FURTHER UPDATE – MARCH 4th: The crowdfunder campaign has been extended for two weeks – which I think also extends the time of the prize draw. The announcement of the winners won’t happen until April, so one can assume the prize draw is still active right now. If you’d like to make a donation and be in the prize draw, check with Carlton for certainty.
UPDATE – MARCH 2nd: Prize draw donations will be closing in a couple of days from now, so if you want to be in with a chance, be sure to make a donation ASAP!
Carlton Studios in Glasgow is a rehearsal space and professional recording hub for local bands within the city. As far as I am aware, Kenny Hyslop was involved in the set up of the studio.
Due to the lockdown restrictions that have gone on over this past year, the studio is in real danger of permanent closure. It needs funds to stay afloat. It needs our help.
Virginia Turbett has donated eight A3 sized prints to Carlton Studios to help raise funds. The prints are being auctioned off. The prints centre around the Scottish music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s and include images of Simple Minds, Bruce’s Records, The Skids, Alex Harvey and The Rezillos.
Please take a look at Dennis Ramone’s video in the Facebook link below….
You can donate by clicking HERE – please consider donating anything you can to this. Rehearsal and recording space such as these are vital for cities like Glasgow, where music is one of the major driving forces of the community.
The first three are all promo photos taken of Jim inside the Olympic Stadium in Stockholm.
The black and white photo has a newspaper headline attached to it on the back that translates in English as saying, “Jim Kerr in Simple Minds visited Stockholm Stadium on Saturday, where the band will play on June 9.”
The three photos have dates stamped on them. The two colour ones are dated April 1st, 1989, (a date of March 31st has been crossed out on one of them). The B&W one is dated March 31st, 1989. Checking what day of the week it was then, it tells me Saturday was April 1st.
It would seem from this that Jim made the trip esp. to get the promo shots done at the stadium. I was sceptical, but it is definitely the stadium in Stockholm that he’s been photographed inside.
Finally, the smaller photo (actual size is 7×5 inches) of an even younger Jim was taken backstage at Kant Kino on March 3rd, 1980.
Timely photos, all of them. (He looks a right poser in the one the Swedish newspaper chose to print to promote the concert. Lol)
One of the biggest names in the Australian music industry has passed away. Michael Gudinski created one of the biggest record labels in Australia – Mushroom, and it had on its books just about every Australian music artist or band you’d ever wish to name.
From Skyhooks to Split Enz to Kylie Minogue, many a musical act has at some point either been on the Mushroom label, or had some dealing or other with Mr Gudinski.
He also set up Frontier Touring, one of Australia’s largest tour promoters and was responsible for getting a wealth of worldwide acts to make the long-haul flights Down Under to tour the country and play live.
The Australian music industry owes a lot to him. He will be very sadly missed.
This book was produced by Virgin Records in 1982, and asked rock and pop stars of the time a standard Q and A. About 40 of them were printed in the book, including one “mystery star” who if you could name and send in a postcard to Virgin with your answer, you could win a cash prize.
I couldn’t work out who it was. I’ll share the relevant pages in the days to come, so you can have a go at solving the puzzle.
I had seen the one of Jim shared on Twitter some months back and I had genuinely thought I’d posted about it here but seemingly hadn’t.
I certainly remember the “lips, hips and quick wit” turn-ons making an impact and me thinking “well, I’ve got one out of three”. Lol. The only thing I have ever liked about myself are my lips.
I think he should have specified that the “hips” need to be slim and not child-bearing.
Quick wit? Yeah, I fucking wish! Yeah, he’s seen how “quick-witted” I am in front of him. Lol. More like “fuck-witted”. Nope! I’m the kind of person who thinks of a great come-back or put down HOURS after the event…or even the next day. No “quick wit” here.
So…decent lips, hips the size of a house and a slow, dumb fuck. Catch of the century! Lol
Oh…those boots! We agree on them, Jim.
“The cafes of Europe”! Hark at you! Mr Glasgow! Lol. I do love the inverted snobbery you’d sometimes exude. oh, why the hell not! Who could blame you? I’d be doing the same.
I would dream of a couple of hours in a tearoom with you. Sipping lapsang souchong and eating finger pieces and the loveliest, airiest scones – seeing as you don’t “do” dairy – what’s in place of the clotted cream, Mr Kerr? I’m having clotted cream on mine…with the most delicious wild Scottish raspberry jam. Cream first!
Yes. I still have such daydreams. My subconscious certainly wouldn’t allow me to have such wonderful imaginings during my sleep. I never dream about you now. Even in my sleep, too much “reality” creeps in.
Anyway…Stuart Holland posted Jim’s Q and A on SMOG and reminded me of it. I then went back to Twitter to hunt down exactly where this thing came from and found the source. Amazingly, someone was actually selling a copy on eBay, so I grabbed it.
I might share one or two others some time, but for now, here are Jim’s and Billy MacKenzie’s…
Today is the official calendar start of spring – but I much prefer to think of it in seasonal terms and don’t really feel any real sense of spring until the equinox on March 20th.
That in mind, I wanted to choose something that conjured up warmth and light and joy and optimism, and maybe a bit of Utopia and in the case of this song, enlightenment. Something to symbolise that, indeed, spring is on the way.
I knew it was a spiritual song. You can hear it and sense it without being told, as it delivers that sense, that feeling of a warm spring day. A warming of the soul.
But I actually hadn’t read the info on Dream Giver about it – or if I had, it was so long ago, none of it ever really sank in.
Having read it last night, I was moved by Jim’s words. Moved by how moved HE was by the song.
I can’t help but feel it was semi-autobiographical what he had written in the email? That perhaps it was he who had the dream of the wedding procession and of the Prince (aka Krishna) and the beautiful coquettish brides. That he was the man left standing in the loft apartment staring at the painting on the kitchen wall.
He has talked about the Bhagavad Gita several times in the past. It has had quite an influence on him over the years.
I enjoyed it too, having read it from him mentioning it again in recent years.
I’ll share the piece Jim had written about Superman v Supersoul below. There are so many days in which I miss him and I miss just…feeling with him, connected to him, part of him. More than just through music and through a “singer and fan” dynamic.
I know I have to stop going on about it! And I know I have to find some kind of closure as it has so obviously come to an end – whatever “this” was. Whatever connection I felt there was. Whatever skewed imagining of “togetherness” I had deludedly conjured up for myself and dreamed for myself. It has obviously faded.
For want of painting myself a dream and walking into it to experience it and live it in my subconscious, I better “get real”.
I miss the romance of the togetherness. Of feeling kindred. Of feeling sometimes I could allow to kid myself that, on the odd occasion, there was a “like mind”. That we were connected beyond the music. And that it wasn’t just me that felt it.
(The end of the first paragraph of Jim’s words … God is a DJ? “This is my church. This is where I heal my hurts.”)
UPDATE: (later the same morning) I mixed up my books! I tried to read Bhagavad Gita but got lost in the rambling preface of the copy I bought – an English translation of the book from German – and didn’t continue to read it. So in actual fact, I was mixing up my Siddhartas (which I have read) with my Bhagavad Gitas (not actually read yet) – and I’m wondering if Jim didn’t do the same in this email? I may just have to have another attempt at reading Bhagavad Gita.
One made a very long time ago – in March, 2016, in fact.
People are finding God in different places. Some stare at the sky. Others walk the desert. A friend of mine recently put forward the notion that God has taken to stalking the floors of discotheques!“
“The scenario in the song: An individual, closing his eyes after staring long and hard at a beautiful painting of a scene from the “Bhagavad Gita” finds that he is transported body and soul into the painted image – which in fact becomes reality all around him. There suspended in time for what feels like a whole night he finds himself drowning in the sights and sounds of a wedding procession which is taking place in the most heavenly blue moonlit garden.“
“All around him the most sensuous music drifts and he listens while watching the screams and laughter of the beautiful young brides who cannot contain themselves as they receive the flirting and teasing attention of an obvious boy prince, who must be no other than Lord Krishna… the sense of joy is palpable as peacocks mesmerize, and it’s there and then our character decides that this can only be the one true paradise…“
“Suddenly it’s gone, where to!, where from? The man is left staring out the window of his loft apartment at the shimmering lights of the cityscape; and the sprawling chaos of the streets below. He vows on the spot to completely change his way of life; and tears well as he shifts his eyes back to the small calendar painting, given to him free last year, on the street by a “devotee” and now hanging on his kitchen wall.“
