V.A. Saturday

In 1982 Bill Drummond and Mick Houghton compiled an album called To The Shores Of Lake Placid, a various artists compilation rounding up releases by on the Zoo label. Bill set up Zoo in 1978, initially to put out a single by Liverpool punk group Big In Japan (the band Drummond played guitar in along with at various times Jayne Casey, Ian Broudie, Holly Johnson, Dave Balfe, Budgie and Clive Langer among others). The Big In Japan single was a four track EP, From Y To Z And Never Again- the song Suicide A Go Go appeared on To The Shore Of Lake Placid along with Society For Cutting Up Men. 

To The Shores Of Lake Placid is a round up of some of what was going on in Liverpool between 1978 and 1982. A clutch of lesser known, semi- legendary Zoo groups are all present- Whopper, Troy Tate's The Turqoise Swimming Pools, Birkenhead's Dalek (I Love You) and Those Naughty Lumps whose song Iggy Pop's Jacket Bill Drummond plays guitar on. 

Lori And The Chameleons, a short lived Bill Drummond and Dave Balfe outfit with singer Lori Lartey, are there twice, with Lonely Spy and this one, Touch, a lovely piece of late 70s disco- pop...

Touch

The Teardrop Explodes and Echo And The Bunnymen both show up, each represented by three early classics (the Bunnymen with Pictures On My Wall, their Julian Cope co- write Read It In Books and live favourite Villiers Terrace, The Teardrops by When I Dream, Camera, Camera and Take A Chance). 

My mp3s of the original versions of Read It Books and Pictures On My Wall, the ones from Lake Placid with Echo the drum machine keeping time, are corrupted and won't play. This version of  Read It In Books is from a session at Rockfield with The Chameleons producing, and was added to the U.S. release of Crocodiles. 

Read It In Books

A few years later Echo And The Bunnymen would be huge. In 1984 they released 'the greatest album ever made' (to quote Ian McCulloch), Ocean Rain. Drummond gave the Bunnymen something else as manager, something out of the ordinary. On 12th May 1984 there was a Crsytal Day, a day of activites in and around Liverpool city centre- breakfast in a greasy spoon, a bike ride that traced the outline of the head of the bunny god, a ferry trip across the Mersey and a banana fight. In the evening the band played at St. George's Hall, the neo- classical building opposite Liverpool Lime Street station, visible in the centre of my photo above, taken from the viewing platform at St John's Beacon. The gig was filmed and transmitted on The Tube, a tea time treat.

Bill's adventures as the Bunnymen's manager came to end not long after and in some ways they were never the same without him, professional record company management taking over and the operation losing the madness of Bill's days- the tours of Scottish islands, gigs on ley lines, post- punk bicycle rides. In his book 45 Bill details his time as their manager in a chapter called From The Shores Of Lake Placid, a book written and published for his 45th birthday and also the revolutions per minute of the ultimate pop culture artefact, the 7" single.