Echo and the Bunnymen • Shine So Hard (1981)

Shine So Hard is an abstract and fragmentary (*) short film made in 1981, As the post-punk band Echo and the Bunnymen had concluded the tour promoting their debut album “Crocodiles”, Bill Drummond, their manager, hatched a plan for a one-off gig on 17th January 1981. It was to be a special event, a mystery show. The venue, at first a secret location was, in fact, the Victorian concert hall at the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton, a quiet spa town in Derbyshire’s picturesque Peak District. “Shine So Hard” documents the event, what Ian Pye of the Melody Maker described as ‘A Coppola inspired vision of Armageddon’. The film was released on the 13th of August 1981. It was premiered at London’s ICA and screened for two weeks there and elsewhere in the UK. (*) The book drummer Pete de Freitas is reading, is Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”.