Friday 31 October 2008

In A Previous Life.



Once a upon a long time ago the Scottish band Simple Minds were actually quite good. There was a small window in time when they were definitely not an overblown stadium band striving (unsuccessfully) to become another U2.
In the early eighties they made some great records such as 'I-Travel' and 'The American' and live they were superb. I saw them in the much missed music venue The Lyceum in the Strand 'up that London'. Unfortunately they released 'New Gold Dream' and went a bit off the rails and once they started doing stadium gigs it was all over for me.
If you go back in time though, well before Simple Minds, there were a group of lands called Johnny and the Self Abusers. They were from Glasgow and released just the one single on Chiswick records called 'Saints and Sinners'. They went on to discover Stadium Rock and the rest is, as they say, history.


4 comments:

Kippers said...

I've always thought of New Gold Dream as a bit of a classic actually! Shows what I know...

Mondo said...

Even though I've known about this tune for years it's the first time I've actually heard it - marvellous.

marmiteboy said...

Kippers

Maybe I'm being a little harsh, I bought the album and remember quite liking it, However it does hold a memory of a fairly quick decline for Jim and the boys. I saw them at Hammersmith Odeon on the album tour and it they were just going through the motions. That certain something had disappeared and the troad to bland had began.

Mondo,

It is rip roaring isn't it.

OUS said...

'Sister Feelings Call' era Simple Minds was when this band were at their peak as far as I'm concerned. I agree, they had that brief period when they wrote some really good tunes. I was sat at work the other day listening to them. The songs from that album actually have a Kraut vibe in my opinion.