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Echo and the Bunnymen are touring this summer performing Ocean Rain in its entirety with a full orchestra. I like Ocean Rain, but having seen them numerous times, I wish they would lay off performing their early back catalog. Their four post 2000 albums, starting with What are You Going to Do with Your Life are, are, in my opinion, better. Every time they tour behind a new album – the excellent Siberia being the most recent, they are actually touring behind Songs to Learn and Sing with a few new tracks tossed in. I will gladly never listen to “The Cutter” again as long as I get to hear far superior and less played-out tracks like “Stormy Weather”, “What if we are?”, “Rust”, or “Baby Rain”.
As annoying as Echo & the Bunnymen are on favoring their early halcyon days when touring, they have nothing on The Psychedelic Furs. The Furs are all old hits and no new material. Some 7 years ago I heard a new Furs song live “Once in My Life” and was stunned. It was definitely the highlight of the set and had me going to numerous Furs shows since hoping for new material. I always leave disappointed – no new songs and I haven’t even heard them play “Once in My Life” since. (Now that I think about it, I think I have a recording of that one time they played it, which is the first show I ever recorded. I will see if I can dredge it up sometime.)
Richard Butler is far too good of a song writer to be perpetually rehashing old Furs songs, so I was pleased that Richard Butler released and toured behind a solo album in 2006. Here is a video of Richard Butler performing “Sentimental Airlines” off of his self-titled solo album at Maxwells….and no, he didn’t play “Once in My Life” but he did play several expected Furs songs just to piss me off.
Since the sound in the video isn’t stellar, I posted the mp3 as well.
Download: Richard Butler – Sentimental Airlines (Live Video)
[audio: http://thesoundofindie.com/archive/2008/20080502/RB-SentimentalAirlines.mp3|titles=Sentimental Airlines (Live)|artists=Richard Butler]
Download: Richard Butler – Sentimental Airlines (Live Audio)
if there ever was a band who needed to put out a new album, it’s the Furs. Besides “Alive(for once in my lifetime)” which showed up on the Beautiful Chaos live cd in a live and also studio version, they’ve done a couple of new songs over the years…”Wrong Train” coming to mind. An old Furs fansite had a boatload of live, unreleased tracks by them…but all in Realaudio or something …Don’t forget the Love Spit Love albums. Those were 2 sadly overlooked by the public albums.
Yeah, those Love Spit Love records were quite good. I have a live LSL show from 94 somewhere I will have to go looking for it.
I would be first in line for a Love Spit Love and Electrifixion reunion tour. Coachella bookers, if you are out there, take note and get to it!
If you could post the live LSL sometime, that would be sweet.
I’m all for more recent songs in the Bunnymen setlist…