Bucketlist Item Check - Seeing LUSH Live! :: The Vic Theatre, Chicago :: September 18, 2016

A few of the images I captured from the Lush gig at The Vic Theatre in Chicago, September 18, 2016.

Don't forget to follow LUSHapalooza on Facebook!

Happy Birthday Phil!

Look who's birthday it is - hope you've had a Happy one Phil!

'Select' :: May 1996

Twenty years ago - Emma and Miki, in the pages of Select magazine, published on the eve of their 1996 North American tour. 

"I do have a real problem writing songs about stuff that I'm right in the middle of actually... John used to get pissed off that I never wrote any songs about him, but I used to say, "Well you know all the songs I write about people are really horrible!'" -Miki

Want to read the entire article? Pop over here for the full electronic version - www.lightfromadeadstar.org/

Miki and Phil on Recording 'Blind Spot'

This from Lush's own site:

Lush have announced details of the release of the Blind Spot EP on Friday 15th April 2016 on their own Edamame Records.

Talking about the recording of the EP, Miki Berenyi commented:

 

"It certainly took sometime to come together, but once we were in the studio, everything came together incredibly quickly. It was great fun!
It's been a long time since I've written Lush lyrics, and I realised early on with this EP that what I wrote about then is not what I feel comfortable writing about now. My perspective, and what is close to my heart, has changed, and I think that's conveyed in the songs."

Bassist Phil King added:

"I know I’m biased, but I work for a music magazine and so much of the music I hear played in the office sounds non-descript or derivative. Emma has this way of writing unusual chord changes and manages to weave lovely melodies over the top, and it immediately sounds distinctive, like Lush."

Miki, Emma & Phil - New Photos for a New Year

A big Thank You goes out to the Lush Appreciation Society for sharing these new photos. https://www.facebook.com/lushappreciationsociety/

New LUSH Press Shot

It's been a long time coming! The first new Lush press shot in 20 years - taken by photographer Gabriel Green.

Happy New Year's from Phil, Miki & Emma

From Emma, Miki and Phil, and of course us here at LUSHapalooza

Happy New Year -

See you all in 2016!

LUSH Interview :: The Guardian

LUSH in The Guardian:

Lush reunited: ‘We were seen as a band who’d turn up to the opening of a packet of crisps’

Ethereal, angelic shoegazers or boozy scenesters? Seventeen years after they split up, Lush talk about their legacy – and why they have reformed

"Drinking red wine on a couch in a London hotel library for their first joint interview in 19 years, Lush are still excellent company. Berenyi, instantly recognisable even though her distinctive shocking-pink 90s hair is now ink-black, gets told off for vaping indoors. Co-frontman Emma Anderson wages a war of nerves with a passive-aggressive desk clerk who keeps silently opening the library door. Silver-haired bassist Phil King regularly interjects with wry, elegant anecdotes, like an indie Peter Ustinov."

Follow the link for more.

LUSH @ Heathrow Airport

The photo booth series appeared in the May 1992 issue of Select Magazine. Can you guess each letter?

Scroll down for the answers...

Answers: A, B, C - D, E, F - G, H, I - J, K, L

The Making of 'Hypocrite'

I love sharing all these fresh new posts that keep coming straight from the band! Today they're talking about the making of the 'Hypocrite' video (one of my personal faves).

. . .

Miki: 'Chris LOVED making this video! So sweet to see him laughing and being his lovely happy self. I remember going on the Octopus ride with Phil and they ran it backwards and forwards and it went on and on and what started with riotous hilarity ended with both of us having one hand clamped over our mouths and the other frantically waving in the air desperately trying to get the bloke to STOP!!! '

Phil: 'I remember that before we decided on getting Matthew Amos to direct this we met up for lunch in Notting Hill with a now famous French film director who was making pop promos at the time. Chris nicknamed him 'consumptive child' as he looked very pale and sat throughout the meal in silence while his manager did all the talking. The concept was us floating around a haunted house. It would need to filmed in a pool on a Hollywood soundstage. “100,000” his manager told us. “Pounds or dollars” asked our manager. “Pounds” he replied. Meal over. Think PJ Harvey ended up doing it in the end. We instead decided to hire a funfair near Heathrow Airport for the day and shot the video there for half the price. A bargain...um.'

Emma: 'I don’t remember a massive amount about it except them trying to create that effect where the camera and the subject is moving unnervingly toward/away at the same time..they do it using the camera on a track and the subject (us individually) on the same track with both moving at the same time. It wasn’t a massive success.
Wasn’t there also an extra who was also in Eastenders?'

Phil: ' I do remember seeing one extra (old bloke looking miserable) all the time afterwards in Marylebone library’.

LUSH - Control Freaks

Well what's all this then?? It's a bit of a filler piece that was shown on Channel 4 around 1996-ish during the holidays. But what makes this unique is that the 4-minute show features the one, the only Phil, Miki, Emma and Chris - aka LUSH. Aren't they all a wonderful lot? So there's  no music from the band, no interviews either, however as the uploader keenly points out: "...but it's rather charming in a lo-fi kinda way." And that's something that every true Lushhead can appreciate. Cheers and Long Live Rock!

(follow the link, web-sharing disabled) https://youtu.be/fKMah99Z8ro

'Nothing Natural' & Pyramids Centre 24th Anniversaries

It was 24 short years ago today...

October 29th, 1991 'Nothing Natural' was released as a maxi-single disc. It had peaked at number 43 on the UK Singles Chart. The EP was followed by a national British tour, during which time bassist Steve Rippon left the band and was replaced by Phil King. 

Incidentally, on the same day, 100's of screaming kids - the 29th of October - The Pyramids Centre, Portsmouth - LUSH is there to play. With the opening acts of Passing Clouds and Gallon Drunk on a two-leg UK tour debuting the songs from the just released Black Spring EP.

Reflecting on the music video, Miki said it was "an effing nightmare" and that the video's director had "some ludicrous idea of what he wanted [Lush] to look/act like in the video and it was nothing to do with how [the band was]." Miki further explained that the band went along with the director's suggestion as Lush "had no ideas of [their] own at all, and back in the [19]90s the solution was to offer directors a shitload of money to come up with something fabulous that MTV would play." According to Berenyi, Nirvana vocalist and guitarist Kurt Cobain became a Lush fan after seeing the music video.

'Nothing Natural' - 'official' promo video

'Nothing Natural'- live at Toad's Place, New Haven, CT - March 23, 1992

Photo of the Day - Rehearsal VII

Phil, Miki and Emma.... Together again!

LUSH's Photo of the Day

From the band's stream today, and if I'm not mistaken this is a wonderful outtake photo of Phil apparently from the same shoot done for the album art on the 'Split' LP and it's EP's.

So Many Songs

Phil's share today, with his comment 'So many songs, what to do?'

Phil's Vapour Trail Interview

New interview with Phil on Vapour Trail Blog-"Lush, the final piece in the shoegazing jigsaw are back and would 'like to get back in the studio'".

'"We've wanted to reform for a few years", Phil said. "It was more that we've all got families and jobs", denying that the Lush reformation was the band's way of riding the crest of the zeitgeit. "And also its 20 years, next year, since we split up, so it's a nice round number". At the moment, Lush have only got June's roundhouse dates chalked up, but King insists that they're just sorting out some more dates for a wider tour, as well as festival appearances.'

'The biggest revelation of our small conversation was that Lush certainly have a desire to get back in the studio, and put out new material, which is something that MBV did extremely successfully a couple of years back, although you'd maybe like to hope it'll take a bit less than five years of being back together to produce some songs. "If we can find time, we'd certainly like to" says King, which is something which is pretty exciting, especially seeing as the band's members have all stayed in music just a little bit since the band's break up, King especially keeping his noise-cred high being a full time touring member of the Jesus and Mary Chain...'

And there you have it, there will be more touring to come and the desire to record new songs... after the details get worked out. 2016 will be the Year of Lush!

LUSH's Photo of the Day

Photo shared by the band today on Facebook. I don't believe this one has been made public before.

Phil on Shooting 'For Love'

From Facebook - Phil shares his first experience shooting a video as the newest band mate:

"The first video I did with Lush. Don't think I even knew the bass line at this point. The bass - a white Squier Precision - belonged to Emma, guitar nerds - and the leather jacket I wore had previously belonged to Douglas Hart from The Jesus And Mary Chain. The big selling point for the video was that the director was Winona Ryder's cousin. It cost £30,000. My memory was of him constantly disappearing off with our manager. Can't think what they were doing. Our manager's thinking was that somehow this video would help us get MTV Buzz Binned - or something. It did get us on MTV 120 Minutes. The video was shot up on York Way in Kings Cross in the Christmas break of 1992 in a warehouse. I remember it being a long cold walk from Kings Cross station. I still cycle by the location occasionally. Much pouting ensued on the video shoot - mostly by me it seems by the look of it. After having done my close ups Miki said rather witheringly, "you're not as good looking as you think, you know". Oof!"

LUSH by Kevin Cummins

This off of Kevin Cummins' Twitter feed via Phil's Facebook status. The internet is a wonderful thing...

https://mobile.twitter.com/KCMANC/status/651739864724062208

LUSH – A Video Retrospective With Miki Berenyi

Andy over at the Von Pip Express has posted a new interview with Miki discussing all the juicy behind the scenes lore of Lush's music videos.

Miki also has something to say about Lush's reformation (I never get tired of seeing those two words together):

"‘Hey, ‘ if financial constraints and time were not an issue I’d be on my 10th LP and recording a Greatest Hits compilation with the Royal Philharmonic by now. I would love to make music again, but it’s precisely those things that are stopping me!"  – Miki Berenyi (Lush) -2008 

Thanks Andy and Miki!

http://www.thevpme.com/2015/09/29/lush-videosmikib/