Echo & the bunnymen: Classic or Dud?

It remains a miracle that they managed to do 'epic rock' whilst remaining fresh and without becoming boringly 'political', bloated or pompous. (U2 had failed on all counts by the time they released 'War'.). Sure Mac loves himself, but you can't completely dislike the guy, whereas Bono...

Although they're in no way essential any more , the re-union albums are both very good, but it's perhaps a little disappointing that EATB haven't been influenced by anything 'new' whilst they were away. It seems that Mac's small store of influences (Doors, Cohen, VU, Scott Walker, Iggy) has remained unchanged over the years.

Finally - just think back to some of the singles if you need confirmation : "Rescue", " A Promise" "The Cutter", "Back of Love", "Seven Seas", " The Killing Moon" !! It's a no-brainer - CLASSIC

They've risen vastly in my estimation since reading Bill Drummond's secret theories about them in 45, though.

I hate with a passion : The Wedding Present, 99% of all C-86 - affiliated bands, Sister of Mercy, Mission, All other Goth, New Model Army, Carter the..., The Cult and many more.

Just to put things straight, Omar! ;)

Great, great music, though! Really, I was surprised by just how much of it I liked, and how many of the tunes I remembered. I'd forgotten just how nice the "feel" of the band is - crisp, tight, a little bit robotic, just how I like it, plus the guitar playing is excellent. they're a really underrated group of musicians. Most impressive is the way "Ocean Rain" manages to achieve this epic, big music thing, whilst retaining this crisp sound and feel, and w/o sounding flabby & turgid. IIRC there was some bumpf recently in mojo or uncut about the waterboys, and there was a side panel with all the "big music" also-rans (they said) I think "Ocean Rain" is what the should have been writing about, and the waterboys (who = sux0r) should have been in the also-rans side panel.

I'll be buying the rest of these reissues very soon. It occurs to me that Warner (going on the last lot of yes re's as well) are one of the few companies who are not fucking up their back catalogue by overcompressing it at the moment, so 3 cheers for them, or something.

The Teardrop Explodes were, of course, superior in every way.

you know, yesterday I would have agreed w/this 100%. I mean the teardrops were great, cope solo as well, really, one of my favourite bands/artists ever, but to-day, right now, I've got to disagree. "Ocean Rain" beats anything the TDX recorded hands down. Really, it's knocked me flat. I remember "Silver", for example being not-that-good, but when I put it on yesterday, i was like FUCK, THIS = TEH BEST MUSIC EVER!!1 It fucking lifted me up.

i 2d everything norman said upthread about ocean rain. i would also add that it's the 1 eatb record where i can see the purported doors influence -- in that ocean rain is kinda what the soft parade should have sounded like.

Yes to both. (The reissues' bonus tracks are by and large not ones from the box set, though there's a small bit of overlap.)

I dunno `bout that. Cope isn't so "amiable" toward Mac through much of Head-On and Repossessed. Rivalry does that, i suppose.

That said, I just never though the two bands sounded very similar. I mean, the Bunnymen were much more of a guitar band than the Teardrops.

Thanks for the advice. I'll have to sell some stuff on ebay to pay for the reissues!

Utterly awful band, yr right. Back to EATB - I have just bought the grey 5th album in the reissue series. I like this one greatly, but I realise that no-one else in the world does. Original (non-LP)version of Bedbugs and Ballyhoo is the absolute bizness.

Norm - based on what you've said about Ocean Rain, I reckon you'd really like 'Flowers' the 2001 EATB album. It's not widescreen like OR, but Will's interested again and his guitar work is fantastic in the same way that it's great on Porcupine and Killing Moon. Little details chucked in that no-one else would think of.

Shine So Hard EP on Crocodiles.
Live tracks from Australia on Heaven Up Here including The Disease - worra knees-up.
Nothing on Porcupine.
Life at Brian's (albeit minus newly topical miners' strike chit-chat) on Ocean Rain, and the non-12" AKA LP versions of Silver and The Killing Moon.
12" version of Bring on the Dancing Horses on the grey one. I quite like Soul Kitchen too.

Also they make the box set look much better than it did before.

Very much so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEThL6WcgF4

FOREVER YOURS, NOCTURNAL ME

TAKE ME INTERNALL FOREVER YOURS,
NOCTURNAL ME

Best o f british music, folks, this is it.

CRYSTAL VIEWS

PURIFY OUR MISFIT WAYS AND MAGNIFY OUR CRYSTAL DAYS

you know heaven and hell collide there are no in betweens

This is all because Echo & The Bunnymen are...the link at the end of my willly nillly

"I'm the Yo YO Man always up and down /so take me to the end of your tether"

Forget it. Echo & The Bunnymen forever

CA CA CA CABBAGE

YOU THINK YOURE A VEGETABLE NEVER COME OUT OF THE FRIDGE

YOU SET MY TEETH ON EDGE
CCAAA CA AULIFLOWER MEMOIRS APRIL SHOWERS

YOU ARE A DYING BREED! ooooooo

cucumber cabBAGE CAULIFLOWER AAAAAAAAAAH@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

wait for me on a new horizon new horIzON FOR EVERYONE

o deCIDED TO WEAR MY THORN OF CROWNS

ALLTHE WAY ROUND....

insideout!

uPSIDE DOWN!

bACK TO FRONT!

aLL THE WAY ROUND!

dOWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

fate up againST YOUR WILL THROUGH THE THICK AND THIN
HE WILL WAIT UNTIL YOU GIVE YOURSELF TO HIM

saw them in SF last night for the first time ever and they were incredible. I gather Ian is poorly behaved at times, but we got none of that and his voice was great. Local SF man Kelley Stoltz (who is a massive, massive Echo fan and about 10/12 years ago did a Crocadiles show which is legendary to, well, some people) was invited to be in the band for this tour handling all the rhythm guitar duties so it was extra special for the SF audience, a good portion of whom are friends of his. All in all an incredible night.

also they played nothing newer than "nothing lasts forever". I could have done with some songs from Siberia which I think is a great album, but not really missing anything else

Sounds like they're keeping the correct focus, then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1B6LrOmNsg

i decided this is the year i finally get into Echo & the Bunnymen. they are a band i have always liked and now i am listening to their albums in full for the first time. "Porcupine" is so great. i wish i had that voice, his vibrato is so glorious. this is some great stuff!

The break and build up to Shankar's violin in Heads Will Roll is the best damn thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veRBiHeUTp8

this video rules

porcupine's my favorite, one of the all-time guitar LPs for me and an apex of that post-punk snake charmer vibe that so many bands of the decade visited but seldom like THIS.

when i was 15 and would buy things i saw written on other people's leather jackets, and was also a sucker for weird band names, I bought a cassette of Porcupine with my paper route money at Har Mar Mall and put it in my walkman -- i have the most vivid memory of walking through the arcade there as The Cutter came into my head, what a holy shit moment.

Classic classic classic classic - Echo & the Bunnymen are my all-time favourite band and I love everything they did. I'm always thinking that while I claim Ocean Rain is the greatest album of all time, the real answer might secretly be Porcupine.
The first four albums are the undenyable perfect classics, but IMO all other albums have plenty of amazing stuff on them too.

I have met Ian McCulloch several times and he's always been super nice to me. My greatest experience was when he toured his solo album Slideling and I caught him after the show. I told him how much I loved 'Kansas' from that album and he realized it was one of the few he hadn't played - so he sang the first verse and the chorus to me, on the spot.

Seeing them tomorrow night with the Violent Femmes which is a very weird bill to me but I like both so hey. I can't wait.

Ooh jealous!

I super regret not going to the Ocean Rain at Radio City Music Hall show a decade or so ago

xp - my friend Ava is opening that show! Wish I was on the East Coast to see the whole thing.

Oh, that's cool! Will certainly let you know how it is. My best friend from college (who now lives in LA) is going to be in town and coming with me and earlier today I realized that while I've seen her lots since we were at NYU, this will be the fist show we've seen together in 18 years which is crazy and now I feel very old.

loved the use of jimmy brown in i don't feel at home in the world, what a track

Two different trails on uk TV have used bunnymen tracks in the past month. It's like it's a thing now.

(Second season of French drama on bbc4 used a nouvelle vague version of all my colours, and that thing about the history of a Liverpudlian house is using killing moon)

I agree with Not Jon upthread, Porcupine for the sound, esp. Heads Will Roll, but Ocean Rain for the songs

All I need imo.

What a fine idea!

https://www.thirdmanbooks.com/catalog/bunnyman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t620DfthImk

The first half of Will's book is not good.

Maybe I've read too many of these memoirs recently but I'm always impatient to get past:

What did the parents do?/who was musical in the family?/The Beatles/Bowie on TOTP/Sex Pistols/Ramones first album/older brother into Genesis and Henry Cow/OGWT/inadequate parent's stereo system/wasn't growing up in the suburbs during the 60s-70s shite?/school days (waaaaay much of this in Will's book)/crap clothes/first instrument/first girlfriend/college/university/dole/hash/cheap beer/getting a kicking/street fashion...

All that part eats up the entire first half of the book, the second half, much better. Starting with Eric's, but I didn't realise that this is just Vol.1 and it stops with Pete DeFreitas joining the band, booooo

A bit like Brett Anderson's first book, then.

want to read it just to see how it compares narratively to Julian Cope's Head On

It's much less colourful or interesting, but probably more accurate. Pretty much the same tone as Stephen Morris or Peter Hook's bios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SeLNifXhuc

^ La Via Luonge | featuring Echo & the Bunnymen | A film by Bill Butt | Nacho Restoration | 1981

i know the name "La Via Luonge" as a solo cd of will's, on ochre records, which had some connection to the local record shop in cheltenham, so they'd stock all the Glide stuff. but have never seen the above.

https://www.discogs.com/Will-Sergeant-Weird-As-Fish-Le-Via-Luonge/release/900378

love the krautrock roadtrip vibe of that film, haven't seen it for years

i think i like the instrumental music from it more than i like most of their records tbh

Not sure which is considered the best Bunnymen thread but they're sounding incredible tonight (playing old stuff/random YouTube stuff after clicking through on someone else's Tweet earlier).

Will Sergeant is about to do a City Lights THird Man books webinar alongside Bobby Gillespie. Not sure if there is a Facebook feed but there has been before.

I saw Ian McCulloch in concert once, about 20 years ago. I thought it would make me appreciate Echo and the Bunnymen, but it didn't. I do like Seven Seas, though. That song seems very romantic in a Morrissey kind of way—very operatic (probably because it sounds like 'O sole mio).

There are a slew of alternative acts from that 80s that all had these Mixolydian songs that all blend together in my mind: The Cutter, Lips Like Sugar and many others by Echo and the Bunnymen; also Primitive Painters by Felt (who I otherwise like), She Sells Sanctuary by the Cult, Uncertain Smile by The The, and I'm sure there are others I can't think of right now. I was an adolescent when the 90s alternative thing hit, and sometimes a DJ would come on the radio and start playing records from when he was in college, and it would always be one of these records. I have a bad association with them but I don't exactly know why.

Speaking of Seven Seas: is this the origin of the Tortoise track title "The Taut and Tame"? Ian McCulloch says this in the lyric. Or, is this a phrase or reference to something else that I'm just not familiar with?

these Mixolydian songs that all blend together in my mind

That's unusual! Do you have problems with ♭VII chords outside of 80s alternative?

is this the origin of the Tortoise track title "The Taut and the Tame"

That was my assumption.

I thought those City Lights talks turned up on youtube shortly afterwards. Not seeing it appear yet but it is Will Sargeant, Bobby Gillespie and a couple of other talking heads talking together about recently published memoirs.
Goad to hear that Sargeant already has the next section underway since the first book ends before the first lp.
Lasted about an hour and 10 minutes.

Do you have problems with ♭VII chords outside of 80s alternative?

Nope, it's mostly just in that context. It doesn't bother me in Krautrock, or 60s Psychedelia, or Post Rock, or in an Indian Raga. But if I hear "Perfect Skin" by Lloyd Cole it makes me cringe a little.

Buh buh bite the nose off and make it the most of

SWUNG FROM A CHANDALIER

Couldn't cut the muuuuuustarrrrrd

Rolo McGinty remembers Pete de Freitas on the anniversary of his passing.

https://www.facebook.com/rolo.mcginty/posts/pfbid02Lx9ozR8uVgYLX6bAKKzaVvD5vsLTGCwmqqhLrQCr2s8tnpcAknkAfPTuVmay9R7xl

Well well. Per Echo's social media:

We have just posted what I think is maybe the greatest live film of Echo and the Bunnymen over on our YouTube channel.
Filmed live at Zeche Bochum, Germany, March the 5th 1983 during the Porcupine European Tour.
Broadcasted by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in the Rockpalast TV programme.

1 Going Up
2 With A Hip
3 Gods Will Be Gods
4 Show Of Strength
5 Zimbo (All My Colours)
6 The Cutter
7 Rescue
8 My White Devil
9 Porcupine
10 Crocodiles
11 All That Jazz
12 The Back Of Love
13 Heads Will Roll
14 Heaven Up Here
15 Over The Wall
16 Do It Clean
17 Villiers Terrace
18 No Dark Things
19 A Promise

And here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5krHYQ6SxkM

first part of will's biography is 99p on amazon uk this month

ian on sky arts' Great Songwriters this week (last week). very fidgety and rambling but always entertaining.

likes cryptic crosswords, doesn't get Only Connect though.

odd choice of songs though (killing moon, dancing horses, proud to fall, unstoppable force)

Steinbeck et al, they just wrote novels, they don't have to sing them...

I think the second volume of Will's bio comes out very soon.

The way Will describes the current dynamics of the band makes me feel sad, he comes across as quite enervated by the whole business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FoIifB2Ylk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1QFubPHyZc

i had that (glasto 85) as a bootleg, bought during my first week at university from a guy selling them in the students Union building. they do, iirc, it's all over now baby blue, she cracked, paint it black

(oh, track listing right there...)

the Crystal Days box has versions of those, and more, from Swedish radio. don't know if the glasto versions ever saw an official release.

I can't help it, that Peel Session song "No Hands" is the gothiest thing ever. Beautiful and amen. Listen to the bass. I'll never recover. That is absolutely the most beautifully goth thing I've ever heard. Oh my god, make it stop. That is going to fuck with my head all night.
Too much goth. Too much.

― think you're a fookin' bat, eh? (Bimble), Saturday, February 7, 2009 6:25 AM (fifteen years ago)

bimble otm, but it's not too much. i just heard this song for the first time earlier this week, listening to the peel sessions collection from a few years back. when "no hands" came on i immediately tried to figure out which album it was from and how i had missed it before. but it's only on that session, i think, the january 1982 peel session, i think? it rules

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSd36N5rBg8

I had that Glasto / Swedish radio bootleg, too -- so good!

There's only one, pitifully short and tangential Wild Swans thread on ILM, but I thought it worth mentioning here that I'm halfway through Paul Simpson's memoir and it's pretty enjoyable so far.