The Wedding Present gig in the Cooky's was fine. Much better than I had imagined beforehand. I only saw them once in the warehouseish Terminal Export in Nancy around 1993 and the sound wasn't too good. This time it was probably even louder because of the tininess of the place, a night club cellar close to the Hauptwache in the heart of Frankfurt. Where they apparently already had played in 1985 as a totally plastered fiftysomething Brit with short grey hair told me. TWP were the band he had seen most in Frankfurt, five times or something. I was at the bar about three meters away from the lead guitarist and five meters from Gedge. Whose vocals I could understand most of the time. They played at least three songs from their chef d'œuvre Seamonsters, I remember Corduroy, the brilliant Dalliance which builds up from a gentle dreamy tune to devilish guitar noise and the closer Octopussy (no encores of course). Gedge was strumming his life away on his guitar. Most of the songs I didn't know were slower and kind of folkrockish. Gedge in songwriter mode. Not bad but not thrilling either. Probably from more recent albums I don't know. When Apple Pie came on the above mentioned Brit in exile who had been shouting incomprehensible song wishes or whatever in between the songs obviously had to join the dance stage. The audience was rather old altogether. Hardly any twentysomethings, on average it looked older than the band.