From: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org (seven-seas-moderated-digest) To: seven-seas-moderated-digest@smoe.org Subject: seven-seas-moderated-digest V2 #264 Reply-To: seven-seas@smoe.org Sender: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Precedence: bulk seven-seas-moderated-digest Saturday, October 25 2003 Volume 02 : Number 264 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 04:30:03 EDT From: Iangeannapeter@aol.com Subject: seven-seas-moderated Re: seven-seas Setlist again... Cant really see any surprises for the tour apart from the short set. Saw Paul Weller on his last tour knocking out 26 toons over nearly two hours. Cant understand why there is such a restriction on material. Its not as if theyre trying to recreate a prog rock concept album with an orchestra and choir, its guitar, bass and drums. Even if they did play obscure material or stuff not played for years would anyone who happened to try them for the first time really care? I agree that the fairweathers are gone and is there anything on this tour (at the moment)to get them interested again? Maybe the obscure stuff would. The set will no doubt be bolstered by the hits anyway. As a fan for 23 of those 25 years like many others I would have thought that the boat should have been pushed out for this. Makes the old Liverpool trip from London seem daunting. What I'd like to see is some gathering after the shows so the the band can mingle with the fans like the Kilburn National in 97 or the band supporting themselves with a covers set like the 84 shows or even a taster for the new album. Is this really too much to ask? I can understand that the Bunnymen are a "cult" band but lets not let the cult following down. The Reverend Ian Presley ====================================== The Official Seven-Seas Web Page. www.bunnymenlist.com ====================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 07:59:35 -0600 From: "K. F. Smith" Subject: seven-seas-moderated ChartAttack.com http://www.chartattack.com/damn/2003/10/2404.cfm Echo And The Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch Sticks It To Mike Bullard Friday October 24, 2003 @ 03:00 PM By: ChartAttack.com Staff Echo & The Bunnymen It was a surreal moment: Echo & The Bunnymen's resident singer and bon vivant Ian McCulloch onstage on the Mike Bullard Show, being asked trivia questions about Canada for the chance to win a Motomaster Eliminator Power Box (which, due to differences in voltage, would be useless in his native England). "What is a beaver's home called?" asked the beefy presenter. McCulloch makes a big show of racking his brain for the answer, while audience members shout helpfully at him. Finally, Mac The Mouth looks up, and said: "A snatch?" Dead silence. Then eventually, a few nervous titters, followed by incredulous guffaws. Bullard sat stock still, staring ahead. "Rarely, if ever, have I been rendered speechless." They gave him the Power Box anyway. McCulloch spent much of the next night leaving people speechless, but by singing. Despite the years of cigarettes and late nights, he sounded better than he had in years. "It's got better," he said of his voice, sipping a coffee in his tour bus, minutes before that solo gig. "More the way I always heard it. Real soul, and a depth to it that's come not so much with age but battering it for years. It's always been flexible and versatile, and I can still do all the old Bunnymen stuff. But it's got this kind of manly thing, which I like. And I can use it less and get more effect." McCulloch is best known for singing dark Bunnymen classics like "The Killing Moon" and "The Cutter," but ever since his 1983 version of Kurt Weill's "September Song," he has demonstrated a different side of his talent. "I always thought, when I was 13, it would be me, and then all these dudes in the shadows: Jacques Brel, Sinatra, Elvis Presley... They're the singers that had to sing great, cuz it wasn't their songs, so they had to imbue them with their own life and personality. That's what's so great about Frank Sinatra. They wrote songs to fit him and his own image and his life. 'I've lived a live that's full' - he did more than anyone." McCulloch, meanwhile, is doing his best. Instead of the usual tea-and-honey voice-coddling preparations, he has apparently "prepared" for his gig in Toronto by celebrating his Power Box win with an all-night bender. "It was a good laugh," he recalls, fondly if slightly gingerly. However, it's time for him to hit the stage. He agrees to a few words after the show. The concert is impressive: glorious solo material, mostly from his new album Sliding, a few Bunnymen classics, and covers of the two dudes Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed. Mac even plays guitar, which he rarely does with the Bunnymen. "I'm enjoying it," he says, although "it does restrict me, I can't smoke as much." Backstage at Lee's Palace, a bevvy in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Mac is pleased with the show: "I thought it had great moments. 'Killing Moon' was just fantastic. I haven't sung it like that for a long time." Clearly, he's looking forward to the upcoming Bunnymen world tour with axe-slinging wizard Will Sergeant, and to the remastering and re-release of the group's first five albums. He doesn't really rate the fifth, self-titled and more poppy LP, quite as highly as the others - but that would be pretty much impossible. "These four CDs were four of the best albums of all time," McCulloch declares. "It's [been] 25 years, and with all the talk of the Bunnymen, [we'll] just go, 'Here you go, you bastards. This is what we've done.' Ocean Rain, it's better than the Mona Lisa." There has been much talk of the Bunnymen of late, especially in reference to bands like Interpol, British Sea Power, and of course, Coldplay. Mac's friendship with Chris Martin is well known; as he recalls, just before one gig. "Chris said to me, 'Mac, just remember: you're the best. You've got the best voice in the world.' And I went, 'I know. Remember you might have the second.'" Nonetheless, the press remains fixated with youth and newness, and the props The Bunnymen get rarely translate to interest in their new material (no matter how good it is). Mac's still got his share of vitriol, especially for ex-manager Bill Drummond ("this fucking self-mythologized tithead" who "got everything he knows from us and writes books about it") and ex-friend Julian Cope (who's "trying to rewrite history - he's stealing these songs off me"), but he remains philosophical. "The Bunnymen career was just littered with fuckin' half-baked shit, and we should have been massive... We are the Van Goghs of rock, which is not a bad thing to be." Van Gogh sold a total of one painting before taking his own life. The Bunnymen are under-appreciated, but you'll never find Mac cutting his ear off - he enjoys life (and music) too much. Besides there are advantages to never having sold out a football stadium: you can still retain an aura of cool. An English World Cup collaboration with The Spice Girls aside, McCulloch's career is pretty much free of embarrassment, and a younger generation is discovering his work. "I love it," says Mac. "It's happening more and more. Possibly through the Coldplay thing, but I think just generationally, kids go, 'I want to check that band out.' I was like that with The Velvets. And that, to me, has proved that we are one of those all-time bands." Echo & The Bunnymen play the Palais Royale in Toronto on Sunday, Oct. 26, then The Pyramid in Winnipeg on Friday, October 31. -Mike Doherty ====================================== The Official Seven-Seas Web Page. www.bunnymenlist.com ====================================== ------------------------------ End of seven-seas-moderated-digest V2 #264 ******************************************