Simple Minds, classic or dud?

Even in the good old days, though, quality control wasn't really their thing, and I'm tempted to say they were a singles band: "I Travel," "Love Song," "The American" -- those first few where they're flirting with the New Romantic movement are so great, and hold up much better than most of the club-rock of that era. And "Themes From Great Cities" should be recognized as one of the great instrumental rock tracks of the '80s (I actually used it in the early '90s for some public access cable show, and after we screened it ten different people asked me, "What was that amazing music?")

After that... well, I think they were always going to do whatever they had to do to make it big, and if that meant hopping on the Celtic Rock bandwagon along with U2 and Big Country, then so be it. So my expiration date is a little earlier than yours, though again the singles off New Gold Dream and Sparkle in the Rain were pretty fine. I still get that descending keyboard riff from "Up On The Catwalk" stuck in my head at odd times, and "Waterfront" and "Someone Somewhere in Summertime" make artsy pomposity seem so damn soulful.

But after that, toss it all: I saw them on the Once Upon A Time tour in '85 or whenever, and they were pretty bad. Shriekback opened, and wiped the floor with 'em. If they haven't called it a day yet -- and Jim Kerr doesn't seem the type to stop flogging that horse -- I say we punish him with dudness until he relents, or at least commisions a decent Best Of.

the stuff pre-"don't you" is somewhat hit-or-miss, but mostly pretty solid and just about every record from that time has at least something to recommend it. real to reel cacaphony, empires and dance, and new gold dream had an interesting roxy music-meets-kraftwerk sound to it. and something like "theme for great cities" was the greatest kraftwerk song that ralf und florian never made. things started getting a little bombastic around sparkle in the rain, though it's still quite good (a bit like what echo & the bunnymen would've sounded like if ian mccullough wasn't so whiny).

I just tried to order a couple of the re-issues online and the bastards sent me the old versions, so my reacquisition of their back catalog is on hold until I get that sorted out.

I have Sons and Fascination here on vinyl however, and I love it. It somehow complements American architecture perfectly, it's such a modernist building of an LP. A huge empty sound that fills up all that concrete and nothingness. I'm continuously surprised that freeway interchanges don't sprout from the ground whenever I play "Themes for Great Cities."

Anyway, I like the Breakfast Club theme, but agree it was their downfall. I'd try and make the case for Once Upon a Time though... I don't like the album so much, but I love the double live release that has many songs from it.

Also search "Hunter and the Hunted" from New Gold Dream.

I recently played 'I Travel' for the first time in about 10 yrs and was astonished by how bloody thunderously good it is.

Oh and I really love 'Don't You Forget About Me' - even though Kerr's hooting is pretty silly.

That is all.

R2RC would probably still make it as one of my 25 favourite albums - jagged and carnivalesque with that last-gasp-of-the-70's electrourban concrete-subway harshness & alienation scattered through it

E&D has a looming thunderous quality and depth of sound which anticipates the best that 80's production was to offer (eg Fear Of Gods sounds like prototype-Propaganda to me)

S&F/SFC was like listening to big-idea architecture
(+ great as accompaniment to overnight motorway drive - nr-empty urban stretch of M6 level with Manchester/Liverpool at 4am while 'theme for great cities' or 'sound in 70 cities' blasts out = wonderful)

their swelling up into tinselled plum puddings starts on some of NGD
(albeit glorious title track uses those tendencies in a way that works)

the rest should probably have been silence

Dr. C is OTM as always. I remember the po(m)p and drama of New Gold Dream came as a pleasant surprise at the time but their subsequent descent into U2-style bombast and vacuity was sadly rapid.

(I could find an analogy in history yesterday when my friend asked me this question: "Is you going on about early Simple Minds the same as Jode going on about early Whitney Houston?" (!!!) (or should that be (??)).

Once Upon a Time - a huge letdown. Joined the ranks of OMD.

No.

Ned has summed it up pretty well. I used to like "Don't you forget about me" when I was a kid, but now it seems silly and I can't help but associate it in my mind with some horrible 80s yuppie aesthetic.

Sparkle in the rain is execrable apart from Waterfront which is one of the records from that period which tried to take on U2's bombast and actually suceeded.

Aren't they back to doing some trancey electro stuff now?

I totally disagree with Ned, "Don't You Forget About Me," while totally cheesy, is the only Simple Minds song I'd care to hear again (ok, MAYBE "Alive And Kicking" if I get to dance around Bono-style to it).

See, this is the problem, which you must overcome. ;-)

I'll defend Real Life somewhat - couple of the songs on there are OK and are mostly salvaged by Mel Gaynor's incredible drumming (he's #1 on my unheralded drummer list)

* This may not be true, but I can't prove that it's untrue either.

Definitely one of the best in my book, though choosing between it and Empires and Dance is nearly impossible.

What in tarnation?

TS: Miccio's Bono-dancing or Paul Stanley's foxy-dancing!

Andy and Ned have summed it up quite well. Most of the ideas are still present - disco punk (albeit more "30 Frames A Second" than "I Travel", crazy synths, sound collage, weird lyrics - but whereas on Empires & Dance the band focus that down to a relatively consistent thematic approach, Reel To Real is more all over the place. On the one hand, there's more "proper" punkish songs like "Citizen", "Changeling" and "Calling Your Name" (all of which put me in mind of a funkier, glammier Joy Division), and on the other there's quite a few weird but really engaging instrumentals and just totally fucked-up stuff like "Naked Eye" and "Carnival", both of which sound like the backing music for a circus organised by violently pathological schizophrenics. Also Kerr sounds like he's flipping out the entire time, whereas on E&D he sounds much more abstracted/distant.

In many ways I like the "idea" of Empires & Dance a bit more - the collision of dub, disco and punk, basically - but Reel To Real Cacophony has more killer cuts eg. the wonderful "Premonition". I love some of the really outthere stuff on E&D like "This Fear of Gods" but I'm always vaguely disappointed that there aren't more uptempo numbers like "I Travel".

Listening to the old albums this week has been a great but disorienting experience: as a kid, I always blamed SM's downfall on Jim Kerr and his pseudo-evangelical sub-Bono turn, but what's struck me is that even in the good days he was *always* a ham -- maybe more cryptic and less puffed-up, but the Euro affectations on E&D ("hey waiter, I'm first class") now seem like they're cut from the same cloth.

Which leads me to conclude that what really changed was the *music* -- and for some reason, that had never occurred to me before. Maybe because they were often so trance-y and grandiose on the good stuff, it was easy to miss the tight propulsiveness behind it... whereas "Alive and Kicking" is just shapeless, there's no rhythmic backbone holding it together at all. I seem to recall that the bass player defected to Propaganda's touring band between Sparkle and Once Upon A Time, which in retrospect makes a lot of sense (on both sides of the equation -- Propaganda had a lot of the same grandeur, but always with an eye on the dancefloor).

Is that the Kibble Palace in on the back of the sleeve to Celebration?

They could perhaps win the prize for quickest dive from heroes to arse in rock. Street Fighting Years is terrible.

I watched them for a bit at Glastonbury in '95 and it was quite funny; Jim Kerr was leaping around as if he was in front of an audience of 50,000 adoring fans, and in fact there were about 500 bored crusties.

long not ling, i'm obviously still away in tbe heather after Speed Your Love

Is Waterfront proto-schaffel? Prog schaffel maybe?

They went right off the rails trying to compete with U2. I did blame Bono earlier but the real culprits where Kerr and Burchill of course.

It was around this time jokes about Jim changing his name to Juan started emerging in Glasgow.

he didn't even did get his rewards for becoming a total arse, as in getting invited to g8 summits to act like an obsequious clown around putin and blair. or maybe that's a plus.

He is an arse but I can't hate him too much because he's a proper Celtic fan (so is Burchill) (as opposed to green and white cosplayers like B. Gillespie).

Second half of Sparkle is a struggle. Street Hassle cover is no Spacemen 3 thats for sure. White Hot Day is a big old load of nothing. Kick Inside Of Me is probably the low point. Starts off Jim loudly announcing himself like John Lydon at the start of Public Image and then he goes for this edgy rock n roll thing, maybe in his head it sounds like Alan Vega but it comes off more Billy Idol. Bassline is cool though, very Magazine. Whats that of their's, the when-i'm-in-the-air one? Because that.

Talking of bass, the playing in C Moon is my highlight of side two, lovely soft volume swelly stuff, wonder how he played that? Really exquisite, makes me think of Eberhard Weber. I like Shake Off The Ghosts a lot too (its instrumental for starters). The shuffley drum thing comes back, but this time in slo-mo. Very Mark Brzezicki, could actually be a Big Country-side, quite an emotional bit of music for me.

b-side. sorry my fone is kaputt

I like Shake Off The Ghosts a lot too (its instrumental for starters).

'Theme from Great Cities' is arguably Kerr's best vocal performance.

I do like Sparkle, but it is front-loaded, reminds me a lot of The Unforgettable Fire, a mix of really big songs and very slight experiments/jams.

Inspired by this thread I just listened to Sparkle in the Rain for the first time in several decades. I have to say it was a bit of a slog to get through! Empires and Dance/Sons and Fascination is their peak, New Gold Dream is good too, it has a lightness that the bloated Sparkle lacks, but I hear the beginning of the rot as well, the bombast creeping in...

Gotta admit that I was a child of the SM bombast, I still have a measure of love for Once Upon A Time (but nothing really after that), if you squint a bit you can just say 'Oh it's the Big Music, like The Waterboys...'

Jimmy Iovine with his 'hey you guys, I don't hear a SONG, where's the HITS YOU GUYS', fuck that clot.

Enjoyed the documentary, but the middle bit is the best because that's where the focus is. I'm a bit disappointed that - like the band heh? - the focus dissipates once we reach the late 80s and it all becomes a bit too simplified for my liking. Kerr seems to have forgotten that, uncool or not, Simple Minds were still selling more albums than "The Stone Roses and Madchester" over 89-91. And who apparently even knows what they did after Street Fighting Years. Did they still have two UK No. 2 albums after that?

Sparkle in the Rain is fantastic, through and through. Though it took me a while to see that. It's my favourite album for Derek Forbes if not my actual favourite Simple Minds (one of the three before it). The majesty of "Up on the Catwalk", so undeniable and splashy but compellingly oblique - a marble fountain done all modernist, like. It's the old 'may be meaningless but sure as hell doesn't sound it so it isn't' 1984 business at its best. "East at Easter" and "Shake Off the Ghosts" still have that 81/82 glacial texture put to an excellent if poignant ending. "Waterfront", actual Scottish industrial music (cf. Big Country's Steeltown), but on a killer catwalk bassline with the business of writing an actual tune a secondary concern, a la Frankie's "Relax". Those wave-poll bass whooshes on "White Hot Day" make it much the same. No mention of Lillywhite in the doc a bit surprising and sad, considering they even arranged for Steve Hillage to compliment John Leckie to his face.

But along came Jimmy Iovine, who told them to knock this 'atmosphere first, song-as-in-a-song-you-can-play-on-an-acoustic-guitar second' malarkey. Kerr seemed to really take that to heart.

love a westbury post, even when their taste confounds me. gotta say i found it really sad when they talked about forbes being kicked out of the band. someone just slowly fucking up their big opportunity, must be an awful thing to live with. alcohol is truly cursed. was going to say 'and what iconic basslines has john giblin ever written anyway?' and then i remembered he played on cdb's 'the lady in red'

According to Derek Forbes he was sacked from the band over his addiction to the laydeez.

haha fair enough

A few months ago I did a post on facebook where I summed up my feelings, which I repeated last week when someone brought up a Francois K. mix in Francois K's World of Echo facebook group. He came on to say it wasn't his best work.

Regardless my take was as follows and mostly aligns with most here...

First album has some great songs but too slavish to Magazine and Roxy among others.
Second album is the same but now with Kraftwerk and Joy Division influence.
I like both of those albums and they have some classic songs, but they're not game-changing.

Empires and Dance has them coming into their own, and Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call is an embarrassment of riches. Just amazing stuff.

New Gold Dream is a masterpiece song and sound-wise...but it has a quality to the production that's a bit more homogenous and less interesting than the 3 before.

Sparkle in the Rain and Once Upon a Time push the synths more and more to the background and bring anthemic rock to the foreground, but I still like some of the songs and performances. They're not pushing any envelopes but there's some good songs. Losing Derek Forbes between the two is a big problem. I guess your tolerance for a certain type of overproduced 80s rock will impact your enjoyment of those two albums.

Nothing past those is of any interest to me whatsoever. But I like All the Things She Said. I love Alive and Kicking, but maybe that's as much nostalgia. I probably like Alive and Kicking more than anything U2 did that sounds like that.

This Herald article on Forbes explains why he, Brian McGee and Mick MacNeil decided not to take part in the recent documentary, and gives Forbes' perspective on his sacking. Jim Kerr doesn't come out of the incident looking great.

Charlie, Mick and Paul Kerr, Jim’s brother, came into the office. Charlie and Mick were both crying, and Paul was raging about Jim, who was not there. I ended up talking to Jim on the phone. Jim just wouldn’t listen or give me a chance to redeem myself. I had disappeared from the band too often, giving too much attention to my girlfriend, and not nearly enough to the band. But, whatever the reason, I was sacked and that was it.

Jim on Sparkle is night and day from the albums prior, even New Gold Dream. It's like a stage hypnotist has made him believe his is Bono. There's still much to like on the album, but it's inescapable

What I find interesting is that Achtung Baby has so much in common with what the Minds were doing circa Empires-Sons And Fascination, yet by 1991 Simple Minds had half turned into Runrig. INXS, Deacon Blue etc all had a go at 'doing an Achtung Baby' to some extent, but the Minds seemed to double down by the time of She's A River, by trying to keep the stadium dream alive

I thought “She’s a River” was an attempt to sound like Achtung Baby (or themselves, earlier), but that said, I did watch them at Glastonbury ‘95 giving it all the “Lemme see your hands in the air” to a few hundred disinterested crusties (and me).

Nothing past those is of any interest to me whatsoever. But I like All the Things She Said

Yeah i always liked that one too, there is something beautiful lurking in that song somewhere. The video is charmingly terrible, i dont know if those were state of the art special effects back then, but they always seemed to conjur up some bbc sci-fi show from several years earlier, blakes 7 or something. Jim wears a variety of different costumes, all of them awful. When i saw them live in tbis era he had tight black leggings, a huge white blouse, an embroidered waistcoat and a giant black beret bejewelled with a large green stone that looked like a fucking time crystal or something. what we he even going for? renaissance space nonce?

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

rennainonce

it absolutely looks like the intro to 1986-era Doctor Who

they all had naff retro-future clothing too

Oh yeah, "All the Things She Said" is a good song. Jim, Jim, those stripey breeks, what were you thinking?

I've seen someone else claim the Minds in 1995 were trying to do an Achtung Baby themselves, but I cannot hear that at all. They sound like Then Jericho

Or on Hypnotised (which is kinda great): INXS

I'm going to go see Derek Forbes in November. Probably Scotland's greatest ever bassist. https://www.stlukesglasgow.com/events/renegade-communications-presents-a-very-simple-mind-on-tour-derek-forbes-ex-simple-minds/

i was recently flying back to Glasgow from London and Jim Kerr was in the queue in front of me waiting to board. A man came over and said to him "You're someone famous aren't you? Where do I know your face from?" and without missing a beat Kerr replied "Crimewatch".

LOL, nice one Jim!

(xp) There is Jack Bruce to consider too.

Simple Minds did do a 'Pop', I suppose, or rather a late 90s 'electronica' album. The thing about Neapolis though is that if anything it's a roots move, where - at least in theory - they remember the band they were in the early 80s and largely forget the intervening decade and a half. Ofc it's not that simple but I do enjoy it and how it announces its 'we're no longer a stadium band oh noes' from the sleeve alone.

Also,

love a westbury post, even when their taste confounds me.

― Bernard Quidbins (NickB), Thursday, 19 September 2024 14:02 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

thanks! but even Simple Minds worked hard to convince me here because ten years ago i did not get Sparkle-era SM at all. I suppose there's no real consensus.

One of my parents' first concerts together was Simple Minds at Milton Keynes, 1991, opened by the Stranglers and OMD. I've never seen a copy of Real Life in the house. How the singles go I struggle to remember. I do wonder how well all those songs, invisible on the radio in the years to come, really went down to such an enormous crowd.

Ever since I heard "New Gold Dream" I've been on this quest to find a song with that sense of openness, of possibility.

The German 12" is the one

Yep, I own the deluxe edition of the album.

The bottin edit is the one!

I went to see Derek Forbes tonight doing a Q&A and live set. He is extremely entertaining and very funny. Lots of great anecdotes. Jim Kerr's ears must have been on fire. He talked quite a lot about Propaganda too and did an absolutely note perfect impression of Claudia Brücken singing.

He then played live for an hour with a drummer (I didn't catch who they were) and keyboard player (Brian McNeil, once upon a time a member of China Crisis). They were truly excellent. Forbes sang (very well). He has still got it - his bass playing sounded incredible and I didn't miss the lack of guitar at all). He played close to my dream Simple Minds set -

Waterfront
Celebrate
Love Song
Changeling
I Travel
New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
The American
Theme for Great Cities

Whoa awesome!

oh man, that sounds fantastic! was hoping you'd do a gig report - god, i would've had mad goosebumps at the opening notes of some of those songs

internet says the drummer was probably tony soave who was in the silencers (who i'm sure you already know were the band that fingerprintz turned into, that drummer wasn't in them though)

it was indeed tony soave.

and yes, several mad goosebumps moments.

Wow sounds great.

nice set

The documentary is off youtube now, is Paramount Plus really the only place its showing?

Another person uploaded it on youtube, enjoyed it. I'm still quite new to the band and kind of hoping I'll like some of the albums after the first 5.