Simple Minds, classic or dud?

i might youtube some stuff tomorrow, but i'm a little afraid to...

hey i liked some of that new OMD anyway.

just mr. ex-chrissie hynde and lots of session people for a lot of later stuff.

that's what did these guys in. i gave up after reviewing Real Life w/o enthusiasm.

early stuff like "I Travel" has aged v well.

I still like "Don't You Forget About Me" more than most people seem to, tho it obviously isn't a patch on their earlier work. It was "Belfast Child" that nailed down the coffin and posted it to the moon imo

but, jeez, listening to empires and dance tonight, that always sounds so amazing to me. everything from that first line-up 79 to 81. i love it. 3 years! that's nothing now. they made 4 amazing albums in that time after life in a day.

Yeah it's a pretty astonishing run as much for how they so effortlessly switch up their sound each time and remain so good. Of the albums from Reel To Real.. to New Gold Dream I can never decide whether Sons & Fascination/Sister Feelings Call are ever so slightly lesser or actually secretly the most interesting, and that's probably the SM I've listened to most in the past couple of years, it's like a puzzle.

One thing that interests me and I don't know much about is whether and how the band was responding to currents around them. I mean obv Reel To Real... is their experimental electronic post-punk record and as unprecedented as it sounds to me I can get why they were interested in making a record like that. But what provoked the shift to an even more electronic, pseudo-discoid sound on Empires and Dance? What were they listening to? And if they were really into disco or whatever, why did they suddenly switch to elaborate art rock less than year later? And if they were really into elaborate art rock, why the switch to synth pop less than a year after that? Were they just following their own muse, or was this reflective of micro-movements in trends that have (apart from the general notion of post-punk --> new pop) now been submerged? I wouldn't know.

it's a mystery! i would like to read some interviews from that time. were they huge krautrock fans? Empires and Dance has that vibe. Hunters & Collectors tried the krautrock thing around the same time with Conny Plank, but the results were nowhere near as good.

we know for sure that they were big Roxy fans. Big Bowie fans. Big Magazine fans. They had to have been big Ultravox fans. Ultravox mach one. Empires definitely has the Factory vibe as well, so we can assume that they were aware of and listening to Joy Division.

okay, looking over their wikipedia page - which is actually fairly comprehensive and well-written - this is interesting:

"The next album, Empires and Dance, was another stylistic departure, and signalled the influence of Kraftwerk, Neu! and similar European artists on the band. During this period of their career Simple Minds promoted themselves as being a European band, rather than Scottish or British."

I don't know HOW they promoted themselves as "European" exactly, but it makes sense. The album covers. The song titles. The whole aesthetic. They were loving the German thing.

Recently, I listened to a radio Scotland interview with Kerr around '84 or so, maybe earlier, just as Sparkle was coming out and they had just done a short UK tour and I was surprised at how crazed and preachy he sounded, albeit in an amusing way. But he was talking about music in really similar terms to how Bono did back then.
I'm certain something did happen just prior to NGD, enough to make them junk the European Guy schtick and move wholeheartedly towards The Big Music, which was more fashionable, arguably more in keeping with their roots and much more potentially profitable. They also had Mel Gaynor by this point, a big loud, capable rock drummer.

Oh yeah, if you were still doing plink-plonk barely melodic stuff in 1984, you were doing it wrong. Anthems is where the money was.

I'm certain something did happen just prior to NGD, enough to make them junk the European Guy schtick and move wholeheartedly towards The Big Music

Jim Kerr met Bono

Yeah but for all that the songs are 'bigger' and more straightforward 'new gold dream' actually sounds less like U2 than 'sons and fascination' does. That's what I find interesting about the band's early career: all the reversals.

Maybe we shouldn't have cashed in

Nice fauxhawk there, Jim.

OMG that haircut he looks like a hungover monk

Good article anyway. Classic older-but-wiser moves. M. I always love that 'total hamburger music' story you tell upthread.

oh yeah - even though I still have a soft spot for "don't you forget about me" this all sounds promising.

I have the X5 box set on it's way, looking forward to the bonus tracks and the full immersion!

There was an interview in the Quietus the other day too:

http://thequietus.com/articles/08040-simple-minds-jim-kerr-interview-5x5

2 revived threads one common love.

"I was like [he puts his head in his hands and groans]: 'We're the Boomtown Rats! This is fucked!'"

i would like to assume that bob had that happen at some point.

haha!

I remember being quite impressed when I heard Empires And Dance for the first time. It was definitely a bit of an eye-opening experience because up until that point I'd only heard the big hits from the "stadium rock" years. I also like how that cover is blatantly where the Manic Street Preachers nicked the font from for the artwork to The Holy Bible.

Still don't understand why Once Upon A Time gets more grief than Joshua Tree, for example

This band was 1000000x times more interesting than Brian En...sorry U2

I'd understand if you're debating both albums song by song, but just because Rolling Stone and Q writers thought U2 did the arena thing better doesn't negate the fact that everyone else (pretty much) prefers the early stuff of both bands anyway...and Simple Minds' early stuff is leagues above U2's

I know exactly three Simple Minds songs: "Don't You Forget About Me" "All the Things She Said" and "Alive and Kicking." And I'm having a really hard time picturing this same band in arty Radiohead mode. This thread has piqued my curiosity and I'm checking this Reel to Real Cacophony out. Should I start there or with New Gold Dream?

I had to go back and listen and see whether I thought this description and praise of "Promised You a Miracle" from the Quietus article was overstated:

'Promised You A Miracle' for all its accessibility and retrospective familiarity is as far a cry from the preset patterns of regular pop as can be imagined. It teeters arrhythmically, glitters and starts, breaks out in distant showers of tinsel and manna. It conjures not just possibilities for a better pop but a better life, to which music could act as some sort of wormhole.

And indeed after doing so, I don't think that it is. Extraordinary record.

yes, i remember simple minds, more than any early 80s band, seeming to point the way to some "better" music world, and that is why so many fans feel like an intense betrayal took place when they went big & bland. sparkle in the rain was the turning point but i feel there were still some great songs on it albeit with a too heavyhanded steve lilywhite touch. once upon a time was 95% shit.

Mr. Snrub: Reel to Real = SM at their most arty. Something akin to what Wire and Magazine were doing at the time (and early Human League in places too). New Gold Dream = less so, though none the worse for it. Just not as "experimental".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1KCqWHhXK8

The X5 box set is a total joy, particularly loving "Reel To Reel" and Empires. There's lots of what-IS-that-sound moments such as the buzzsaw synth on "Changeling" as well as brilliant mutant krautrock like "30 Frames A Second". Even the Bowie/Roxy pastiche of the debut is great fun. Hurray for new opinions of old material!

And, really, "Twist/Run/Repulsion" is so wonderfully insane.

Wow. Indeed it is. Especially to someone like me who knew nothing about Simple Minds beyond "Don't You Forget About Me" and Once Upon A Time. Got some catching up to do, evidently.

Totally blown away by this. It's an exact crossbreed of Roxy Music and OMD, but so good and so cool and such fun.

http://youtu.be/3WXXyacakRo

Let's try that again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WXXyacakRo

Yeah, Simple Minds had a ridiculously good set of influences that you can spot in lots of their early work - Roxy, Magazine, Kraftwerk, Bowie, Eno...

picked up 5*5 today on a whim.

debut passed me by and will need a few more spins, ears pricked up a little more with reel to reel, but then i put on empires and dance, and f*ck me.

'i travel' is just huge.

never expected that.

do things get any better i wonder ..

Sons and Fascination is probably my favourite, so in my opinion YES THEY DO

One thing I love about those early Simple Minds albums is Derek Forbes' bass playing. Respect to him for jumping ship at the right time, though.

blasted I Travel on the way to work this morning

to follow up my earlier post : things do indeed get better.
this stuff is absolutely fantastic.
the 1st two albums i need to live with a little longer i think before the penny drops, whereas the rest of this boxset is superb.

I think the band themselves were disappointed by the way the first album turned out. Best thing on Real To Real Cacophony is Changeling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbvwKqotIAY

this fear of god : the missing link between shriekback and crackdown era cabaret voltaire.

good spot!

so according to mojo article, derek was never supposed to be bass player, but due to his les paul getting half inched ended up doing the bass lines.

how f*cking lucky is that as i totally agree that his presence in the bands sound is a large factor as to why i have fallen hard for this stuff.

if this is the result then more guitarists need to be a victim of theft, and pick up the bass guitar.

(actually thats not that bad a piece of advise for 2012 .. )

Empires And Dance = Real To Real Cacophony > Sons And Fascination > Life In A Day > Sister Feelings Call

Nice to see the early Simple Minds stuff getting its due. There was a while there where I would only listen to Empires and Dance alone because I was tired for having to explain myself.

The recent box set is excellent and it's definitely nice to have those bonus tracks more widely available.

I have a question for those of you who bought the 2003 remastered CDs and the x5 box: how does the remastering differ between the two, if at all?

It's also got me eyeing that copy of Sparkle in the Rain at my local used CD place. It's one that I've never heard, writing it off years ago as something from the "new" (read: more produced) version of the band that I was not interested in.

EUROPE HAS A LANGUAGE PROBLEM!

Currently spinning Empires and Dance after not listening to it for a while, and once more wondering why 'I Travel' wasn't the huge smash hit that it deserved to be.

Where I come from I Travel was nauseatingly ubiquitous. It's cool though. Decades have passed.