Saturday Live

The third of my holiday reads, started by the pool and finished on the flight home, was Greame Thomson's Themes For Great Cities: A New History of Simple Minds. Thomson's book covers the early years of the band, their formation in late 70s Glasgow and the development into the classic five piece group- Jim Kerr, Charlie Burchill, Brian McGee, Derek Forbes and Mick MacNiel- and then the records they make up to the moment where they walk through the door into arenas and stadiums post 1984. The albums they made between 1981 and 1984, after getting their debut Life In A Day out of the way are an astonishing run of records- Real To Real Cacophony, Empires And Dance, Sons And Fascination/ Sister Feelings Call and New Gold Dream (81- 82- 83- 84). Their influences hover over those earlier albums- Bowie, Iggy, the West German bands, Eno, The Velvet Underground- and the keyboards equally part of the sound with the guitars, driven by Derek Forbes' incredible basslines. Instrumentals, dub space, washes of ambient sound, tape loops, sax, FX pedals and Kerr's lyrics, semi- stream of consciousness transmissions. Funk and disco are in there too, Grace Jones, Chic, underground New York dance records, early hip hop, and by 1984 a new kind of European pop sensibility is driving them. Thomson's dissection of the songs and the albums, their recording, the process and influences is excellent, a vividly drawn portrait of the group and these years. 

I've never seen Simple Minds live, the anthemic, post- McGee and Forbes version of the band never appealing to me. I'm not that fond of seeing bands in football stadia either. Recently they have dug back into their earlier albums and played those songs again and I'd be tempted to go if they played near here again. This twenty minute appearance on The Tube in 1982 shows what a good band they were in the early 80s, four songs played by a band who know how good they are and how vibrant they sound. The Hunter And The Hunted, the brilliant, ascendant, optimism of Someone Somewhere (In Summertime), New Gold Dream (81- 82- 83- 84) and the spangled and magnificent The American. By this point McGee had already left the drum stool, replaced by Mike Ogletree and then later by Mel Gaynor (whose drumming is part of what propels them to a much bigger and more anthemic sound, destined for bigger stages and spaces).

Also in 1982 they played at Rockpalast in Cologne, West Germany. The gig is ninety minutes of sensational music, from the slow building, minimalist intro and then they play Love Song, starting slowly with Burchill's FXed guitar and the thumping, prowling rhythm section, the tension building for several minutes before Kerr even steps to the spotlight in the centre. After that there is an almost perfect Simple Minds gig including Changeling, Thirty Frames A Second, Sweat In Bullet, King Is White And In The Crowd, Promised You A Miracle, I Travel, Celebrate, The American, Sons And Fascination and Room.