spectrum game loading.'  There were several positive comments about 'Cattle And Cane', but they tended to praise the source material and express relief that TWP hadn't, as Kirk put it, 'stray[ed] far from an excellent original.' It missed out on qualifying by just one point.

Once again, the panel found it difficult to rate the Going Going instrumentals alongside the more traditional TWP songs, although many found it easy enough to give 'Greenland' (perhaps the most atypical of the quartet) a zero. Only Joanna and Keg showed it any notable support, the latter enjoying its 'weird and unsettling' qualities. 'Marblehead' did rather better, buoyed by high marks from Johnny ('a beautiful few minutes of glorious wonderment') and Joanna, although Gricey's view was 'pretty and pointless = pretty pointless.'

There wasn't a huge amount of enthusiasm for 'Hulk Loves Betty', although Ian rated it 'a good pop song.' Johnny thought that it was a potentially 'pleasant little ditty' spoiled by 'dreadful lyrics' and an 'awful, awful title.' He was more positive about 'Further North' b-side 'The Girl With The Curious Smile' ('the aching lyrics weaving in and out of the ebb and flow of the tune... magnificent'), but his enthusiasm was shared by few others.

Another b-side, 'Up', attracted mid-range marks from many of the panel and qualified quite comfortably. Harry was a fan, as was Keg ('great stuff!'); Johnny ('a pointless racket') and James ('OMG, did someone step on the cat?') were not. Another 'Further North' b-side, 'Rekindling' also received moderate support from the majority of the judges. This time, Johnny had mixed feelings ('a little clunky and jarring in places, but also finds itself sweeping and flowing at times'), as did Kirk ('shows glimpses of promise which were clearly not developed further'). 

There were also mixed views about Home Internationals track 'Scotland' (Steve M, reflecting on his score, suggested that it was 'the first time in ages Scotland have scored five'), but it did enough to join 'Wales' in the next stage. 

'Interstate 5' was, to nobody's surprise, the runaway winner, with several people identifying it as the defining sound of the TWP reformation. It looked odds-on to become the first track to get a 10/12 from everyone... until Keg gave it only a six. He was much keener on 'Never Said' ('Frantic strumming and a familiar tale of relationship woe... marvellous fayre'), which also got a 12 from Johnny: 'The sound of a tin can full of spare screws, washers, nuts, bolts and masonry nails falling off the top shelf of the workshop, and utterly glorious for it.' 

'Crawl' also performed strongly, even if Kirk thought it 'overrated and overplayed live.' 'The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend' was praised by Kirk ('Terry’s finest moment in a TWP strip ') and several others, although it might well not have managed as high as fourth place in a stronger group. 

Home page