The early 80s back catalogue of Simple Minds continues to reveal new wonders to me. I've said before that my prejudices about Jim Kerr's band were formed in the mid to late 80s when their wind swept stadium rock did nothing for me. But in recent years I've had my head turned, first by Theme For Great Cities and then its parent albums Sons And Fascination/Sister Feelings Call. Over the last eighteen months I've picked up various Simple Minds records second hand, albums and singles. Then JC at the Vinyl Villain undertook a weekly trawl through the singles and B-sides of the group released between 1980 and 1984, a series of blogposts and comments that educated and entertained me while filling in umpteen gaps. This one has really struck a chord with me in recent days...
New Warm Skin
Riding in a fantastic backbeat and then covered in New Wave synths, the playing on this, the synth lines and jagged guitar fills, all sound weirdly contemporary to me. Jim Kerr's vocal stylings date it a little and it does sound in debt to 1977- not the '77 of the Sex Pistols but the '77 of Kraftwerk, Berlin, Iggy, Bowie, The Idiot and Low, Mittel Europa- but John Leckie's production keeps it really fresh, remarkably so for a record made in 1980. New Warm Skin was a B-side, the flip to single I, Travel. There was no room for it on the album Empires And Dance, a record I found in a stack in a second hand shop last week.
3 comments:
Nope still does nothing for me although I have had reason to rethink my impression of Jim Kerr over recent years. I have read and heard a few interviews with him recently and he seems to be a genuinely good guy. Ricky Ross does a Sunday morning show on BBC Radio Scotland (another guy who in the 80s I thought was a complete fud but is also a really good guy) which is a great listen not least for the weekly Van Morrison track but also for the guests and last Sunday it just happened that one of them was Jim Kerr, you can listen to it here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009by7
Simple minds still wank tho'.
JC's series opened my eyes a little to the music of Simple Minds as well. Jim Kerr is often to be heard as one of Lamacq's guests on 6Music and, as Drew points out, he comes across as a thoroughly decent chap.
Strange one's, 'The Minds'. Started out as edgy art rockers. 'Reel to Reel Cacophony' and 'Empires and Dance' are intense and experimental, great bass playing from Derek Forbes. Kerr's lyrics about paranoia and political melt down in Europe could be about the now. I fell for the 'New Gold Dream' at the time, but really the writing was on the wall. Filofax pop and stadium rock were not far away. Oh dear!
-SRC
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