Some weddings have a DJ playing Frank Sinatra hits on repeat. Some have an ipod belting out alternative indie classix from the 80s and 90s. Catering "Ruth" Crupton and Phirrus "Pip" Gobensmock were not "some" couple.
Their one-time unrecorded gig lives on through the people who attended; mostly confused relatives and serving staff. One particularly cool bus boy spread the word that it was the best thing he heard that day and he'd been at an all-day festival all morning but had to leave to go to work. Soon promoters tried to get the couple to reform, but their approaches were met by silence and confusion from the newlyweds.
Legend has it that the couple spent a long time looking for the type of party band who could switch between appeasing the in-laws by crooning Brat Pack-era Riviera pleasers and slap-bass heavy indie cheese. There were no bands operating in West Yorkshire who came close. With weeks to go and only a limited number of musical instruments, the pair decided to take the job on themselves.
Crupton developed her xylophone skills, incorporating microphone-manipulation, microtonal theory and controllable feedback loops. Gobensmock looked on and fiddled with his guitar.
On the day of the wedding, the rumours say, the couple were married in a big cathedral by a priest and went on to their reception location for sound-check and new world wines. When the engineer had finished his vegetarian cheese souffle they took to the front of the venue and got going. With the resulting chaos caused by a illegitimately sourced flashbang the husband and wife grabbed their instruments and drifted into a cover of Don't You (Forget About Me), crunching through it at a rate of knots only previously achieved by tape manipulation and involuntary electrocution. They sojourned -through a series of clusters Crupton had devised as little as 6 minutes before- into I Remember a Time When Once You Used to Love Me. This eventually fell into an extended noise section whilst Gobensmock asked the toastmaster to fetch him a brandy and cola and a pint of Old Hebbler's Stoic ale. Returning to proceedings the conjugally aligned pair rushed into the only minutemen song they could possibly remember: Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs. Fearing the audience were about to turn on them, the group then rescued their efforts by playing a xylophone-heavy cover Jermaine Jackson's Words into Action. The Brat Pack loving relatives were impressed enough to stop throwing bottles at their niece and new-nephew in law and order was returned when the couple left to get themselves cleared up.
Perhaps this really happened. Or perhaps a server was bored and annoyed at his mum for making him work when he had an all-day festival planned. Either way, the couple will now not accept calls and will not perform publicly together. Is this a lesson in humility or an over-egged dream, a la the 1986 film Wisdom? We will never know.
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