Simple Minds Album by Album Thread

Here's a question, the first version I received was a jewel case with a silver platter containing white etching. My wife sent it to me while I was in the Middle East. I had heard there were digi-packs available but she couldn't find them. I also read that there is a hybrid version that I can't seem to verify whether the vendors I see on Amazon carry or not. I also got my hands on a numbered digipak but didn't open it yet. Has anyone been able to track down a hybrid SACD of Cry?

 

I'm not sure about digipaks in the US; I'm only aware of the regular jewel case version.

As for the SACD, I've never seen one but here's a listing on amazon.uk. Only one used copy currently available... 99.99 GBP!!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cry-Simple-...d=1409248600&sr=1-7&keywords=simple+minds+cry

The Dream Giver listing says this came in a super jewel case and says "SACD" on the spine, but otherwise the packaging is very similar to the regular CD.

 

It's an OK album. I remember being an avid SM.com discussion poster. I swear it was the best band discussion board of all time. Too bad its gone like all good things.

I have the standard jewel case, the digi-pak with the numbered slipcase. I tried buying the SACD on Amazon from a seller claiming it was a SACD, that was A to Z'd right away.

I also have 2 Cry singles mentioned before, they both have the SM.Com community avatars on a mini poster insert. I remember Jax, Ian, Lawrie, Cmoon03, LoveBlender, Sera, SpaceTrace, and all the other PubBores on that site.

 

So what dark fate has befallen the SM.com forums? I've only now had time to get into something like this recently and I normally avoid these things like the plague but we've settled into an evening routine where my wife wants me nearby and not buried in some book or with headphones on. We normally have a baseball game on or something on current world events and talk but I can check in and post without too much of a problem. I would think that a SM forum would be a little more tame and diplomatic than most.

 

I meant to mention these in my post - I'm glad to own these singles.

 

I was quite active on there as well, and I believe I had the same user name, or something similar such as "SurlyAlmighty"

 

"European dance music"... That pretty much sums this period up, for good or worse. Personally I'm ambivalent; while reassuring to see the band getting a proper studio album out, and embarking on tours again (The Floating World '02 festival tour / the Alive And Kicking tour of '03) the album material was pretty hit or miss. Title track (and lead single) quickly gets repetitiously abrasive. Second single, the triflingly titled Spaceface is better, but still the one-note, nonsensical aim prevail, especially lyric-wise.

On the other hand, European single release New Sunshine Morning is at least musically proficient, with an arrangement and sound that invoke memories of Glittering Prize. Yet another mentionable track is the final (European) single One Step Closer. Co-produced/arranged by Italian hipsters Planet Funk. From its majestic opening to the (slightly forced) singalong chorus, the miniepic emanates the idiosyncratic big sound, the band is mostly remembered for.

Planet Funk also released a single version of the song in '03, and included an instrumental mix (sans the intro) on their Non Zero Sumness album in '02. Personally, the definitive version of One Step Closer is arguably Planet Funk's own extended version released on their self-titled 2009 compilation. It extends the intro, and downmixes Kerr's vocals a bit.

Honorable mention goes to b-side cut Lead The Blind, employing chants in a electronic soundscape similar to Superman V Supersoul. Positively puzzling and intensly intriguing.

 

^ Nice critique. Yes the material is a bit uneven, but there's a sense of exploration and fresh ideas. While the first two post-Mick albums have their charms they sound like they were trying fortify a sinking vessel; Cry is like casually putting a new ship in the ocean to see how it fares...

 

I guess I just see the record as a nice collection of songs where Jim and Charlie hooked up with some of the pioneers of the new music scene and the results worked pretty well. I'm glad the band went back to making records the old fashioned way as I enjoy their last two quite a bit (surprised?). I'm easier to please than GLM (you big meanie) and am always looking for reasons to like something so I'm sure my perspective is somewhat out of phase than many. I went through some extremely tough times physically and mentally and part of the recovery was learning to see things in a different way which may seem like blissful ignorance to some even though I'm well aware of things.

Cry is just "easy listening" for me, not life altering, not heavy or deep but kind of along the lines of something I'd put on when entertaining.

I will agree that the best things from Cry were the tour and the fact that it got those wheels turning again. I had to move mountains to get back to California to see them and traded in a lot of favors but it was well worth it, even if the concert included "chicken or steak".

On a side note, I had a dream where there was a get together of people in the forum and GLM looked exactly like his avatar, he was a cartoon living among us kind of like Roger Rabbit. Nobody even gave him a second look but I had issues with it and kept asking people if they saw the shirtless cartoon guy or if I was hallucinating. You see what you do to me GLM? You're living rent free in my left ventricle.

 

Hahaha crazy Havoc. You seem like a genuine nice guy, altruistic and warm.
Certain music appears to appeal to certain temperaments (or the opposite way), so do Simple Minds.
Up next, Silver Box (2004) or Early Gold (2003) or Italian release Live And Rare (2003 iirc) maybe?

 

Likewise! Tell you what. How about we make it GLM's choice and you go ahead and write it up. Then the others can pick it up with the rest of the SM albums and we can make it a test run for our lil' music club. I also wanted to know what everyone thought about talking about the Lostboy album. I take daily walks around our facilities when configuring our backup media and I've had it in my Zune lately and have been liking it.

 

Accepted. Here in Denmark its past midnight, and Im off to bed = the kids will be up again way too soon. Ill think/dream of a write-up in the meantime.

 

Pleasant dreams and here's to your not dreaming of a Sea Serpent named Havoc sitting in the lounge of a 3 star hotel.

 

I never really bought into the whole Neon Lights - Greatest Hits - Cry campaign, although the songs I heard from Cry are decent in and of themselves. I thought the Cry album is probably the least "band" album in their catalogue - it looks like even Burchill has minimal creative contribution. As a sidenote, I didn't care for the packaging/artwork of any of these records, either.

However, I am grateful for their existence insofar as they did reboot the band, allowed them to (finally) get a stable lineup (Kerr-Burchill-Gayor-Duffy-Gillespie) and mount a real global tour, their first since 1995. I was fortunate to catch a rare US visit in 2002 (they were the sole artist on the bill in Chicago, unlike most dates which were shared with latter-day INXS). The tour was a great celebration of their entire history. Again, Gaynor's return was a positive, and Gillespie/Duffy are credited by Kerr himself for helping to revive several pre-NGD tracks for the first time in 20 years and deeper album cuts from the NGD-Good News era that had also been forgotten. In Kerr's journal notes, he often notes this 2002 period as the start of the present day Minds touring momentum, while conceding that the backing album at the time ''Cry" was only so-so.

 

The compilation years (2003-2004)

Early Gold (2003)
The first attempt of an early compilation since 1982's Celebration (excluded from the 2002 remasters series), the tracks for this compilation were hand-picked by the band themselves. Incidentially, all featured tracks were album versions, but curiously, The American appeared in its 7" single edit. Still, the selection presented an excellent view of the early discography, special kudos for including deep cuts and RTRC highlights Premonition and Factory.
The release slot coincided with the "Alive & Kicking" tour of 2003. In the end, Early Gold was allegedly a bigger commercial succes than 2001's The Best Of, being the previous compilation. The growing appreciation for the band's early history propelled this compilation in certain revisionist hipster circles.

Track Listing

1. Life In A Day
2. Chelsea Girl
3. Changeling
4. Factory
5. Premonition
6. I Travel
7. Celebrate
8. Thirty Frames A Second
9. The American (Single Edit)
10. Love Song
11. Sweat In Bullet
12. Promised You A Miracle
13. Glittering Prize
14. Someone Somewhere (In Summertime)
15. New Gold Dream


Live And Rare (2003/04)
Vodafone Italy commissioned the band to re-record DYFAM for a new advertisment, and offered a limited edition collection of rare and live material. The White Spaces mix of The Man Who Sold The World outstrips the album version easily, while New Sunrise, - the acoustic version of New Sunshine Morning, appears as a different, and arguably superior mix, with added effects and instrumentation. Two new cover songs also surface, White Light / White Heat and Dirty Old Town, the latter is notable for including Mick MacNeil. Effectivly the first recording with the Minds since 1989. A personal highlight is the inclusion of the Verona version of Belfast Child, a definitive live rendering, and previously only available on VHS.

Track Listing

1. Don't You (Forget About Me) (Gerret Frerich's Radio Mix)
2. The Man Who Sold The World (White Spaces Main Mix)
3. New Sunrise (Alternative Mix)
4. White Light / White Heat
5. Dirty Old Town
6. Belfast Child (Verona 1989 Live)
7. Mandela Day (Verona 1989 Live Edit)
8. Alive And Kicking (LITCOL)
9. Love Song - Sun City - Dance To The Music (LITCOL)
10. New Gold Dream (LITCOL)
11. Don't You (Forget About Me) (Perky Park's Radio Mix)
12. Biko (Album Version)
13. Spaceface (DJ Tomcraft Remix)

Thus clearing the way for the band's first anthology box set, the highly anticipated (amongst fans) Silver Box...

 

This is around the time I temporarily stopped purchasing SM stuff. I started getting back into Big Country collecting and listening. BC was now my favorite band and Simple Minds 2nd-5th. Adamson was now my guitar hero and Kerr with his buddy Sigmond lost appeal.

 

These came out while I was in the Middle East and just wasn't able to pay the kind of attention I wanted to. Early Gold looked interesting for the cover and for sentimental reasons but I never did bite at these. Whenever I was home for a bit I was trying to get to know my daughter and I think I fell behind a bit. I guess the question is if it would be worth it to track these down.

 

Live and Rare seems like it may be worth seeking.

 

I can get behind the notion of appreciating things for what they are instead of trying to find faults, based on hard-won wisdom . Interesting set of posters in this thread

Anyway...Early Gold must have been an eye opener for folks who dismissed the band as an 80's stadium act...for us educated non-hipster fans it's inessential. I have soft spot for the 1982 Arista years comp Celebrate though, which picks the heavy hitters from the 3 albums and has a nice cover.

Would like to have a copy of the Italian comp just for Dirty Old Town with Mick. Still hoping he will one day return to the band...such a great musician.

 

Early Gold is essentially Celebration version 2.0, though I think the compilation mertits its existence by including SAF/SFC and NGD. The hardcore base may of course nitpick the selection, and ponder the absence of key tracks as Pleasantly Disturbed, Calling Your Name, This Fear Of Gods, Theme For Great Cities and King Is White And In The Crowd. Still its a good presentation of the early back catalogue.

Live And Rare is recommended for the fanbase, there's several interesting remixes, The Man Who Sold The World arguably takes the top slot. The hookup with MacNeil (Dirty Old Town) is hardly very exciting, though it does make fans question the difficulty in mending the pieces between (I assume) Kerr and MacNeil.
As stated, Belfast Child alone makes this purchase worthwhile. Personally I've always been somewhat lukewarm (or at best ambivalent) regarding the studio version. The Verona version is so excessively flamboyant, that it seem to transcend the turgid pathos of the album cut by sheer pomposity. A rare situation where going bigger is doing better.

 

Nothing wrong with genuine critiques and honestly I would consider myself the oddball where evaluating music and a few other things are concerned. I consider GLM's summaries the attention to detail that I OD'd on when I was in the military and don't have the energy for right now so he's providing a service.......whether he wants to or not. After nearly 2 decades of pre-flight and post-flight, customs and courtesies, mountains of paperwork, this college...that college, I'm just loving life skimming over the details and reading the products of other people's research.

I liked Celebrate as well, I thought the cover was awesome. I gazed at it for many moments while playing it in my "Realistic" brand portable cassette stereo system.

 

Don't have much to say about Early Gold (the X5 box makes it superfluous), but I'd really like to have a copy of Live and Rare someday.

 

Pardon me but...

Silver Box (2004) [working title: A History]
A box set consisting of rare material aimed at collectors was initially proposed back in 1990, eventually transforming into the Themes Volumes. In 1998, the quickly withdrawn compilation of the band's early demos, The Early Years 1977-78, was intended as a series of archival recordings. The subject of an archival box set resurfaced in 2000, in time for the band's 25th anniversary in '01. The idea came and went. By 2003 the concept of a rarities box surfaced yet again, it would include all the rarities Virgin had the rights to, radio sessions, shows, outtakes et al. The release limbo of 1999's Our Secrets Are The Same was similarly addressed, and rather than being issued as a separate album, it would be packaged in the box as well.

Personally I regard Silver Box as a obligatory purchase, particular CDs #1 (1979-1980) - #2 (1981-1985) and CD #5 (OSATS) is worthwhile for connaisseurs.

Track Listing

CD #1. 1979-1980
1. Life In A Day (Live)
2. Chelsea Girl (Live)
3. Here Comes The Fool (Live)
4. Changeling (Session)
5. Premonition (Session)
6. Citizen (Session)
7. Room (Session)
8. I Travel (Demo)
9. Celebrate ((demo)
10. Thirty Frames A Second (Demo)
11. Twist/Run/Repulsion (Demo)
12. Capital City (Demo)
13. New Warm Skin (Demo)
14. Constantinople Line (Demo)
15. Careful In Career (Demo)

Disc highlights:
Here Comes The Fool - from the LIAD era, though never recorded in studio, it was something of a live favorite at the time. Notable for MacNeil's synth work.
Cracking session versions of especially Changeling, Premonition and Citizen (Dance Of Youth).
New Warm Skin - sardonic EAD b-side. Notable for Burchill's mesmerizing riffs.

CD #2. 1981-1985
1. The American (Demo)
2. Life In Oils (Demo)
3. Sweat In Bullet (Demo)
4. Love Song (Demo)
5. Promised You A Miracle (Session)
6. In Trance As Mission (Session)
7. Someone Somewhere (In Summertime) (Session)
8. Glittering Prize (Session)
9. Hunter And The Hunted (Session)
10. The Kick Inside Of Me (Session)
11. New Gold Dream - Take Me To The River (Live)
12. Don't You (Forget About Me) (Rehearsal)

Disc highlights:
Life In Oils - accomplished SAD/SFC leftover, "a misty oil painting" (Steve Hillage)
The NGD session showcase, particular a flawless rendering of Someone Somewhere (In Summertime) stands out.
Achtung baby: The live behemoth of NGD with Bono is from Barrowlands '85. Very turgid.

CD #3. 1985-1991 (live versions)
1. Waterfront
2. Ghostdancing
3. Book Of Brillant Things
4. Once Upon A Time
5. All The Things She Said
6. Alive And Kicking
7. Sanctify Yourself
8. Mandela Day
9. Real Life
10. See The Lights

Disc highlights:
Once Upon A Time is the longest recorded version with 3 bridges (iirc) and plenty of Robin Clarke.
All The Things She Said is likewise very long, with some good percussion work.
The standout track is definitely the 1988 Wembley version of Mandela Day, quite possibly the finest rendering ever.
This is where the rarity section stops. Uninspired selection of previously bootlegged live versions. No demos, no sessions, mainly filler.

CD #4. 1991-1995 (live versions)
1. Travelling Man
2. East At Easter
3. Banging On The Door
4. Stand By Love
5. Oh Jungleland
6. King Is White And In The Crowd
7. Big Sleep
8. Let There Be love
9. Ghostrider
10. Belfast Child
11. She's A River
12. Up On The Catwalk
13. Hypnotised

Disc highlights:
Like the previous disc, it's a regular letdown.
While the '91 live versions of Travelling Man (novel coda), East At Easter and King Is White And In The Crowd are all good performances, the feeling of a missed opportunity persists. Where's the genuine rare material?

CD #5. Our Secrets Are The Same.
No where close to the "lost black album" its been cracked up to be in certain fan circles, but still miles ahead of the previous two discs in terms of material value.

 

As I mentioned in the OSOTS discussion, I never got this box. So I will remain silent for now.

 

I've "heard" this boxset and can hear any time I wish. But I don't.
Once was enough and nothing in it will make me seek out and purchase it, then and now.