Back nearly FOUR YEARS ago now, when I took those tentative steps into exploring the Simple Minds back catalogue and having quickly listened to Life In A Day and Real To Real Cacophony to move onto Empires And Dance and fall instantly in love…it was Twist/Run/Repulsion that was the first track I heard that absolutely blew my socks off. Oh…it was just…the summing up of the parts. Like all the elements of what was being done by the boys (to me, anyway) finally converged for a piece of perfection.
For many early SM fans (and I mean fans of early SM music, rather than long-time fans), as much of a masterpiece as Empires And Dance is to them, Twist/Run/Repulsion is a “bridge too far”. NOT FOR ME! It is absolutely EVERYTHING I love about that time in music, and the time in Simple Minds’ career.
It’s an unsettling piece, granted. It isn’t fluid and smooth. It jutters. The saxophones are jarring and uncomfortable. Pure Bowie on Neukoln wailing sax fest.
And then there’s Jim and those words. A completely different lyric to what was on the demo (which is equally as good). I love that he would just completely rewrite a song having demoed it. And…how he performs that vocal I will never know!
Anyway…here is a version of it posted on YouTube last week that tried to separate out some of the parts of the song…isolating some of the French verse, the sax, and the “chorus” backing vocal. The song continues to astound me. I will love it until my dying day. This version highlights all the components going into a Simple Minds song of the period.
Oh, f*** they were good. And still so! And still so…
I cannot for the life of me understand how a band could release such a perfect album as this and then go on to produce such pop/stadium/film soundtrack dross afterwards. Oh wait, maybe i can… they sold out for money. Nothing else SM ever did can match Empires & Dance. This marks a perfect era in electronic/art music. The likes of which were headed by the phenominal sound and image presented to the world by Gary Numan in 1979. He then went into the music dross wilderness but at least managed to pull himself back on track with Pure and so forth to this day, But lads, what the hell happened too you? Empires & Dance will forever be a huge and tragic demonstration of a band totally losing the plot. Oh, and Phil Oakey and gang you are not any better. Reproduction and Travelogue then sell out to disco and dross as well. Somethings are more important than money (even though Gary seems to be selling anything he can for it these days!).
Hardly sold out. They moved on to a different sound as they wanted to get involved in bigger stadium events and festivals. Jim said that himself in loads of interviews.
Anyway, who else was still playing this stuff 2-4 years later?
No one.