The First Big Weekend

Chemikal wanted a one-off seven-inch to test the waters; it came out in 1996 as CHEM009, limited to 700, with "Gilded" on the B-side, and did not chart. Moffat wrote lyrics about a real weekend, and the song was written, recorded and mixed in a single day at MCM Studios in Hamilton, produced by Paul Savage. It is mostly a spoken monologue by Moffat over guitar and a drum machine, with Middleton guitar and a few sung words near the end. The weekend takes in clubs, bars, international football, The Simpsons and trying to pick up girls; the Irish Times described it as a weekend in which Scotland were knocked out of Euro 96, and fans date it to Thursday, June 13, 1996 from the England 2-0 reference, which is a fan inference. The single is 4:52 and the album version 4:53.

Moffat told The List he is still not sure why it worked the way it did and called it an honest, unapologetic tribute to being young and having a good time, though he has always hated that drum machine sound. In The Skinny he said it was not a particularly joyous song and that he was getting tired of it, the chirpy one, with a certain irony. The Quietus reports that it was not meant for the album, and Moffat says it throws it all out of kilter. Radio 1's Evening Session played it heavily, and John Peel was positive about it; his first session in March 1997 included a version, "The First Big Peel Thing", released on the 2010 reissue. Pitchfork ranked it 187 on its top 200 tracks of the 1990s, an instrumental version was used in a 1997 Guinness advertisement, and Miaoux Miaoux reworked it as a techno track for the 20th anniversary in 2016. Setlist.fm lists it in 71 setlists. We found no covers or samples.