Simple Minds Album by Album Thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Havoc, Jun 20, 2014.

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  1. jamesc

    jamesc Senior Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX
    I just listened to the album. I've had a promo cassette that I got from the record store I was working so I probably listened to it a bunch in the car at the time it was released. It's probably been twenty years since I've played it though so there were several songs I didn't recognize at all (the first two tracks in particular). I was a big fan of Trevor Horn at that time and loved what he did with Pet Shop Boys that year. I need to play it a few more times for it to sink in but it's a nice sounding album in any case.

    I didn't buy any of the singles except for Kick It In. I still have brand new looking UK 12", gatefold 12" and CD3! Probably bought them for the mixes and live track. I really like the live version of Big Sleep on there but the Waterfront 89 mix is pretty dull. The original mix is better imo. The Kick It In mix has some nice moments.
     
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  2. JeffMo

    JeffMo Format Agnostic

    Location:
    New England
    Sometimes you kick, sometimes you get kicked.....

    Sorry, wrong band!
     
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  3. Havoc

    Havoc Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Poland
    It's definitely in the structure of the thread as I was planning on bringing up the Themes set for discussion so all of those EP's might be discussed in the context of discussing the singles outside of the context of their place on an album. Does that sound like it would make for some interesting posts or do you think it would have been better to discuss the single releases in the context of their accompanying albums?
     
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  4. JohnBR

    JohnBR Forum Resident

    Personally I'd prefer to see them discussed in the context of their accompanying albums, but I'd be happy to see them touched on anyway at all. :)
     
  5. peter

    peter Senior Member

    Location:
    Paradise
    What a fantastic post. Another demonstration of why the forum is a special place. I was older than you when SFY came out, but it speaks no less to me than it did you.
     
  6. Havoc

    Havoc Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Poland
    Yeah, it was a tough call but I was thinking of a block of posts that discussed all the great EP's instead of bouncing back and forth between EP and album since album discussions also mention the singles as well. Had there not been a release like the Themes set, I probably would have leaned towards your suggestion. C'est la vie or as Jim would say....."Let me see your hands."
     
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  7. Surly

    Surly Bon Viv-oh-no-he-didn't

    Location:
    Sugar Land, TX
    I like the idea of discussing them as the Themes sets.
     
  8. Havoc

    Havoc Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Poland
    Appreciate the kind words. I actually believe the album probably would have resonated better with people older than myself as they might have been more aware with some of the subject matter. Oddly enough, I knew who Victor Jara was thanks to my incredibly Scottish grandfather who happened to be the world's number one hater of Communists since he was liberated from a German POW camp by the Red Army then promptly marched back to Moscow and held captive for years while they made him clean up. He was quite pissed at Jimmy boy for writing an ode to a Communist so he switched back to Rod Stewart and tuned SM out for the rest of his life.
     
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  9. dino77

    dino77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    Picked up the "Ballad Of The Streets" EP (and the "Promised You A Miracle" 12') - another find. This thread is good for my local record dealers :)

    About "The Amsterdam EP" - there are 2 "new" tracks on there - "Sign O' The Times" and "Jersusalem". I always wondered whether Mick MacNeil plays on them, but it looks like it?

    From The Sun interview with Mick:
    The American leg of the tour had been pulled and Jim decided we were going to Amsterdam to starting writing a new album after Christmas. At that point, I just said, 'Well, you can go, I'm going home.' We all got very angry and it got a bit nasty. Jim accused me of splitting the band up. Charlie told me I was a rat leaving a sinking ship."

    "I didn't say I was chucking the band. I just told them I wasn't going to Amsterdam. I was going home and I'd sort something out from there."


    It seems there were 2 periods of sessions in Amsterdam, one in fall '89 and one in spring '90, and it's those later sessions Mick is mentioning.
     
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  10. morgan1098

    morgan1098 Forum Resident

    I like the idea of a Themes discussion, but it also makes sense to discuss the singles/EPs in the context of the album. This is especially true for Street Fighting Years because Ballad of the Streets is really the heart and soul of the album, you can't separate them.

    Oh, and I admire SM's audacity for covering a Prince song on the Amsterdam EP, especially one as good as Sign O' the Times. However, I wasn't thrilled with the end result... not enough funk! :)
     
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  11. peter

    peter Senior Member

    Location:
    Paradise
    Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. My wife's dad was also a staunch anti-communist. In fact, when he passed in 2006, he still had pieces of shrapnel in his back from not only fighting in WWII, but from fighting the communists in Greece after WWII was over.
     
  12. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    I never heard Street Fighting Years when it came out. I'd gotten into the band's three big albums in 1985 when they had their brief moment in the North American spotlight, but by the summer of 1989 that seemed like eons ago (I was 20 then so even a year was a long time) and I just wasn't that interested anymore. And my perception of the critical response to the album was that it was a pompous and self-serious dud. (Funny that put me off as I often like pompous, self-serious bands.) It seemed to come and go without making much impact so I forgot about it, and Simple Minds in general.

    Years later though, the "Early Gold" comp got me to revisit the Minds' early albums, but I still had the sense that everything they'd done after the mid-80s was irrelevant, so I didn't venture past that. But finally I did check out Street Fighting Years again. My initial impression of it was that the critics were right -- it seemed like a lot of hot air to me, to be honest -- but something kept me coming back to it, and the album's atmosphere grew on me. There's a lot of great musicianship on it, and I like the Celtic folky strain that runs through it. It reminds me a lot of another album that came out that year -- Tears for Fears' "The Seeds of Love." Both big big productions that inflate the band's music to monumental proportions, and are longer on mood than tight songwriting, and on which every song seems to be seven minutes long (and usually is). At the time maybe they seemed like they were too much -- but now, when most new albums seem so modest and forgettable, I enjoy the epic, cast of thousands feel of these records. I do think Jim is trying too hard to reach for "important" themes and be a Bono-like inspirational figure -- I was fine with Simple Minds being arty and oblique -- but on the other hand, I appreciate that it's not a brazen bid for commercial success like "Once Upon a Time." (Though people seem to view everything Simple Minds did post "New Gold Dream" or "Sparkle" as a big sellout.)

    I still think, though, that it took them far too long to put this album out, losing all their momentum in North America, and making it seemed to have cost them considerably -- not just the rhythm section but MacNeil after it was finished. Were the sessions that troubled?

    The album's big headscratcher to me is the cover of "Biko." Did they think people were unfamiliar with this song and it needed a wider audience that Simple Minds could somehow give it? This is one of Peter Gabriel's most iconic songs and recordings -- it seems like unadulterated hubris for them to try to claim a piece of it. (And they continue to use it on compilation albums too.) When there's already a song about Nelson Mandela on the album it just feels like righteous overkill. The album would have been fine stopping at "Belfast Child" (which I like a lot even though it seems to be an unpopular track with many.) It was already plenty long enough.

    It's interesting to me that this was produced by Trevor Horn -- it's slick certainly but it's not the kind of shiny, clever, immediate pop music he was known for at the time. I've never seen any comment from him about this record -- what did he think of it?
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2014
  13. JeffMo

    JeffMo Format Agnostic

    Location:
    New England
    Trevor did some great work in the 90s with Seal too. Another artist that it isn't cool to like but I do anyway!

    I might agree with Squealy on this one. If they had kept those as b-sides and only had "Belfast Song" on the LP, would there have been as big of a critical backlash? Covering "Biko" didn't do them any favors and to my ears they didn't exactly make it their own.
     
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  14. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    Paul Simon did a fairly successful cover of "Biko" recently -- but he did it by turning it into an intimate, Paul Simon-style voice and guitar performance. Simple Minds just try to out-anthem Peter's version, and it's just kind of pointless to me.
     
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  15. RevolutionDoctor

    RevolutionDoctor Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gent, Belgium
    When I bought Live In The City Of Light I was dissapointed. I don't think I listened to it more than five times. And a double album was a huge investment for a 16 year old. I don't really know why I was let down, it just didn't do anything for me. By the time Steet Fighting Years came out I had very little intrest in it. The singles didn't catch me. It all sounded too slick for me.

    Nevertheless I went to a concert in 1991 (Flanders Expo, Ghent, Belgium on 29 august 1991) because a friend of mine wanted to go.
    I can remember the exact moment when Simple Minds turned me off forever : The band came on stage and they were greeted with applause and cheering from the audience. Instead of starting to play they just stood there, accepting the applause. This lasted a few minutes. (or maybe my memory is playing tricks on me : it sure seems it lasted that long). I found this so self rightgeous. In my opinion, a band should come on and start to play immediately and blow the audience away with good music. They have to earn their applause. A band earns applause by playing good music. Not by just showing up at a concert.
     
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  16. onionmaster

    onionmaster Tropical new waver from the future

    Street Fighting Years is a great album. It's atmospheric, has great sound quality (the intro of Wall Of Love, for example), and is unique in their discography as being dark and ballad heavy.

    Soul Crying Out may well be my favorite Simple Minds track of all time. If you hear this when driving through a thunderstorm in Scotland it fits perfectly.
     
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  17. dino77

    dino77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    The 'Verona' video from the tour is unbearable, but I find the album low key and powerful, not slick. It's a u-turn from Once Upon A Time when they could have done OUAT part two. They lost the US pretty much.
     
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  18. peter

    peter Senior Member

    Location:
    Paradise
    That people between the ages of 20 and 60 can write like they have in this thread is nothing short of inspirational to me. Fantastic.
     
  19. shaboo

    shaboo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bonn, Germany
    As we've already arrived at "Street Fighting Years", i.e., Themes Volume 4, it's much too late to discuss the Themes in the context of their albums, but what about a break after "Real Life" (which was what the fifth and final Themes set was about) and an discussion of all five volumes before continuing with GNFTNW?
     
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  20. JeffMo

    JeffMo Format Agnostic

    Location:
    New England
    That sounds good to me - I don't have Themes or any of the SM singles so I'm curious to hear what the others have to say about the b-sides, live tracks, and extended mixes. I do have 5x and do like the bonus content on those albums.
     
  21. jamesc

    jamesc Senior Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX
    I received another strangely priced order from Amoeba today. Was looking online last weekend and got both the Canadian clear vinyl and US standard vinyl of Sparkle In The Rain for $12 shipped! Are Simple Minds just not collectible anymore? The Canadian pressing still has the shrink wrap with the stickers on it and looks NM. The US cover has a little wear but the vinyl looks unplayed which is what I was after. Of course the UK or Japanese pressings are probably the preferred way to go with vinyl but I'll take what I can get at this point. The US was mastered by Frank DeLuna at A&M Studios. No credit given for the Canadian. I also got the UK New Gold Dream vinyl this week so I'm looking forward to listening to them all this weekend. :)

    Sorry for being off topic but I'm on a Simple Minds buying spree lately thanks to this thread!
     
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  22. Havoc

    Havoc Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Poland
    Spot on! As much as I love the band, I have a very hard time watching the Verona video. I was so disappointed in it because it doesnae project the raw power of what 8 accomplished performers create when they have a great catalogue of songs to play and an enthusiastic audience to listen. I was lucky enough to have seen that tour and even though I spent much of it trying to stay alive on the floor near the stage, I could tell there was something special being created that night that the video just does not capture. I dunno what's the hitch but it seems that the band's bootlegs are much better than anything officially released concerning its live material. There's a great recording of the entire Rotterdam show from 85 that is just bloody brilliant, flaws and all. While LITCOL is a fine album and I've enjoyed listening to it quite a lot as of late, the bootleg recording is the sound of a brilliant band playing its **** off for 2 hours while engaging the audience in such a warm and genuine way. There's a rough video of the Street Fighting Years tour from Germany at the Sportshalle in Munich(?) that conveys the performance much better than that over-edited and micromanaged video.

    That's one of the things I admired most about Street Fighting Years is that it is subtle and a thoughtful turn around from the calculations that went into Once Upon A Time. Don't get me wrong I love Once Upon A Time for what it is, a great sounding and uplifting modern rock record with a high level of conscious spirituality emanating throughout but Street Fighting Years captures the band saying, this is the best we can give of ourselves and this is who we are, we hope you enjoy it. It lost them much of the American audience but I'm guessing it was mostly those who only cared to know only what MTV will tell them about the band. There's nothing wrong with that sort of person, they like what they like, pay attention for a while then move on to the next thing that appeals to them and don't feel like doing much exploration. I enjoy doing the leg work as the payoff is well worth the ride. Whatever the band lost in U.S. dollars I think they made up for in what they gained by building a stronger bond with those willing to look beyond the videos and listen to what was being said.
     
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  23. Havoc

    Havoc Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Poland
    That's the plan. As much as I like the volumes associated with SFY, I think the Real Life volumes have just as much interesting material included although I'll prepare you in advance that I had a beef with Mark Taylor's uninspired live keyboard playing. Just listen to "Oh Jungleland" and see if you understand what I'll be getting at.
     
  24. Havoc

    Havoc Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Poland
    Good on you. Here's to a great weekend for you. Wife and daughter are out of town until late tomorrow so I'm going to reacquaint myself with my DVD-A on actual speakers for a while. I have been coveting the clear vinyl from a distance while getting a few copies of the white vinyl. I think it's time to stop coveting. Would you say there's a discernible difference in sound for Sparkle in the Rain across the different media formats?
     
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  25. Havoc

    Havoc Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Poland
    Around that time, they normally opened with Real Life that had a kind of quiet and long intro. You sure they were just taking it in? I've also seen bands allow the applause to run its course as many see bands not acknowledging the applause as rude and ungrateful.
     
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