But … is he right?
This guy gets some factual information wrong, and I disagree on certain aspects, but 100% agree with others. Overall, he makes some really good points. See what you think.
I had been thinking about sharing this video after the past 24 hours. Jim’s post today just compounded my decision to share it.
Do I agree that their best years are behind them? No. But I’m not going to flesh out an argument as to why because I’m not even sure I’d believe myself. They certainly did make other great albums after Once Upon A Time.
We all have our differing taste. Look at me with my “pick n mix” Iggy Pop fandom. The first four albums, skip, Blah Blah Blah, skip, Brick By Brick, skip, Every Loser.
What I agree most on with this guy is that the music from Real To Real Cacophony to New Gold Dream was PHENOMENAL and still feels so incredibly underrated by the non Minds diehard.
I could see from my previous uni assignment and a short piece I wrote about New Gold Dream for it and the feedback I received for that from the students in my module that the average non Simple Minds fan really needs some persuading on even something as near perfect of a piece of conceptual aural art as New Gold Dream is. I mean, jeez!
Anyway, take it away, Julian… the floor is yours.
Hi again Larelle!
Those very early years will never be bettered. How can they?! It took all of the members of the band combined with playing live and in the studio to get to gel and know each other (if they didn’t already) to come up with all those ideas. A ‘melting pot’ if you like.
Can’t repeat that even though they nearly did for a couple of tracks back in 2008.
They certainly have a history of changing members. Look at 1981 – 1982 with the change in drummers. Didn’t hurt their upward trajectory but they peaked commercially with Once Upon A Time. I rate Street Fighting Years highly but it was so serious and political and quite frankly a bit of a downer compared to the previous album. Record company must have loved that!
Last time they came across as a band to me was 1995. No Derek, Mick & Mel but by eck what a live band. Not fashionable or breaking new ground musically but real onstage chemistry. If this had been the follow up tour to Once Upon A Time then more people would have been happy.
This of course is just one fan’s opinion. Doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. So many, many opinions out there in random.
All the best Larelle!
I guess that?s why Jim is always using that ?bus/van moving forwards? analogy. You can?t put the genie back in the bottle and all that. All the things were there – young, full of energy and imagination. The time to be prolific. Nothing else going on. Living and breathing it 24/7. Drugs! No matter how much people try and deny it, drugs DO have a tendency to manifest that creative spark and give the extra momentum to keep working and producing prodigiously.
Life progresses. Things change. At least all that they did then was all captured and can be enjoyed ?forever more.? ???