By touring and playing its classic albums live, Echo and the Bunnymen, along with a handful of other media-branded '80s bands, are doing more than just cashing in on the nostalgia of baby boomers or the currently in vogue surface-only fascination for music from that era.

Echo and the Bunnymen’s current tour, featuring original members Ian McCulloch on vocals and Will Sergeant on guitars, is filling a void for those fans of creative rock 'n' roll who, in spite of the unprecedented availability of music “on demand,” crave the experience of hearing a body of work. Igor Stravinsky didn’t flame out after “The Firebird.” Picasso didn’t shoot his wad after Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

So before several upcoming United Kingdom dates where the Echo and the Bunnymen will play its album Ocean Rain complete with string orchestra, the band is touring its first two classic albums Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here. Echo will perform each of those albums in their entirety this Friday night at Warehouse Live.

From the beginning, Echo and the Bunnymen's members knew they would be influential, and not just because they stole from the best, including Jacques Brel, the Velvet Underground and The Doors. They infused the music of their Merseybeat predecessors, including The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits and Gerry and the Pacemakers, with the outsider psychedelic sounds of The 13th Floor Elevators and Syd Barrett. They could groove with the tempos of punk rock and beyond thanks to original bassist Les Pattinson and drummer Pete de Freitas.

Guitarist Will Sergeant is one of post-punks underappreciated geniuses on his instrument. On Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here, you hear him moving from rhythm, to lead lines, to feedback and noise all within the course of a single song. Playing live compelled the band to expand pop forms into lengthy digressive jams. Like The Doors and other great improvising rock bands, the Bunnymen could follow McCulloch’s propensity for theatrics and quotation without losing energy or focus.

Lead singer Ian McCulloch, or “Mac” as his fans affectionately call him, is the focal point in performance. Attractive and attractively petulant — in a late 1980s interview he referred to the then-up-and-coming band U2 as “pigshit,” — McCulloch crooned, belted and occasionally screamed his lyrics over the band’s dynamic arrangements. Again, they knew what to steal, and where to run with what they had to take it to someplace new.

As McCulloch snarled on Crocodiles: “Don’t be scared when it gets loud / When your skin begins to shake / ‘Cause you don’t wanna look back / You gotta look tall / Gotta see those creeps crawl!” Images of running, perpetual energy and facing down fear are recurring lyrical themes on both Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here. On those records, McCullough’s delivery is totally committed, even when he sounds like he’s lost his mind.

In performance on the current tour, McCulloch is definitely calmer, wearing sunglasses and taking some of the steam out of his pipes thanks to his onstage chain smoking. The timbre of McCulloch’s croon and head voice is still hauntingly familiar though. Sergeant’s gently strummed guitar chords and lead licks have a hallucinatory quality and dance easily over the taut groove of the song:

The Warehouse Live audience this Friday will surely include folks who were in their teens when the Bunnymen recorded “Stars Are Stars,” and some will have their children in tow. Seeing a young kid dressed in an Echo and the Bunnymen T-shirt is a sure sign that the band and its '80s compatriots are filling a void that has been left in the wake of the information age and a disposable culture masked as “sharing.”

Or, that through point of reference, parents are turning their kids on to some pretty cool music.

Echo and the Bunnymen play Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here at Warehouse live Friday. Doors open at 8 p.m. Houston’s own The Watermarks are the opening band.