From: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org (seven-seas-digest) To: seven-seas-digest@smoe.org Subject: seven-seas-digest V3 #217 Reply-To: seven-seas@smoe.org Sender: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Precedence: bulk seven-seas-digest Tuesday, June 29 2004 Volume 03 : Number 217 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 21:09:22 +0100 From: "steve g" Subject: seven-seas never mind the balcony dogs - here's the sex gods! all, i've been working with my old mate andy eastwood on a site for the sex gods. there's still loads more to be added including never before seen pics of pete d. there's more audio to come and hopefully more vids, when eastie finds them! anyway - take a look and hopefully, enjoy! stevie g. http://www.thesexgods.co.uk ====================================== http://www.bunnymenlist.com ====================================== ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 10:01:35 -0600 From: "Kristin Smith" Subject: seven-seas dbmagazine.com.au/ http://www.dbmagazine.com.au/306/iv-IanMcCulloch.html This is from last year, but I don't think it has been posted before. The name may not draw an immediate response from most readers, but take it from me: Ian "Mac" McCulloch is an honest-to-god rock star. After co-forming Echo & the Bunnymen in the late seventies, through to the band's huge cult success in the 80s, his acrimonious departure, a middling solo career and the Bunnymen's triumphant return in the nineties, Mac has managed to retain an aura of untouchable fuck-you about him. Which begs the question: what the hell is he doing up so early on a Wednesday morning? "Well, I'm up anyway fairly early with the kids," he yawns, "but yeah, I'm feeling a little dazed." The reason he's up at all is to talk about his third solo album, the much-praised 'Slideling'. He sounds in good spirits, but my first and most obvious question - with the Bunnymen in the ascendent again, why do a solo album? - sets off a series of half-responses: "I just felt that with some of these songs I've written over the last two or three years..." Mac begins, before changing tack: "Once in a while you need to spend time... You know, I hate to say my age, but I'm 40-odd, and I just pretend for the rest of my life that I'm just half of the Bunnymen. I've got a lot more that I want to do..." He trails off, clears his throat, and starts again. "There are certain songs that are maybe more personal, or easier to set in a solo situation. I mean, once a Bunnyman, always a Bunnyman - but I also want to sings songs about me, that are more than cliched rock'n'roll things. Not that the Bunnymen ever have been, but..." he hastily adds, before sighing and giving what's probably the closest to the truth: "I don't necessarily want Will connected with everything that I do." Ah. The relationship between guitarist Will Sergeant and Mac is a long and colourful one: they formed Echo & the Bunnymen together before having an enormous falling out in 1987 (Mac left the band to release his first solo album, the excellent 'Candleland', in 1989; Sergeant continued with a new lineup of the Bunnymen for a few unspectacular years). They patched up their friendship and formed Electrafixion, releasing a great (if barely-heard) album in 1994, then roped in original bassist Les Pattinson to return as the Bunnymen in 1997 with 'Evergreen'. Pattinson left after a couple of years, leaving the original duo as the core of the band again with 2000's magnificent 'Flowers'. Meanwhile 'Slideling' is Mac's most confident solo offering yet: while perhaps not reaching the highs of his solo debut, it's also a damn sight better than 1992's confused 'Mysterio' ("Oh yeah," he snorts at the suggestion). In fact, at times 'Slideling' sounds like a love letter to Lorraine, his wife of over 20 years. "Does it?" he laughs. "Well, kind of - but it's also a 40 minute alibi, or apology. Not every song is connected with Lorraine, but with the song Slideling, the way I see it, I've rewritten the marriage vows: love, honour and obey, for better and for worse, for slidelings and climblings. It's just basically if you see me sliding, we'll slide together. Or if I'm going down," he laughs. "Well, you kind of knew what you were getting. But if this thing is sacred, or if you believe in the sanctity of marriage, then you've got to read those vows. I s'pose it's my way of saying that I've got into more shite than a lot of people - I come a cropper every now and then, so it's my way of saying 'yes, but this is what we agreed'." Mac has no shortage of pride in his work (when he describes the Bunnymen's 1984 effort 'Ocean Rain' as being the best album of all time, there's no hint of bluster - he says it as a statement of fact), and I suggest that it must have seemed strange in the 90s when the band were more or less written out of UK musical history. "I know, yeah," he spits, "and I thought, 'what the hell's going on?' Except in America, there were always people like Pavement, Courtney Love and the Flaming Lips who would cite us, but with the Britpop thing you've got the NME going 'well, we've got our Britpop, so who cares if the Bunnymen in some way inspired loads of American stuff?' And I think with the comeback, with Nothing Lasts Forever, proved we could still come up with someting brilliant, and I think that shocked a lot of people - and then the British press started saying 'the greatest comeback ever' and stuff. It's funny - the British press is just so stupid. The NME's like a rag week [University] mag, they just just latch onto things - I mean, they latched onto us and I thought it was OK, but they think they can write some people off. The true greats you can't." Again, there's no hint of boastfulness. Mac talks about the Bunnymen like an outsider talking about his favourite band - which, to be fair, they probably are. And he's absolutely right about the Bunnymen's legacy: Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg's sleevenotes for Rhino Record's excellent Bunnymen boxset are written with an almost religious zeal. "For a lot of American kids it was like 'we want the cool stuff coming out of Britain', so they liked us and New Order, something that wasn't just U2 banner waving," Mac explains. "And then Chris [Martin of Coldplay, who also guests on 'Slideling'] comes along and gets totally into the Bunnymen, and we become mates. It validates what we did in a way, because Coldplay are the biggest new thing by a long way, and they're global - and that's what the Bunnymen were. We were nowhere near as big, mind, but pockets in each part of the world were Bunnymen territories, which is no small achievement either. If you just affect a few people in London, no matter how well you appear to be doing, if you haven't really proved that you can affect people in Australia, Brazil, Japan, it does mean that you're just provincial. You may as well be a Morris dancer." Mac's also quick to point out that 'Slideling' doesn't mark any sort of permanent break for the Bunnymen. "When we reformed it was because there was something about the Bunnymen that I missed, and it's gone great since," Mac insists. "But I do need this [solo] outlet. I'll just amass a collection of songs and then go 'I wanna do this for six months,' and that's OK. I don't owe Will anything, except that we're going to carry on doing Bunnymen stuff, and I'm really looking forward to it." He pauses. "But I actually thought for the first time the other day that I wouldn't mind acting, just for a challenge. With the right kind of thing, you know? Just a loose kind of dude in whatever film." Andrew P Street ====================================== http://www.bunnymenlist.com ====================================== ------------------------------ End of seven-seas-digest V3 #217 ********************************