Welcome back to the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the Yank) and Tony Fletcher (the Limey) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond.

In this 29th episode we discuss not one of the first four classic albums by Liverpool legends Echo & The Bunnymen, but the troubled, eponymous fifth album. Tony actually witnessed the record’s long gestation in person while writing the band’s authorized 1987 biography Never Stop: The Echo & The Bunnymen Story, which makes Echo & The Bunnymen the first album to be featured on CROSSED CHANNELS that one of us was in the studio for. It is also perfect subject matter for Crossed Channels as it’s an album made by a British band in a British studio but with an American audience very much in mind.

Since he was present for its recording — both in subsequently-abandoned form in Liverpool with producer Gil Norton, as well as in London with eventual producer Laurie Latham - and given that he traveled with the band on their subsequent 1988 US tour for SPIN magazine, Tony has quite a bit of insider information to share during this episode. Some of it is explosive, and much of it will be new to Bunnymen fans, so this episode should be well worth the price of admission!

Released in July 1987, three years after the jaw-droppingly brilliant Ocean Rain, and nearly two years after the Latham-produced single “Bring On The Dancing Horses” signified a change in musical approach (and landed on the platinum Pretty In Pink soundtrack), Echo & The Bunnymen was the band’s most commercially successful release in the US, where the single “Lips Like Sugar” was a significant radio and dancefloor hit. In the UK, the album peaked at #4, just as Ocean Rain had done. But improved US sales aside, Echo & The Bunnymen was widely seen as a disaster.

Once considered the greatest band in the UK, Echo & The Bunnymen - whose drummer Pete de Freitas had returned to the fold after going AWOL in the USA and “totally insane” in the process - now seemed sadly adrift amid Laurie Latham’s generically “80s” pop production. Not even the presence of Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek on a remake of the beloved B-side “Bedbugs and Ballyhoo” — the band subsequently covered The Doors’ “People Are Strange” for the soundtrack of the 1987 teen horror film The Lost Boys — could re-light their fire during the recording sessions.

As always, the first 10 or so minutes of this episode are free for all to hear. To listen in entirety, along with all of our previous complete CROSSED CHANNELS episodes, just sign up for a paid subscription to one of our Substacks — or, better yet, sign up for a paid subscription to both of them! tonyfletcher.substack.com danepstein.substack.com

By doing so, you will not only get a new episode of CROSSED CHANNELS every month in your inbox, but also receive other exclusive posts from each of us, as well as full-time access to all the good stuff in our respective archives. Plus, your monthly paid subscription will allow us to afford our monthly post-recording repast over at one of our many fine (or at least decent enough) Asian eateries!

Remember — CROSSED CHANNELS, unlike most podcasts, does not take ads; we value your intelligence too highly to subject you to that sort of thing. And if you are already a paid subscriber to one or both of our Substacks, THANK YOU. We appreciate it more than you can know!

Theme music for this episode is Dan’s project The Corinthian Columns and its latest release “Hydrangea,” available on Bandcamp here.

Welcome to the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the Yank) and Tony Fletcher (the Limey) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond.

Instead of our usual format of discussing one particular artist or album, we’re trying something new for Ep. 28: each bringing three music-related topics to the table without informing the other in advance, and going wherever those topics take us. We’re calling this new format the CROSSED CHANNELS “Pick n’ Mix” — it’s like a spirited bar conversation, only without the alcohol.

So please join us and try to hang on as the conversation careens from the merits (or otherwise) of Rickenbacker guitars, to the The Rolling Stones’ most vital period, to what makes for a good live show when you’re in your 60s, and more. Tony even finally reveals the correct answer to the multiple choice question/poll that he posted on April 23 asking which Welsh band referred to Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey as "c**ts".

Also different: we’re making this Pick n’ Mix episode available to all listeners, and not just paid subscribers to Jagged Time Lapse or Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith like we usually do. While we would obviously love it if you became a paid subscriber to either of our Substacks (if you’re not already), we wanted to give everyone a full dose of CROSSED CHANNELS action, in hopes of tempting some new subscribers.

Our other entirely free episode — “Oasis: What’s The Story” from April 2024 — can be found here, while all our paid-only episodes can be found here. They are many, they are varied (The Jam, Replacements, Kate Bush, Otis Redding, Blondie, & Parliament just some of our previous 27 subject matters), they all home in on a specific album or period, and dare we say it, but we think they are a cut above.

In addition, we’re putting a different sonic spin on this episode of CROSSED CHANNELS by studding it with snippets of tracks from our current musical outfits — Dan’s solo project The Corinthian Columns and Tony’s band The Dear Boys.

And finally, since we also talk in this episode about legendary recording sessions we would have loved to be flies on the wall for, we were wondering: which would be the one recording session you wish you could have attended? Feel free to leave your answer in the comments section of our Substack pages, which — like the rest of this episode — is open to all. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — a.k.a. the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the Yank) and Tony Fletcher (the Limey) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond.

This episode (our 27th!) focuses on an album from an artist we’ve wanted to discuss for ages: the legendary funk maestro George Clinton. The main reason we haven’t covered the good Dr. Funkenstein on the podcast before now is that the sheer breadth and brilliance of his six-decade discography made it difficult to decide how to approach it.

Ultimately, we decided to hitch a ride on Mothership Connection, Parliament’s 1975 commercial breakthrough. The record not only gave Clinton his first million-selling LP — and his first million-selling single with “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)” — but also introduced the first characters and storylines of the interplanetary Afrofuturist sagas that would dominate P-Funk’s albums and live shows over the rest of the decade.

In this episode of CROSSED CHANNELS, Dan and Tony discuss why Mothership Connection was the album that finally brought George Clinton mainstream US success after over a decade of funking on the margins. But we also talk about why the album failed to catch on overseas, and why it would take a few more years before Clinton actually landed on the UK charts.

And in addition to getting into the years and musical milestones leading up to the Mothership’s initial landing, we also touch upon Clinton and P-Funk’s widespread influence.

To hear this episode in its entirety, along with all of our previous complete CROSSED CHANNELS episodes, just sign up for a paid subscription to one of our Substacks — or, better yet, sign up for both of them! Dan Epstein (the Yank) and Tony Fletcher (the Limey)

By doing so, you will not only get CROSSED CHANNELS every month, but other exclusive posts from each of us, and full-time access to all the good stuff in our respective archives. Plus, your monthly paid subscription will allow us to afford our monthly post-recording repast over at one of our many fine (or at least passable) Asian eateries!

And remember, CROSSED CHANNELS, unlike most podcasts, does not take ads: we value your intelligence too highly to subject you to that sort of thing.