Which Band is More Pretentious: Echo and the Bunnymen or Bauhaus

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

A really good friend of mine with very specific yet highly inscrutable tastes has always told me how much he doesn't like Echo and the Bunnymen, in no small part because the band is "pretentious." Needless to say, I was shocked to see him at a Bauhaus show last year. It turns out he's a longtime fan, which blew my mind. It seems impossible to me that someone can find the Bunnymen pretentious yet somehow not Bauhaus. I mean, they're called Bauhaus!!!

Anyway, his most recent response to my months of head scratching:

So ...?

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:15 (nineteen years ago)

Does he think that Bauhaus is less pretentious because they're maybe more cartoonish?

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:19 (nineteen years ago)

Having seen the Bunnymen live, I can see how Ian McCulloch's stage persona could come across pretentious, but other than that I'm not really sure what your friend means. Did he read an interview with them that struck him that way?

― Dugga Dugga Dugga (Bimble...), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:21 (nineteen years ago)

I'd mostly just suppose your friend isn't that great at articulating what it is that he likes / doesn't like about bands, or else is (mis)using the word "pretentious" as a stand-in for something else. (And I can imagine what, too: the Bunnymen could be said to have taken themselves more seriously as a pop entity; they were more earnest, more slick, less camp, etc.; and so it's possible that your friend reads Bauhaus as more deliberately trashy and therefore somehow unpretentious?)

But yeah, I'd say your Pretentious Meter is probably in line with the rest of the world in being set off by Bauhaus way more than the Bunnymen, who spent half of their time just being a moppety pop band.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:22 (nineteen years ago)

(If it isn't clear in that last post, I think it's a mistake to mistake "more trashy" with "less pretentious" -- they often feed right off of one another. And I think it's fairly uncontestable that Bauhaus require a lot more, umm, let's say "suspension of disbelief" than the Bunnymen. Not that that makes them worse.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:24 (nineteen years ago)

If it isn't clear in that last post, I think it's a mistake to mistake "more trashy" with "less pretentious"

Not to say that the friend's statement indicated he/she believed in this as an absolute, of course. There must be some reason why Echo & Bunnymen, in particular, struck the person as pretentious.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:27 (nineteen years ago)

Echo are more for the girls, that's what he means

― Dr. Alicia D. Titsovich (sexyDancer), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:47 (nineteen years ago)

I think it has a lot to do with the singer, his Morrison-y mannerisms and the trenchcoated followers, crossed with the lack of camp (which is at least implicit in Bauhaus). He sees Bauhaus as more theatrical, McCulloch as more messianic. Which I can see, too, I suppose.

Anyway, the first time he made this odd comparison, I pointed out not only that Bauhaus were called, you know, Bauhaus, but that Echo and the Bunnymen were called Echo and the Bunnymen (!).

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:48 (nineteen years ago)

QUIEN ES MAS MACHO?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:51 (nineteen years ago)

ricardo montalban, por supuesto.

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/uploadedImages/Performance/Stages/echo-and-the-bunnymen-VF.jpg http://gapd.com/MusicPhotosMO/PeterMurphy04.jpg

xpost

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:55 (nineteen years ago)

a bit more difficult:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/images/2004/12/08/music_will_sergeant_203_203x152.jpg http://chrisjensen.com/dash3.jpg

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:58 (nineteen years ago)

Lack of camp? I'm assuming he hasn't seen the "Seven Seas" video or "The Cutter" on TOTP then?

― David Bachyrycz (David Bachyrycz), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:58 (nineteen years ago)

who the f ca®es

― rizzx (rizzx), Thursday, 26 October 2006 20:01 (nineteen years ago)

from attending many shows of both bands... I would have to think that at the least "fans" of Bauhaus are the more pretentious. I tended to see more people getting dressed special to go see them than the Bunnymen.

― SAS (sschwartzberg), Friday, 27 October 2006 03:42 (nineteen years ago)

I do not think that word means what your friend thinks it means.

― zach mercer (suizen), Friday, 27 October 2006 06:13 (nineteen years ago)

I guess Echo are mostly much more precious than Bauhaus, which are like the Scissor Sisters of goth.

― is anyone anticipating the new Baaderonixx? (baaderonixx), Friday, 27 October 2006 07:24 (nineteen years ago)

bauhaus were definitely more explicit with their silliness, though the bunnymen had their goofball moments too ("thorn of crowns" and the videos for "bring on the dancing horses," "seven seas," and "bedbugs and ballyhoo" coming to mind re this argument). if we postulate that mcculloch = ersatz jim morrison and peter murphy = poor man's david bowie, then from where i sit then it's a draw (to be decided on individual taste). that mcculloch is a bit more po-faced "sincere" than murphy would in my mind tip the scales towards bauhaus being more pretentious -- it's almost tantamount to calling john fogerty more pretentious than mick jagger (though some folks round here would no doubt).

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Friday, 27 October 2006 07:35 (nineteen years ago)

> he videos for "bring on the dancing horses," "seven seas," and "bedbugs and ballyhoo" coming to mind re this argument

and the first name that comes to mind (possibly mistakenly*) when you mention those videos is Anton Corbijn. i think he's probably more responsible for the look of these.

* apparently not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Corbijn

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Friday, 27 October 2006 08:22 (nineteen years ago)

OK, one of the problems with this dichotomy is that it makes like "pretentious" is a bad thing.

In terms of appeal to Normos, I would say that Echo and the Bunnymen probably have more credit in the straight world, as it were.

But if you mean "pretentious" in terms of being "put on" - then I would say the Bunnymen win, because I get the feeling that Bauhaus were a bunch of art school freaks who couldn't really *help* being any other way.

― Going Through The Motions (kate), Friday, 27 October 2006 09:10 (nineteen years ago)

>> Having seen the Bunnymen live, I can see how Ian McCulloch's stage persona could come across pretentious

Having seen the Bunnymen live, I can see how Ian McCulloch's stage persona could come across cuntish

FIXED :P

― Colonel Poo (Colonel Poo), Friday, 27 October 2006 12:24 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe it's his offstage persona you should worry about

― The sun sets on twelve tons of pickled onions. A dynasty is dying... (Dada), Friday, 27 October 2006 12:30 (nineteen years ago)

The one time I met him he was all right. That was some years ago, though.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 27 October 2006 13:24 (nineteen years ago)

I met him a few months ago, but he was ill. Seemed like a nice enough guy.

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Friday, 27 October 2006 16:29 (nineteen years ago)

Cur1s, your pictures do wonders for this thread. Cheers, my good man.

― An evening of fun in the metropolis of your dream (Bimble...), Saturday, 28 October 2006 01:58 (nineteen years ago)

even bauhaus would admit to being more pretentious

― kyle (akmonday), Saturday, 28 October 2006 04:05 (nineteen years ago)

Well you know, I'll be honest my friend. Once I went to a Peter Murphy concert. This was about the time of that record Deep or whatever the fuck it was called the most famous one with All Night Long on it that my friends played about a billion times in my presence and which I thereby grew terribly tired of, even though I admit it was a brilliant album. Anyway, so during this concert, there were two people who had stood up and were talking or trying to get out of the venue whatever, and Peter Murphy interrupted the show to object to their talking. I can't remember what he said but it was rather snooty, something like "you guys paid to be here" etc. I was very young but I couldn't decide if I took Murphy's side in that situation or not. He seemed very full of himself in the moment and unfair, but I could at least concede that he may have rightfully deemed those folks the epitome of impolite.

But then what if there was a real emergency of some kind for those folks, what if...they'd just got word of something horrible happening to a family member...then his arrogance would be...the emperor would have no clothes then would he?

I'm still ambivalent about it to this day.

― An evening of fun in the metropolis of your dream (Bimble...), Saturday, 28 October 2006 04:47 (nineteen years ago)

I mean think about it right? He interrupted the show for everyone else there to say basically say "fuck off" to a mere two people.

So what does that mean? Fuck if I know.

― An evening of fun in the metropolis of your dream (Bimble...), Saturday, 28 October 2006 04:58 (nineteen years ago)

hmm, last time i saw mr. mcculloch onstage (a year ago, actually), i couldn't understand a fucking thing that he said. it wasn't him being a pretentious muttering twat (a la, for example, michael stipe) -- it was a matter of a bunch of NYCers not understanding his thick-ass liverpudlian accent. after show, the lot of 'em were friendly enough when greeting fans (though none of us in my entourage could still understand much of what any of 'em were saying).

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Saturday, 28 October 2006 07:56 (nineteen years ago)

".... one of the problems with this dichotomy is that it makes like "pretentious" is a bad thing."

OTM

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Saturday, 28 October 2006 21:07 (nineteen years ago)

1) Both of these bands are fantastic

2) Bauhaus is more "pretentious" in a general sense, though that's not a bad thing - in fact, it's a good part of the band's appeal for me

3) I too have met the Bunnymen guys - Ian and Will in particular are quite friendly and personable

― Stephen Bush (Stephen B.), Saturday, 28 October 2006 22:08 (nineteen years ago)

Although history does appear to have been subtly rewritten since, as I recall the rest of E&TBM - with the full backing of both their management and their record label - actually took the extraordinary step of throwing Ian McCulloch out of the band and replacing him with another vocalist ('88/'89?) because McCulloch had turned into such a complete prima donna that he was refusing to travel on the same coaches or stay in the same hotels as the rest of the band while they were on tour.

I believe this is also why Les Pattinson was initially reluctant to rejoin the band after McCulloch and Will Sergeant first got back together (and hence why they initially had to go under the name of Electrafixion).

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Monday, 30 October 2006 19:53 (nineteen years ago)

Reverberation, the album they made with Fake Ian, was actually quite likeable, though. It would also seem to confirm a more concrete version for Real Ian's split-off, which was that Sergeant wanted to do his whole incense-burning soft-psychedelic Orientalist thing, whereas Ian wanted to be Totally Pop, like "Don't You Forget About Me" / "Heartbreak Beat" pop.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 30 October 2006 21:49 (nineteen years ago)

Reverberation, the album they made with Fake Ian, was actually quite likeable, though. It would also seem to confirm a more concrete version for Real Ian's split-off, which was that Sergeant wanted to do his whole incense-burning soft-psychedelic Orientalist thing, whereas Ian wanted to be Totally Pop, like "Don't You Forget About Me" / "Heartbreak Beat" pop.

do tell!

echo and the bunnymen, "reverberation" -- so, what does ILM think?

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 30 October 2006 22:53 (nineteen years ago)

I remember really liking that album at the time. Pulled it out a few years ago and it just didn't seem as great to me.

― An evening of fun in the metropolis of your dream (Bimble...), Monday, 30 October 2006 22:58 (nineteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.