THE Wedding Present will perform their 30-year-old debut album George Best for the very last time in a home-coming finale at Leeds O2 Academy on Saturday night.

Released on October 12 1987, David Gedge and co's first knockings were hailed as "an unmitigated delight" by the New Musical Express, which later included the the indie-rock classic in its 2014 list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Marked by bittersweet, painfully honest love songs whipped up in a storm of buzzing, super-fast guitars, George Best struck a jangly chord with outsiders across the indie universe. Like The Smiths' awkward Morrissey, here was geeky David Gedge, connecting with so many as a pied piper for our callow missteps. Five tracks made John Peel's Festive Fifty that year, four in the top ten.

The 30th anniversary has been marked by September's "George Best 30", a re-imagining of George Best recorded by Steve Albini and mixed by Andrew Scheps, released through Scopitones on CD, CD and LP and CD with insert.

The story goes that in early 2008 The Wedding Present were in Chicago, recording their seventh album El Rey. They had just completed a George Best 20th anniversary tour, playing the entire album dozens of times, so, once El Rey was finished, Gedge suggested laying down a "live" version of the old favourite in the same studio. Producer Steve Albini was not so keen, but Gedge assured the American it would be "quick and easy".

Albini grudgingly caved in, and Gedge was right, guiding the half-day session with confidence and 20 years' experience, on a warmer, more modern, totally Albini recording, aided by Graeme Ramsay's drums, whereas the original record had featured an electronic drum kit. Think early Beatles or a Wedding Present John Peel session.

So far, so good, but then the impromptu recording was "totally forgotten about", admits Gedge, and it was not until Andrew Scheps mixed The Weddoes' eighth album, Valentina, in his living room in 2012 that he heard the original album for the first time, whereupon he agreed enthusiastically to mix Albini's recordings, and hey Weddoe, here comes George Best 30.

Gedge, now 57, is the only original still in the Wedding Present line-up, and so Saturday's final curtain will be George Best afresh, maybe not only George Still The Best but George Even Better.