I know.
They’d pretty much jumped the shark with their previous album, Sparkle in the Rain, and this album was where they’d lost the plot. All the imagination and gloriies of New Gold Dream two release previously were buried in bluster.
Well, yes. But I had, for some reason a hankering to play it today, as an accompaniment to a day of tedious cleaning jobs And blasting it out while I was home alone , I absolutely loved it. Plenty of overblown nonsense of course but it was miles better than I recall and than I’d let myself believe.
So, any nice musical surprise for you out there recently?
I think from Real to Real -> Sparkle is as fine a run of albums as you’ll ever find. They deserved a spot in the sun after that amount of solid graft. I was amused at school to find people listening to the Minds who wouldn’t have touched Thirty Frames a Second with a bargepole. And some days some pompous nonsense with gated drums being played with treetrunks is just the ticket.
Yep. Mel Gaynor was just what I needed.
I just had a few says in South Wales and borrowed a camper that only had a CD player. So I dug out some homemade compilation discs from 10 years ago and there were some unexpected delights on them. This was one.
Note to musicians; don’t call your single ‘Ordinary Song’ no matter how damn catchy it is
I loved Once Upon a Time when it was released. The scales dropped from my eyes with Street Fighting Years. In retrospect they were getting a bit overblown and stadiumy. Probably Waterfront was the spur.
I think the title track and All the things she said are great songs. Similarly on the previous one, Up on the Catwalk is a nailed-on copper bottomed classic.
New Gold Dream though is a wonderfull thing from soup to nuts, as they say.
I went to a Highland Games yesterday which turned out to be the 100th birthday of the local laird. The seven local pipe bands joined forces for one big bagpipe-off. It was crackers and brilliant. I’m digging out my Big Country albums when I get home.
“Bagpipe-off” is probably in Urban Dictionary.
Same. Loved it when i was a kid and less self-conscious. Have avoided it for a long time in preference for Sparkle and (particularly) New Gold Dream. heard it recently and realised I was being far too reactionary.
I am one of the 5 people in the world who like Street Fighting Years. Some of the production hasn’t aged well, and it’s a few songs too long, but I don’t know why it attracts Tin Machine* levels of dislike. Don’t @ me, as the kids would say.
*which I also like
I’m prepared to listen to “Live in the City of Light” for everyone. Do I need help?
Set the controls for the heart of the pomp. Mullets and billowy shirts set to def con 1.
(Comment on that album by the NME: “Unfortunately, not recorded in Blackpool as the title indicates. Also unfortunately featuring Simple Minds”)
That’s a great review from NME. And great comments from Moose. Billowy shirts ago go or should they be blousons?
“Blouson” makes me immediately think of the unconscionable jacket sported by Mick Jagger in Dancing In The Street, the video of which is arguably the lowest point of human civilisation.
You’re right of course Moose. A blouson is indeed a jacket and not a billowy parachute of purest silk. And that video is s***e though I’m not sure it’s the lowest point of human civilisation…I’ve heard the Johnny hates Jazz debut album.
….which famously outsold The Stone Roses by a margin of about 10 to 1 in 1989.
That’s the real 1989, not the mythical one where everyone’s larking about at raves with centre partings and disco digestives.
Oh dear, I seem to have ventured into big shirts again.
See also: 1977
I never knew that 10:1 fact and will look forward to deploying it.
Can I just explain that I listened to the JHJ album to please a girl. Thank you .
Ok I have just re-listened to most of it and would like to possibly argue against its rehabilitation.
1. The lyrics are TERRIBLE – ‘Wait until you love is/alive and kicking’ ‘But there’s a kid called hope/he’s holding out his hand’ etc
2. Jim Kerr’s voice, well suited to their earlier krautnewwavedance sound, are mixed far too high and thus like ver Bono become the most annoying part of their sound.
3. Massed girl backing vocalists – the sign of creative bankruptcy and general kitchensinkery in the hope that it’ll fly.
4. Just a general sense that everyone was taking too much coke (possibly) and that the people who loved it most were the record company execs.
5. Not even talked about the drum sound or synths (check out the start of Oh Jungleland for a rollcall of 80s production cliches). Take away the vocals and guitar and it could be Howard Jones’s new direction.
I speak as a huge fan of their earlier work. Also a band with a ‘long tail ‘ they’ve made 9 studio albums since that one with the Belfast song on.
Sorry @freddy-steady
also in a case of decades-long foreshadowing it took them until 2014 to actually call an album Big Music.
@moseleymoles
No probs whatsoever. Pretty much guilty as charged….can’t really argue with any of your points (apart from the Howard Jones one.) Probably be another 25 years before I listen to it again…it was an itch that needed to be scratched!
Had given up on them by this time but the singles on this album are pretty good. Much much better than (shudders) Belfast Child or Mandela Day.
Oh God…Belfast Child! Even civilians knew that was crap!
They bought it though. In preference to WFL and Made of Stone.
The real 1989 strikes again!
@moose-the-mooche
Another good point …you should write a book on the real 1989 or at least a post on here.
It would be too depressing. Leave people with their beautiful illusions.
And actually I could never better the relevant a entries on the Then Play Long blog, which I will continue to recommend to anyone who will listen, including random folks in the street, until the end of my days.
@moose-the-mooche
Just had a peak at that, do they “just” review every number one album or is there other stuff on it?
The two of them, they’re a couple, review every UK number one album up to about 1991 where they sadly packed it in. They do get very sidetracked, mind – especially when reviewing Now! albums and the like.
The thing to look out for is the ongoing fixation with Escalator Over the Hill, which Marcello seems to shoehorn into nearly every entry (hur)
Great writing, much more enjoyable than the music.
https://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2015/07/simple-minds-street-fighting-years.html
And here he is, not being quite so generous, about OUAT:
And so this this in part the fall of 1985 – big expansive and ultimately nearly impersonal music, nothing that really sticks closely or touches finely, but blusters and pounds away and congratulates itself […] Kerr ends up sounding like a man who thinks he knows what’s what and is more than ready to impart his knowledge to us, but it was written in haste (the whole album seems to be done in haste) and is clumsy at best.
https://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2014/07/simple-minds-once-upon-time.html
“For the first time Simple Minds have made an album worse than U2”
Ouch!
This is pretty mild stuff. Try reading his review of Bowie’s Tonight. Or, perhaps worse, Sting’s Soul Cages. Yarooooo!
Jaysus. I was just listening to New Gold Dream again this evening and trying to remember my thesis on Simple Minds, one of my most in-depth postings to this site ever… Or maybe the old place. Anyway I think it was by way of starting a thread exploring when bands lost “it” and the how and why.
My main points were that, rather than simply pointing to dropping Derek Forbes and embracing American production values, the adoption of actual piano/organ sounds and crucially the name drop of a real life person Nastassja Kinski in Up On the Catwalk moved “the Minds” from the realm of abstract art into the real world.
To paraphrase James – the band, if they hadn’t produced such riches, we could live with them being poor.
P. S. The Derek Forbes thing was the biggie.
Tina Turner is on that list as well isn’t she?
@bamber
Agree about Derek Forbes…definitely not a root note plodder.
There’s a great video somewhere on YT of him more recently reconstructing the bassline to something from NGD, possibly The Big Sleep. Compare with the bassline to, er, Waterfront.
That’s the problem with the Dropping Derek Forbes solution. He played the bassline on Waterfront. Actually I like Waterfront but the rest of the album is poor.
When I was first getting seriously into music, Simple Minds were a favourite and Once Upon a Time would have been the entry point. It was the right music for me as a pre-teen back then, it sounds a bit tacky now – whereas the earlier Simple Minds stuff (apart from the singles off Sparkle and New Gold Dream) didn’t make much sense to me then – too dense, too much going on unlike the big, brash, expensively produced textures of Alive & Kicking. I still love everything up to Sparkle, and when I’ve seen Simple Minds live if they play tracks from Once Upon a Time they come alive – they were designed for Stadium rockin after all – but not sure it stands up as an album.
After writing that I had a look online and it seens he isn’t saying “Tiba Turner” but ‘“.Deodata” (?).
Right. It’s Deodato – a Brazilian jazz musician.
The tragedy of Simple Minds is in their wannabe efforts. Thry were not happy in themselves, and got more and more overblown (possibly in every way, given claims about Jim Kerr). I saw them in 1989 in Germany, and it was 80s turned up to the max. Live, “Belfast Child” and “Mandela Day” we’re even more exaggerated, and if it was not coke-driven, I’d like to know what breakfast cereal thry ate. But they didn’t need the message songs and unconvincing rock star sincerity. The next step REALLY made me cringe: their “Pin-Ups” album, which was really the party tape to show how hip you are; “sign of the times”, something rappy, a Velvets track … All doubtless were faces in the band, but very much saying, “this is us”. Wasn’t bring a presciently kraut rock electro band from Clydebank enough?
Jim Kerr was one of the many mugs who ended up marrying Patsy Kensit, which tells you everything.
In answer to your last question, compare the platinum sales of Street Fighting Years with the who-hell-he? market presence of Sister Feelings Call. We all know which is the better record but, y’know,civilians.
Little known fact: Jim Kerr loves peas and anything to do with them. He just had to have Patsy.
Crumb crisp coating….
….sorry, reflex action.
@vincent
I saw them in Germany too in ’89. The Street Fighting Years tour? Can only remember being disappointed.
Love your last sentence!
New Gold Dream continues to, ahem, shimmer through the decades. Absolutely love it, and loved a lot of earlier Minds as well. Love Song, American, I Travel spring to mind.
I liked Sparkle in the Rain at the time (I was 17 when it was released). Speed Your Love To Me was a particular favourite. I felt Steve Lillywhite’s production, with Mel Gaynor’s drums very prominent, was thrilling.
I recall not being so keen on Once Upon a Time, even, er, at the time. I kind of liked the ‘big’ sound of it but the problem was there was never a song the equal of the epically wonderful Someone Somewhere In Summertime to fill that space.
I saw them live ca 1984 (they were terrible), Chrissie Hynde had just left Ray Davies for Kerr. Jim charmlessly dedicated Speed Your Love to Me to Ray …
I saw their very first gig as Simple Minds and went to every gig I could at their Mars Bar Sunday residency throughout 1978. They were never the same after they dropped their (ugly/specky) 6th member. The Radio Clyde session and the early bootlegs are all I need.
I saw them a couple of years ago and they were excellent, just rolling back the years. They didn’t play anything post-OUAT if I remember rightly, which bolsters the general thust of this thread i.e. how great they were up to and (in parts) including the subject LP, but also that they themselves recognise that now.
Interesting that. Any idea who the bassist is these days? And what size venues do they fill…I imagine they don’t quite do enormodomes?
@Freddy Steady .. Ged Grimes, formerly of Danny Wilson and (I think) Deacon Blue has played bass with them for about 10 years .. and very good he is too! They play reasonable sized venues (Birmingham NEC/SECC sized halls) but rarely sell them out. Last stadium tour they did was around 1991 when they released their post-Mick MacNeil album, Real Life. They have sort of been in decline since, although they have had the odd purple patch .. usually in a live setting.
They did a cool thing back in 2011 of playing 5 songs each from their first five albums. Unsurprisingly this was called their ‘5 x 5’ tour and despite seeing them loads of times over a thirty five year span it was easily my favourite tour/series of concerts.
I would just about class myself as a long term fan but now rarely listen to anything after New Gold Dream which is still my favourite album of all time.
Stopped going to see them live about five years ago as I got the overwhelming impression that JK was dialling it in .. and frankly his voice was never that good in the first place. For me the alchemy was the interplay between Burchill, MacNeil and Forbes .. and to all intents and purposes that ceased in 1985.
They are now their own tribute act .. which is a bit sad.
It was Southend Cliffs Pavilion, Freddy. Packed out too.
Thanks guys…I remember seeing the ads for the 5×5 tour but couldn’t make it at the time. Would have been decent I reck.
I like one if the early comback* albums, Neapolis, which sounds like Empires and Dance.
(*) I nearly said ‘recent’ but it was 1998
@fentonsteve
Yes! I remember that as being “current.” It doesn’t really sound like Empires and Dance though really, does it??
No, you’re right. It is more galcial than E&D. Sister Feelings Call, then.