Echo & the bunnymen: Classic or Dud?

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

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

that tube video had my neck hairs standing up. can't help but think that the 10 minutes after the credits rolled would've been excellent.

That performance off the tube is incredible, so powerful!

Ian McC is definitely amongst my top five Liverpool fans (it's not a list that goes down much further than #5). From the stage at the Royal Court in '98..."I don't want Everton to go down - it would be bad for the city. Of, er, Wolverhampton."

The Mac/Will interviews on the BBC's Rock Family Trees (Liverpool post-punk episode) are absolutely priceless. "Nein Danke."

A few duff records aside, some days I think they're my favourite band ever.

I only ever saw them after their famous year off, so I think that means past their prime.

The Bunnymen have this strange ability to make me yearn for childhood Merseyside experiences I never actually had; I want to wander along Otterspool Prom with some befringed pals at dusk and talk drunken rubbish until the small hours on the steps of the Palm House in Sefton Park. I didn't do any of this in the '80s, I was playing tennis in New Brighton and then running home for me tea.

The grey album is the only remaster I have bothered with. I love that album, but of course I'm nuts. I have the boxset so the extra tracks on the remasters are less of a lure. They should have picked a gig from each era and put out a second live CD with each reissue.

Anyone else remember them doing fantastic versions of 'The Game' and 'Lips Like Sugar' on some sort of tribute the the OGWT TV programme just before the grey record came out? Bit of a letdown when I heard the actual album though.

(I might still have it on VHS in the loft somewhere)

Bring On The Dancing Horses, which I think of as the best Xmas single of all time, is only available (as far as I can tell) in this reissue programme in two different versions on the grey album. Bah, I'm not buying the bloody grey album.

S/T record from 1987.

Not part of this reissue programme, though. It was last year, wasn't it? That might be too much duplication for me ("Killing Moon" in about five places then) but if I see the CD/DVD version going cheap...

I think I could "do" you a Dancing Horses replica 12" if you like. The 7" was on the box set, but I sold that (fool!).

Ocean Rain does sound fantastic. Possibly the best use of strings on a rock record ever.

i do like the 90s/present-day bunnymen records, though i concede that it's more "for the fans"/already-coverted and they aren't the same w/t de freitas & pattinson et. al. & they haven't come up w/ any as catchy as even "lips like sugar" (much less anything offa the first 4).

i think the newer stuff is OK if you take it for what it is -- competent, polished late 90s sorta-indie rockish stuff -- as opposed to expecting heaven up here, v. 2.0. and of this latter stuff, their LAST record siberia may be the best of the lot -- they play w/ a bit more passion than the other latter-day stuff.

personally, the biggest letdown re the latter-day stuff is that ian's voice is totally shot to SHIT.

unfortunately, its true.

That was a mistake, I feel. If only for what I might have cribbed from it.

Perhaps BOTDH should stay where it is - on my picture disc LP and mixed in with the slush and drizzle of the walk along the Breck to school.

Just listening to the box set on CD1 right now. Broke My Neck (long version) - WOW!!

completely different. grind stuff is ambient soundscapes, some quite dark. glide stuff is poppier, lots of samples, reminds me, somehow, of willy wonka's chocolate factory gone bad.

samples here (ipcress track particularly good. do not listen to whilst operating machinery or driving though):

http://www.bunnymen.com/Glide/mp3page.html

last glide lp (curvature of the earth) had instantly recognisable bunnymen style guitar submerged within it in places, was very odd given that i wasn't expecting it and it took me right back.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000HKDC6C/ref=olp_product_details/026-3945335-0330023?ie=UTF8&seller=

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ECHO-AND-THE-BUNNYMEN-VERY-BEST-OF-PLUS-DVD-NEW_W0QQitemZ280075967382QQihZ018QQcategoryZ2250QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Anyway - now on Disc 3 of the box. And really, what's not to like about any of the later stuff? Nothing Lasts Forever, Rust - all tremendous. Must dig out the WAYGTDWYL album later.

All the B-sides/outtakes are stellar - e.g. Rollercoaster (Will back on the Fender Jag - yay!, Hurracaine etc)

Angels and Devils is possibly my favourite EATB song. Who else could get that groove, that *sway*? The guitars and drums are fantastic on that - really woody and close-sounding.

I'd recommend it. Both under his name and as Glide.

The box set does a great job at cherrypicking the early reunion material, and all the B-sides and rarities and live tracks = rockness. It's a well-put-together compilation and one of the few box sets around that's worth relistening to.

There should be a compilation of that era called "Nein Danke".

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.