Forty Five Minutes Of Bunnymen

I've been thinking about an Echo And The Bunnymen mix for ages without committing. Part of me just wanted to do the first four albums, the original line up of McCulloch, Sergeant, Pattinson and De Freitas, from Eric's to Ocean Rain. Part of me wanted to just sling together my favourite Bunnymen songs (more or less the same thing actually). Part of me wanted to do just B-sides and album songs. These things may still happen. But I enjoyed the pair of New Order mixes I did earlier this year where I started with a New Order song and went where it suggested, taking in solo songs, remixes, covers, edits and songs that sounded New Order- esque- so I used that as a guide and started a Bunnymen mix in a similar vein. There are edits and solo songs, B-sides and singles, outliers in the Bunnymen world. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Bunnymen

• Into The Seventies
• Bedbugs And Ballyhoo (Single Version)
• Never Stop (Discoteque)
• BOTDH Peza Edit
• Thorn Of Crowns (Go Home Productions Remix)
• Lover Lover Lover (Indian Dawn Remix)
• The Killing Moon (T- Rek's Desert Disco Dub)
• Weird Gear

William Alfred Sergeant is Echo And The Bunnymen's guitarist, a sometime solo artist, memoir writer and all round good egg. In 2020 he released an an album of instrumentals called Things Inside. Into The Seventies was the opening track, a three minutes of finger picking and drones that sounds like the soundtrack to a late night TV programme. His side project with Les Pattinson, Poltergeist, released a fine album too, Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder), which I should have included in this mix. 

Bedbugs And Ballyhoo was originally a B-side to Bring On The Dancing Horses, a shimmering Bunnymen pop song with a jazzy, groovy B-side. It was re- recorded for the so- called Grey album, their fifth and self- titled album in 1987 (and then released as a single by WEA but I think everyone had pretty much given up on that album by that point). Ray Manzarek of The Doors plays keyboards. Bedbugs And Ballyhoo (along with The Game, Lips Like Sugar and one or two others) are proof that they could have made a really good album out of those songs if they'd not been falling out, had been more arsed and not smothered the songs in late 80s sheen. 

Never Stop is a 1983 single, a massive Bunnymen moment, released to coincide with gigs at the Royal Albert Hall- 'lay down thy raincoat and groove' they instructed. Strings, Ian doing his best Henry Fonda 'Good Gawd' impression and lyrics attacking Thatcherism. Will's bursts of guitar are pretty good too. Discoteque is the 12" mix and the rhythm section really could lay down their raincoats and groove. 

Peza is a DJ, producer and remixer/ edit artist. His version of Bring On The Dancing Horses is a 2019 nu- disco edit that doesn't too anything too radical but keep the song streamlined for the dancefloor. Dancing Horses is brilliant, shimmering 80s alt- pop.

Go Home Productions is/ was the name of Mark Vidler's remix/ edit/ mash up outfit- I featured quite a lot of his stuff back in the early days of this blog and he's been doing his thing since 2002. His unofficial version of Ocean Rain's Crown Of Thorns found its way to the band who liked it so much they put it out themselves. By contrast with Peza, Go Home Productions does monkey around with Thorn Of Crowns, completely reconstructing it, leaving Ian's C- C- C- cucumber, C- C- C- cabbage C- C- C- cauliflower malarkey on top. 

Ian left the Bunnymen and went solo in 1989. Hi first solo lp was Candleland, a low key and somewhat out of step album for 1989 but it's rather wonderful in its own way. His second solo album was 1992's Mysterio which was lead by a cover of Leonard Cohen's Lover Lover Lover. This remix, the Indian Dawn Remix, was by Mark 'Spike' Stent and is very 1992. He went on to work with the reformed Bunnymen on 1999's What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?, the Bunnymen reduced to just Ian and Will. Les left after realising that the things he grew frustrated about with Mac in the 80s were still frustrating and causing arguments in the 90s. 

The Killing Moon is perhaps their best known song- I'm sure it's their most streamed. It gained a whole new life after being included on the soundtrack to Donnie Darko in 2001. It is a superb song,both Ian's timeshifting, romantic lyrics and the swooning 80s post- punk/ psychedelic music. Something For Kate's cover and this dub disco remix came to me via its appearance at an ALFOS. Both Something For Kate and T- Rek are Australian and this cover/ remix is a bassline led, thumping nine minute gloom romp. Lovely. 

Weird Gear is from Everyman And Woman Is A Star, the 1991 album by Ultramarine with lyrics from a Kevin Ayres song, sung by Brendan Staunton and with strings sampled from The Cutter, a 1983 Bunnymen single/ highlight, high drama and urgency, happy losses and drops in the ocean. 

Random Selections From The Shelves

On Boxing Day night sitting in the room with all the records in it we played the game where someone pulls a record at random from the shelves and we play it. First to go was my daughter, who had already said she didn't like what my brother- in- law were listening to when she came in- 'it's not music, it's just noises' (Richard Norris' Abstractions Vol. 2). She was given the first go and pulled out St Etienne's 1994 12" single Pale Movie.

Pale Movie is off Tiger Bay, the sleeve with a tiger on both front and back. I photographed the tiger above at Port Lympne safari park in Kent a few years ago. I don't think keeping tigers in cages is a good idea (apart from the obvious conservation arguments) but the tigers at Lympne had a lot of room and seeing one close up and hearing it roar was pretty exciting. I digress. We played the single version of Pale Movie from the choice of four mixes on the single. Pale Movie is classic mid- 90s St Etienne, equal parts Eurobeat, Spanish guitar and Sarah singing lyrics about a boy and girl ('he is so dark and moody/she is the sunshine girl'). Pete, Bob and Sarah went to Nerja in Spain to shoot the video.



I went back to the 12" afterwards to re- listen to the other three mixes, all of which were worth giving a spin. Mark 'Spike' Stent, the man who mixed the song (and Hug My Soul from Tiger Bay as well), did the Stentorian Dub, a straightforward but effective clubby remix- plenty to enjoy in it with its bleepy synths and chunky drums.

Pale Movie (Stentorian Dub)

The longest remix was ten minutes from Kris Needs in his Secret Knowledge guise. It starts with an extended intro which builds into the first of several peaks. The Secret Knowledge Trouser Assassin mix goes pretty trancey with pummelling drums and Sarah's vocals dropped in along with the kitchen sink. Kris Needs was a master of this kind of thing in the mid 90s.

Pale Movie (Secret Knowledge Trouser Assassin Mix)

Finally a remix by Underworld (credited solely to Rick Smith), the Lemonentry Mix, one that clocks in at just over four minutes, very short for Underworld at the time. Rick worked on Tiger Bay too, mixing and programming Like A Motorway, Cool Kids Of Death and Urban Clearway. The Underworld remix of Cool Kids Of Death is one I'll come back to when I do a follow up to the Underworld remixes post from a week or two ago. The Lemonentry Mix is a slowed down, dubby affair, darker and moodier than the rest, with Sara's vocal intact.

Pale Movie (Lemonentry Mix)

Just to show how random the following selections from the shelves were my niece followed St Etienne with Gnod and a song from their Just Say No To The Psycho Right Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine album. We played the opening song, Bodies For Money, a glorious piece of feedback guitar led noise, every instrument recorded with the needle tipping into the red and Gnod raging against late period capitalism.



Mrs Swiss then pulled out a six track maxi- single The House Sound Of Chicago and as Gnod's noise dissolved we had Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk's 1986 song Love Can't Turn Around, featuring the sublime vocals of Daryl Pandy, a song that was the first US house track to hit the UK charts. It still sounds huge, crashing pianos, 808s and 303s. Magical.

Love Can't Turn Around

Fun for all the family as I'm sure you can see.