Another hopeless eighties video showing that the encroaching music biz monster is always on the periphery, ready to pounce and do its best to make something great, not so great. An awful, faux Duran Duran video clip embarrassing the singer, desperately trying to find a reason to include the uncomfortable band members, using amateurish lighting, the wrong focus, a failure to capture mood and the wrong props. No mystery, no understanding of the song, no understanding of the band and made by someone with too much money and not enough ideas. Probably at the beckoning of a record company executive that saw dollars in the band because the previous album had reached No.2 in the UK charts, but failing to consider longevity and the glorious artiness and the combined strengths of these four magical musicians brimming over with ideas, connected by a perfect musical chemistry.

What a waste – it looks like all the money must have gone into the catering because the cardboard moon in its clumsy orbit succeeds in turning a wonderful song into a meaningless advertisement for mediocrity in video making – it should get an award for the most ruined beautiful thing.

Echo And The Bunnymen are a recognised Liverpool great and The Killing Moon was a peak of sorts – a creative breakthrough and an evolution. From cult stars on their debut Crocodiles (1980) to the stark accessibility of Heaven Up Here (1981), dark hit makers on their third album Porcupine (1983), they arrived at the classy masterpiece, Ocean Rain (1984). Softer more considered, at times spectacularly self-indulgent, poetic and simply beautiful tunes shrouded behind the dark curtain that conceals Ian McCulloch’s distinctive voice.

A week of posts about Liverpool bands that mostly didn’t quite make it into the public consciousness draws to a close with a band that briefly did. A stunning example of accessibility that can simultaneously lurk in the shadows. Although the band continue with Will Sergeant and McCulloch as original members, it was the power of Les Pattinson’s driving plectrum bass twang and Pete de Freitas’ thunderous original drumming that made them the force they were. Pete de Freitas caused avalanches, unstoppable deadly beats that placed him high on the list of memorable creative drummers, drum beats that were key to a song, without him the songwriting was only three-quarters complete. Tragically he died in a motorbike accident in 1989.

Although the band carried on to make one more album with de Frietas the band split, reformed with a different singer, split and reformed again until eventually Pattinson was gone for good upsetting the balance and leaving a legacy of starlit nights and skies all hung with jewels.

Under blue moon I saw you
So soon you’ll take me
Up in your arms
Too late to beg you or cancel it
Though I know it must be the killing time
Unwillingly mine

Fate
Up against your will
Through the thick and thin
He will wait until
You give yourself to him

In starlit nights I saw you
So cruelly you kissed me
Your lips a magic world
Your sky all hung with jewels
The killing moon
Will come too soon

Fate
Up against your will
Through the thick and thin
He will wait until
You give yourself to him

Under blue moon I saw you
So soon you’ll take me
Up in your arms
Too late to beg you or cancel it
Though I know it must be the killing time
Unwillingly mine

Fate
Up against your will
Through the thick and thin
He will wait until
You give yourself to him

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_%26_the_Bunnymen