Echo and the Bunnymen
Live at Moseley Folk Festival, Birmingham,
31st of August, 2012
I have a theory that the pop music that
meant most to us when we were in the first bloom of youth becomes a kind of
gold standard by which we judge all subsequent music. Even bad music that was
popular in our late teens and early twenties has a special place because of its
power to evoke memories through association -- but good pop music that formed the soundtrack of our lives as we came
of age is sublimely potent.
So it is that Echo and the Bunnymen, formed
in 1978 (when I was 17), released one of my most treasured LPs Heaven Up Here (when I was 20) and the monumental
Ocean Rain (two days before my 23rd
birthday.) When the 51-year-old me heard the Bunnymen were headlining the
Moseley Folk Festival on the last day of summer, it felt like too good an
opportunity to miss.
The 80s post-punk sound of the Bunnymen is
stretching the definition of ‘folk’ beyond credulity and, in fact, there seemed
to be precious little folk music at the Moseley Folk Festival but there were a
fair few artists playing acoustic instruments -- particularly on the Bohemian
stage. If the migraine-inducing poor man's disco lighting of the Bohemian stage
left a lot to be desired, at least the sound engineer consistently got the best
out of a mixed bag of performers. Among these, I was delighted to see those old
favourites of this blog, One Sixth of Tommy (see the entry for Monday, 29 August 2011). As ever, they sang and
played beautifully but I was dismayed to hear them announce this was to be
their last gig. So it was left to the Bunnymen
to make my soul soar again. One highlight for me was All My Colours (Zimbo) which took me
right back to 1981. Front man Ian McCulloch will never succeed as a health promotion
worker: where other singers sip mineral
water between songs he just goes on lighting up one cigarette after another. In
fact, since the smoking ban in pubs, it comes as a shock to see so many people smoking so many cigarettes. At least I could use
my inhaler to keep asthma attacks at bay whereas there was nothing that the
many children under three could do to protect their hearing. Despite changeable
weather and thoughtless parents of young children, that first day of the festival
was worth the trip. Seeing Echo and the Bunnymen live, as they scythed their
way through a magnificent version of The Cutter,
I was once again in heaven up there.
