Over the course of a quarter of a century, Wedding Present and Cinerama auteur David Gedge has consistently documented the intricacies of interpersonal communication, mostly of the romantic kind. While currently writing new tunes in his tradition of celebrating romantic bliss and bemoaning lost love, Gedge is also revisiting some old flames. His label, Scopitones, last week released Live 1988, a double album of concert recordings from—you guessed it—1988, the second in a series of LPs collecting live cassettes that were sold at gigs and through their fanzine in the late ’80s. The band is also playing Bizarro, arguably the best Wedding Present effort, in its entirety during a tour that kicked off April 1 in San Diego. Gedge will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him and our 2005 career overview of the Wedding Present.
Gedge: We’re really used to it now, of course, but I think we take a lot of modern technology for granted. I remember the first time I ran into wireless Internet. It was probably about 2003 or 2004. We were at a hotel in Munich, and I asked the receptionist if I could use their phone line to get our emails, because the rooms had no telephones. He just said, “You can get online here with Wi-Fi.” And he just typed a couple of things into my computer—and pop, we were online. No more plugging cables into dodgy phone lines in hotels and getting charged a fortune to download some spam. And now it’s made all sorts of other great things possible, like the iPhone. It has actually changed how we communicate. Would Twitter have worked if you had to fire up the old desktop and sit in your office to tweet? Something that often baffles people who are new to our tour bus is the fact that we call it “Wee-Fee” like they do in France. It’s just kind of cuter that way, isn’t it?
Video after the jump.
