K SPECIAL Echo & the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon - The Greatest Hits - 45th Anniversary 1978-2023 [2023] (2 x CDs)

K SPECIAL

Echo & the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon - The Greatest Hits - 45th Anniversary 1978-2023 [2023] (2 x CDs)

In celebration of 45 years since Echo & the Bunnymen formed in Liverpool 1978 here is my 2CD special presentation set of their very best work.

There has never been a truly comprehensive set of their best work from 1979 to the present day all in one place featuring all the classic single hits (with many in their original 7" single form of edits and remixes), the best B-sides and album tracks.

This 39-track set features the very latest and highest quality digital remasters, with a considerable number of tracks sourced from the original master tapes for superior sound quality and enjoyment.

Echo & the Bunnymen are an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of vocalist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bassist Les Pattinson. By 1980, Pete de Freitas joined as the band's drummer.

Their 1980 debut album Crocodiles went into the top 20 of the UK Albums Chart. After releasing their second album Heaven Up Here in 1981, the band's cult status was followed by mainstream success in the UK in 1983 when they scored a UK Top 10 hit with "The Cutter", and the album which the song came from, Porcupine, hit number 2 in the UK. Ocean Rain (1984) continued the band's UK chart success with its lead single "The Killing Moon" entering into the top 10.

After they released a self-titled album in 1987, McCulloch left the band and was replaced by singer Noel Burke. In 1989, de Freitas was killed in a motorcycle accident. After working together as Electrafixion, McCulloch and Sergeant regrouped with Pattinson in 1997 and returned as Echo & the Bunnymen, before Pattinson's departure in 1998. The band has done some touring and released several albums since the late 1990s to varying degrees of success.

Early years

Ian McCulloch began his career in 1977, as one third of the Crucial Three, a bedroom band which also featured Julian Cope and Pete Wylie. When Wylie left, McCulloch and Cope formed the short-lived A Shallow Madness with drummer Dave Pickett and organist Paul Simpson, during which time such songs as "Read It in Books", "Robert Mitchum", "You Think It's Love" and "Spacehopper" were written by the pair. When McCulloch left the band, A Shallow Madness changed their name to the Teardrop Explodes, and McCulloch joined with guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson to form Echo & the Bunnymen. This early incarnation of the band featured a drum machine, assumed by many to be "Echo", though this has been denied by the band.

In the 1982 book Liverpool Explodes! Will Sergeant explained the origin of the band's name:

We had this mate who kept suggesting all these names like the Daz Men or Glisserol and the Fan Extractors. Echo and the Bunnymen was one of them. I thought it was just as stupid as the rest.

In November 1978, Echo & the Bunnymen made their debut at Liverpool's Eric's Club, appearing as the opening act for the Teardrop Explodes. The band played one song, a 20-minute version of "Monkeys" which was entitled "I Bagsy Yours" at the time.

Echo & the Bunnymen's debut single "The Pictures on My Wall" was released on Bill Drummond & David Balfe's Zoo Records in May 1979, the B-side being "Read It in Books" (also recorded by the Teardrop Explodes approximately six months later as the B-side of their final Zoo Records single "Treason"). Though credited as a McCulloch/Cope collaboration, McCulloch has denied on more than one occasion that Cope had any involvement with its writing.

With the group now gaining wider attention, they were invited to record a four-song set for the BBC's John Peel Show on August 22, at which time they were still using a drum machine. This was the first of six live sets they would cut for the Peel show between 1979 and 1983.

By the time of their debut album, 1980's Crocodiles (July 1980), the drum machine had been replaced by Trinidad-born Pete de Freitas. Unlike the other band members, who were from working class Liverpool families, de Freitas was considered "posh" - he came from an affluent background, grew up in the south of England, and attended an elite private school. Despite his different background, the drummer's affable and outgoing manner was a welcome addition for his famously fractious bandmates. De Freitas met the trio at their September 15, 1979, gig at Eric's in Liverpool and immediately joined the band, but his October 12 live debut with them at London's Electric Ballroom was less than auspicious. Supporting hugely popular ska bands Madness and Bad Manners, the Bunnymen proved an uncomfortable fit, and they were booed off after just two songs.

"Rescue" (produced by Ian Broudie), the lead single from Crocodiles, reached No. 62 on the UK singles chart but the album (co-produced by manager Bill Drummond and his business partner David Balfe of the Teardrop Explodes) broke into the Top 20, reaching No. 17, and garnered wide critical acclaim.

Eschewing the traditional "pin-up" cover shot, Crocodiles featured an atmospheric cover image, which showed the band posed in a mysterious woodland setting, lit by hidden coloured lights. Designed by Martyn Atkins and photographed by Brian Griffin, it became the first in a coordinated series of elemental-themed album covers by Atkins and Griffin, which spanned their first four LPs, each depicting the band posed at some distance from the camera, in a visually striking natural setting -- a forest (Crocodiles), a beach at sunset (Heaven Up Here), a frozen waterfall in Iceland (Porcupine) and a subterranean river (Ocean Rain). It would not be until their fifth, self-titled album that the band employed a traditional group portrait.

The band kicked off a hectic year of touring in 1984 with their first dates in Japan, in January, followed by a month-long round of dates in the United States beginning in March. April-May saw them playing concerts in Europe and the UK, followed by the second and more extensive leg of their U.S. tour during August-September, concluding with a show at the famed Greek Theater in Los Angeles on September 9. The band then immediately undertook an intensive two-month UK tour, beginning in Dublin on September 15 and concluding at London's Brixton Academy on October 24 (their last concert of 1984).

Following a PR campaign that proclaimed it "the greatest album ever made" according to McCulloch, 1984's Ocean Rain reached No. 4, and today is widely regarded as the band's landmark album. Single extracts "Silver" (UK No. 30) and "Seven Seas" (UK No. 16) consolidated the album's continued commercial success.

Ocean Rain proved difficult to follow up, and their only releases in 1985 were the single, "Bring on the Dancing Horses" (UK No. 21), and a compilation album, Songs to Learn & Sing, which made No. 6 in the UK album chart.

1985/86 proved to be the turning point in the group's career. During their regular winter break, drummer Pete de Freitas had moved to America with a loose group of musical colleagues, friends and hangers-on dubbed The Sex Gods, but the other Bunnymen and his family later revealed that de Freitas was suffering from escalating mental health and drug problems, and following a New Year's Eve drug binge in New Orleans, de Freitas announced that he had quit the band.

With tour commitments looming, the remaining members hastily recruited former Haircut One Hundred drummer Blair Cunningham as their new drummer, but he did not fit in and left after their Spring 1986 American tour. Cunningham was replaced by former ABC drummer David Palmer. The group began recording material for the new album with Broudie and producer Clive Langer but they were unhappy with the results and the recordings were shelved.

They then recorded with Laurie Latham, who was chosen by McCulloch because he had been impressed by Latham's work on the Stranglers' single "Skin Deep". Three tracks from these sessions made their way onto the next album, including the song "Jimmy Brown", which was re-titled "Bring on the Dancing Horses" and released as their only single of 1986.

Echo & the Bunnymen returned to the studio to record more material with a new producer, Gil Norton, but in July, David Palmer left the group and de Freitas expressed his wish to rejoin. The other members were concerned about both his commitment to the band and his drug and mental health problems, so he returned to group as a hired musician rather than a full member of the band. The revised lineup performed live on BBC TV in September, presenting two new songs, "The Game" and "Lips Like Sugar", but by this stage, they were under intense pressure from their label to create what Warners considered to be more commercial material. Will Sergeant later recalled the band's outrage when Warner executive Rob Dickens played them Peter Gabriel's album So, declaring "I want you to sound like this!"

Their fifth studio album, the self-titled Echo & the Bunnymen (1987), was recorded with Palmer, but when de Freitas returned in late 1986, it was largely re-recorded. Released in mid-1987, the record sold well (UK No. 4), and was a small American hit, their only LP to have significant sales there. It is also significant as the final album to be recorded with the original lineup.

Departure of McCulloch

The group jointly headlined an American tour with New Order in August-September 1987, followed by a UK tour in the northern autumn. After a winter break they undertook another round of touring in the U.S. and the UK, to general acclaim, but the March 1988 single release of their cover of the Doors' "People Are Strange" drew withering reviews from the music press, with Melody Maker denouncing it as "a rancid effort".

The end of the original Echo & The Bunnymen came in March 1988. Following a Japanese tour, McCulloch announced that the band was breaking up. He hastily departed for the UK to see his father, who had just suffered two heart attacks, but he died before McCulloch arrived.

Months of speculation finally ended in September 1988 when McCulloch officially informed the other members that he was leaving the band, but Sergeant told McCulloch that he, Pattinson and de Freitas would continue working together. McCulloch departed, and later began work on his first solo album Candleland.

Reformation

In 1994, McCulloch and Sergeant began working together again under the name Electrafixion; in 1997, Pattinson rejoined the duo, meaning the three surviving members of the original Bunnymen line-up were now working together again. Rather than continue as Electrafixion, the trio resurrected the Echo & the Bunnymen name and released the album Evergreen (1997), which reached the UK Top 10.

Immediately before the release of the band's next album What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? (1999), Les Pattinson quit to take care of his mother. McCulloch and Sergeant have continued to tour and record as Echo & the Bunnymen, touring repeatedly and releasing the albums Flowers (2001), Siberia (2005), The Fountain (2009) and Meteorites (2014). The Siberia band line up was Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant, Paul Fleming (keyboards), Simon Finley (drums) and Pete Wilkinson (bass), Hugh Jones produced Siberia after previously engineering early Bunnymen albums.

Since August 2009 the group's touring incarnation has comprised McCulloch and Sergeant along with Stephen Brannan (bass), Gordy Goudie (guitar), Nicholas Kilroe (drums) and Jez Wing (keyboards).

In 2002, the group received the Q Inspiration award. The award is for inspiring "new generations of musicians, songs and music lovers in general." The band were said to be worthy winners as they have done much to promote the Mersey music scene. In a later interview for Magnet magazine, McCulloch said "It validates everything that we've tried to achieve - cool, great timeless music. It's not like an inspiration award affecting the past, it's affecting the current music."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_%26_the_Bunnymen

Enjoy this second set of original 'Zoo' recording artists post-punk/neo-psychedelic bands formed in Liverpool in 1978 - Echo & the Bunnymen!

K

==========================================================

ALL 

OR

ALL 

===========================================================

Track lists

CD1

01 Echo & the Bunnymen - The Pictures on My Wall (Original 1979 Zoo Records 7" Single Version) 2:51

02 Echo & the Bunnymen - Read It in Books (Original 1979 Zoo Records 7" Single Version) 2:59

03 Echo & the Bunnymen - Rescue 4:26

04 Echo & the Bunnymen - The Puppet 3:09

05 Echo & the Bunnymen - Do It Clean 2:45

06 Echo & the Bunnymen - Villiers Terrace 2:46

07 Echo & the Bunnymen - Over the Wall 6:01

08 Echo & the Bunnymen - A Promise 4:02

09 Echo & the Bunnymen - The Back of Love 3:14

10 Echo & the Bunnymen - The Cutter 3:53

11 Echo & the Bunnymen - Never Stop 3:31

12 Echo & the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon 5:48

13 Echo & the Bunnymen - Silver 3:19

14 Echo & the Bunnymen - Seven Seas 3:19

15 Echo & the Bunnymen - Nocturnal Me 4:57

16 Echo & the Bunnymen - Bring on the Dancing Horses 3:55

17 Echo & the Bunnymen - The Game 3:51

18 Echo & the Bunnymen - Lips Like Sugar (Original 1987 12" Mix) 6:45

19 Echo & the Bunnymen - Bedbugs & Ballyhoo 3:29

20 Echo & the Bunnymen - People Are Strange 3:38

CD2

01 Echo & the Bunnymen - Nothing Lasts Forever 3:57

02 Echo & the Bunnymen - I Want to Be There (When You Come) 3:39

03 Echo & the Bunnymen - Don't Let It Get You Down 3:52

04 Echo & the Bunnymen - Just a Touch Away 5:09

05 Echo & the Bunnymen - Rust 5:24

06 Echo & the Bunnymen - Get in the Car 4:21

07 Echo & the Bunnymen - Lost on You 4:50

08 Echo & the Bunnymen - Fools Like Us 4:04

09 Echo & the Bunnymen - Hang On to a Dream 2:24

10 Echo & the Bunnymen - It's All Over Now 3:34

11 Echo & the Bunnymen - It's Alright 3:32

12 Echo & the Bunnymen - Make Me Shine 3:53

13 Echo & the Bunnymen - Stormy Weather 4:22

14 Echo & the Bunnymen - In the Margins 5:06

15 Echo & the Bunnymen - Scissors in the Sand (Radio Edit) 3:17

16 Echo & the Bunnymen - What If We Are? 5:09

17 Echo & the Bunnymen - Think I Need It Too 3:41

18 Echo & the Bunnymen - Life of a Thousand Crimes 3:22

19 Echo & the Bunnymen - Lovers On the Run 4:45

=============================================================

=============================================================