About three or four weeks ago, following an evening that had included some wine, I was doomscrolling Instagram and saw an ad for Echo and the Bunnymen with Warpaint at the Greek (Los Angeles).
In the moment this sounded like an excellent way to spend an evening, and so I clicked, found a pair of seats in the second row, and thought, “Score! Killer date night.” without really thinking about it.
The next day when I saw my receipt, I started thinking about it a little more. Echo and the Bunnymen were unquestionably one of the most influential forces of the British Post Punk movement, but have a long standing reputation for hit and miss shows, and history of contentious relations with each other, their collaborators, and fans. While I definitely like more than a few of their songs, I am also much more of a casual fan. Meaning there are about 10 songs I really like and know the words to.
In the act of reminding myself a little more about them I came across an article where Bill Drummond, former manager and co-producer of their first album, described his time with Echo and the Bunnymen as,
“Lies, deceit, hatred, hotel floors, cocaine dealers, transit vans, acid trips, broken amplifiers, American girls, service stations, loss of innocence, corrupt road crews, missed opportunities, vanity, broken promises, shit gigs, bad sex, crap mixes, late VAT returns, petulance, incompetence, petty rivalry and Pete de Freitas dying.”
So my impulse purchase to go see volatile, aging, used to be rockstars suddenly seemed… questionable.
Weekends in June tend to be pretty full. This one was no exception, and I considered selling the tickets, but my wife was up for it so we decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope for the best. Besides, we were curious to see Warpaint.
If you’ve never been to the Greek, it’s a relatively small amphitheater in the middle of Griffith Park. If you’ve ever been to Griffith Park, you know that parking can be exceptionally challenging, particularly for the Observatory and Greek theatre. Parking at the venue is stacked, expensive ($40-125), and a traffic nightmare to get into and out of. So much so that it’s not uncommon to see people running to their cars after shows in order to beat the mess.
The best option for parking at the Greek though is also the cheapest and easiest. The remote shuttle is $10 round trip from a dirt parking lot just off the 5 between the Zoo and Los Feliz. The shuttle takes about 15 minutes and uses residential roads into the park that are closed to non-residents and so,… no traffic, no nightmare. There were at least four shuttles running and while we might have gotten lucky with our timing, we didn’t wait at all boarding either before or after.
While there is food at the Greek, it is both expensive and really bad. The Greek is not the Hollywood Bowl. High school cafeterias have better food. I highly recommend an early dinner in one of the excellent restaurants in Los Feliz, or maybe the Arts District before heading to a show.
Warpaint are a Los Angeles-based, all-female indie-rock band in 2004 by Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman, Jenny Lee Lindberg and her sister actress Shannyn Sossamon. Sossamon left in 2007 and was later replaced on drums by Stella Mozgawa. They have an ethereal sound described as dark dream pop. To me there music has a late 90’s early 2000’s vibe with a bass guitar that reminds me of late The Cure ala Disintegration with a touch of New Order, and the melodic alt guitars reminscent of the jangly Dream Pop of early 90’s bands like the Trash Can Sinatras, and The Ocean Blue.
The combination of the women’s harmonizing of vocals is nice and while some of the songs hit what I think is an intentionally discordant set of notes, for the most part I liked them. They were fun live, but played a too short set.
Warpaint started promptly at 8, played just seven songs and were off.
My favorite song of theirs is “New Song”, and their current single is “Butterfly”.
At 9:20ish, Echo and the Bunnymen took the stage and… well… were to begin.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show quite like that. While they played 18-19 songs, (there is a question on the setlist), it seemed short, and was kind of weird, and not in a good way.
The edgy, post-punk music of Echo and the Bunnymen has often been described as dark, gloomy, and psychedelic, with some of the band’s cited influences being Lou Reed, The Doors, and David Bowie. This was very much reflected in the staging with lots of smoke and mist and the projected background of a dark forest. This combined with some nice lighting effects created exactly that kind of mood.
As the show went on though, I noticed that the large video screens to either side of the stage weren’t being used at all except to show a large red Bunnyman graphic.
McCulloch, who wore dark sunglasses all night, avoided being hit with lights like a vampire avoiding the sunlight. At one point even calling for the spots not to be on him, which were immediately cut.
It became obvious that Ian doesn’t really want to be seen, or at least not well. Which when you go to a “show”, is kind of disappointing, particularly if you are further back and all you can see are some dark shadows moving in a multi-colored mist.
Having had the benefit of proximity, I can kind of see why. While McCulloch looks a lot better than a lot of other 65 year olds I know, he also looks exactly like what you might imagine a 65 year old post punk rock and roller who lived that lifestyle would. Rough.
And unfortunately Ian sounded the same way, rough and raspy. McCulloch, known for his powerfully epic vocals, sounded very hoarse, and struggled to hit many of the notes that make so many of their songs what they are.
My wife and I both wondered if Ian were sick. He repeatedly wiped his mouth and nose on his sleeves during the performance and there was a box of tissues on a table next to a myriad of beverages that were apparently all his, and that he visited frequently.
Visit’s which quite frankly were odd to watch. Every band I’ve ever seen has their fair share of beverages at hand, be it water, whiskey, or beer, but Ian seemed to have a whole apothecary station set up. Which, during the bridge of every song he would go over to, and then go through a ritual of appearing to be confused and deciding, “Which of these many things do I want to drink,” before seeming to find the thing he was looking for and repeating the exact same order of whiskey, chaser, and something that looked like milk?. Meanwhile the band would stretch the bridge or play a solo until the ritual was concluded and Ian was ready to continue.
In fairness the whiskey at least seemed to help his voice temporarily, and McCulloch is known to have OCD so maybe this was part of that.
He also didn’t really engage with the audience or the other members of the band much. When he did speak, whatever combination of drugs and alcohol was on the menu, combined with a thick Liverpudlian accent, made him largely unintelligible to most of the people in the audience. Anytime he spoke, the people around me would turn to each other and ask “What did he say?” Eventually, it became a bit of a joke.
McCulloch’s voice and oddity aside, the band sounded absolutely fantastic.
As represented by the altered graphic for Songs to Learn and Sing that is being used as the promo for the tour, McCulloch and Will Sergeant are the only original members still left.
In contrast to McCulloch’s somewhat cadaverous appearance and erratic manner, Sergeant seemed comfortable in his age, and was on point with his playing.
Seeing music live often provides the opportunity to highlight the mastery of the musicians who are otherwise often somewhat anonymous in the many layers of production. This was no exception. 30 years on, I’ve a new awareness of, and appreciation for Sergeant’s guitar work in Echo’s songs. The influences of the Blues in-particular were far more apparent live.
A few songs into the set those influences made themselves manifest when “Villiers Terrace” transitioned into the Doors “Roadhouse Blues” and then fragmented further into something that was definitely Bowie, and generally agreed upon to have been “Dream Jeanie”.
At this point McCulloch’s voice either seemed to be a little more warmed up or is just particularly well suited to the “Roadhouse Blues” because it sounded great and in those moments McCulloch and Sergeant were definitely in sync and it began to feel like a real show. This was followed by “Never Stop” and “Bring on the Dancing Horses”, during both of which McCulloch sounded good, if not great.
Then quite suddenly, having played less than 40 minutes and 10 songs (I thought it was maybe six but have been since corrected), with only a few that the audience really knew and would have wanted to Learn and Sing, they stopped. McCulloch began mumbling something about that being the first half done, and “….needing a piss and to have a cup of tea”, the house lights came up and they walked off.
What? No literally, what?
People were confused and more than few them said, “Fuck this.” and left. Unsure of what was happening my wife and I also considered calling it a night.
10-15 minutes later they turned the lights back off, the band came back out, and picked up again. Hey I guess if you need to go you need to go, but I’ve never seen a band break before they’ve even got going. As weird as it was, and it was definitely weird, whatever ghoul juice McCulloch was guzzling in his “tea” seemed to work, because he sounded better after the break.
His voice was still kind of rough and raspy, and struggled to hit some of those more epic notes that made his vocals so incredibly powerful back in the day, but the raspy seemed to work and he was hitting more of those notes and/or strategically calling for the audience the sing along on the choruses he perhaps knew better than to try.
The second half had both the better songs, and the better energy. Although there was still very little in the way of a “show” or audience interaction, they played all my favorites, McCulloch sounded ok, and the band, particularly Sergeant, sounded great. The highlight of the set and of the evening was, “The Killing Moon”, on which McCulloch sounded his best of the night (but still 20 years from his prime).
If Echo and the Bunnymen are one of those bands that are on your bucket list, then seeing them sooner is likely your last opportunity to see them and have any hope of a halfway decent experience. Having looked at some of the reviews from the others shows, the set list below is the one you’re going to get (plus, or minus) and the performance, such as it is, will be subdued, with the quality really dependent on the mercurial McCulloch.
Set List
9:20ish First Set
- Going Up
- All That Jazz
- Flowers
- Rescue
- All my Colours (Zimbo)
- Villiers Terrace / Roadhouse Blues / Dream Jeanie
- Never Stop
- Bring on the Dancing Horses
10-15 minute break
Second Set
- Show of Strength
- Over the Wall
- Seven Seas
- Nothing Lasts Forever / The Fountain/Sweet Jane / Take a Walk on the Wild Side
- Heads Will Roll
- Bedbugs and Ballyhoo
- The Killing Moon
- The Cutter
Encore
- Lips Like Sugar
- Ocean Rain
Wrapped just before 11
