Should Have Got It Right

Echo & The Bunnymen released their debut single The Pictures On My Wall in May 1979 on 7" vinyl, backed with Read It In Books. At the time of posting, there are three copies of the first pressing available for sale on Discogs, all outside the UK and starting at roughly £21.50 plus postage. 

My copy wasn't purchased as a switched-on 8-year old or a bargain-hunting twenty-something but as a teen in late 1985/early 1986. I bought the singles compilation Songs To Learn & Sing from my local WH Smith, a sticker on the front cover boldly proclaiming

 

"Includes bonus 7 inch

the Zoo version of

Pictures On My Wall

with Original Sleeve"

Copies are more readily available with an arguably more accessible starting price of £16.31 plus shipping, not bad for the thirteen songs in total, especially if the 12" 4-page lyric insert is still present and in good nick.

The significance of Zoo, or producers The Chameleons aka Bill Drummond and David Balfe, was lost on me at the time. I also paid little attention to co-writer "Cope" on B-side Read It In Books until the same song popped up on the Charlotte Anne EP by Julian Cope a few years later and I began to learn about the song's history and the legendary/mythical Crucial Three, comprising Ian McCulloch, Julian Cope and Pete Wylie.

The Pictures On My Wall was a cracking debut single and still hits the mark, decades later. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a video for the single, either at the time or in retrospect. However, in my internet trawl, I came across an upload of a VHS from 1984 with the same title.

The Pictures On My Wall is an odds 'n' sods compilation of montages, videos, TV appearances and live performances up to and including then-current album Ocean Rain. With a running time of just over 43 minutes, it gets off to a weird start with the title track clumsily edited/cut with follow up single Rescue and a sequence of images 'introducing' the band, the sleeves of their releases to date and other random images. The first twenty minutes are (mostly) in studio, the final five songs live at the Albert Hall in 1983.

Given the source, the upload is inevitably a bit murky and muffled in terms of visuals and sound but it's an intriguing curio and a reminder of what record companies would cobble together to extract a few more pennies from music fans also wowed by the boom of video players at home.

For more gems like this, visit Manu Guinarte on YouTube.