Released 39 years ago this week (anniversary coming up on March 12th) is the second single from Sparkle In The Rain, Up On The Catwalk.
After Waterfront, this was one of the first Simple Minds songs that I truly took any notice of. I think it was the video that captured me more than anything. I remember the video getting A LOT of screen time on the Australian music shows around at the time – Countdown on the ABC; “Switch on your TV, we may pick him up on Channel 2” that line from Bowie’s Starman always had a certain extra significance for anyone growing up in Sydney at the time as the government funded ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) was colloquially known as “Channel 2.” Had you lived in the inner city, preferably anywhere near the North Shore (the ABC transmitter was located at Gore Hill, near Artarmon) then you most likely received a clear signal and strong reception of the channel on your telly. Those of us out in the south-western suburbs of Sydney struggled to get anything too clear. I mostly remember wanting to watch anything on Channel 2 being an arduous exercise. I digress! The other music show around at the time was on Channel 7, hosted by Donnie Sutherland, called Sounds. There were weekend music shows as well. A thing called Nightmoves was on as well. Finally, there was the forerunner to Rage starting on the ABC, a show imaginatively enough called “Music Video” which was the nearest thing we had to MTV at the time as it ran all night on Fridays and Saturdays. I still have a reply letter from the show requesting more U2 videos being shown stuck in the pages of my diary.
Again, I digress!
It was through watching these shows that I would get exposed to other music. I was veering away from listening to radio by that point and it seemed the music video was going to be the future. I wouldn’t exactly describe Simple Minds as being at the “cutting edge” of the art but some of their videos certainly were making their mark upon me. Promised You A Miracle, Catwalk, Speed Your Love To Me, Alive And Kicking and All The Things She Said all managed to make an indelible impression upon me in one way or another.
For me, Up On The Catwalk’s video had a kind of sophistication to it. I was intrigued by the masked characters strutting the catwalks in the background. I was also mesmerised by Jim’s constant jigging about. He is in full jackrabbit mode in the video. As much as I am in full admiration of Brian McGee as a consequence of fully discovering the back catalogue and stepping into my diehard fandom, prior to all that was the very early exposure I had to Mel Gaynor’s drums. It was those cracking bombastic drums on the Sparkle In The Rain tracks that first really had me sit up and take notice of Simple Minds. The drums on Waterfront, then the drums on Catwalk.
As the album opener and with Mel’s audible count-in starts and then that THWACK of him cracking that snare just cuts through everything – it sets a tone as if to say “Right – are you ready? Here we go!” I mean, just within those few seconds of that, compared to that beautiful shimmering opening of Someone Somewhere In Summertime, tells you from the off that you are in for a completely different aural experience with Sparkle compared to NGD.
I can see why, as a 13/14 year old at the time it was released, why Sparkle In The Rain was their first UK No. 1 album – it just cut straight into what a teenage kid was absolutely loving right at that point musically. And I can see where the divide in the fanbase happened as a consequence. The divide between NGD and Sparkle denotes a generational divide. By and large, the New Gold Dream set was mostly made up of fans that started out with the band from their early beginnings. The age group of the band themselves, and older. Sparkle brings in the young pretenders. The upstarts. The new breed. The teens. A generational gap can be as short as seven years, in terms of musical tastes, lessons at school, trends in fashion, popular toys, etc, etc. The leap artistically for Simple Minds from that beautiful fairy tale, ethereal, cathedral spire of New Gold Dream to the raw, barebones, rough, brash, bombastic Sparkle In The Rain absolutely carried through in the change and altering of their fanbase.
Back to Catwalk itself. I think it was probably the first time I took notice of any of Jim’s lyrics as well. It was that “who’s who” name call at the end of the song that I remember taking most notice of. Wondering who the hell these people were, if the names were unfamiliar to me, and wondering how I could find out about them.
Jim has stated that the book by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master And Margarita, was an influence on the writing of the lyrics to Catwalk, but I am yet to work out exactly where and how that influence comes across.
I really like the 12” version of the single. We really are heading into the age of the 12” remix now and for Sparkle In The Rain some of the best 12” singles in the Minds catalogue were produced. They loved themselves a 12” remix anyway and had been producing them since 1980 with mixes of I Travel and Celebrate but they were quite underground and not that easy to get hold of. By the time of SITR, it was pretty much mandatory for bands to produce 12” singles alongside the (usually edited) 7” versions of their singles.
In celebration of the release of Up On The Catwalk, I am choosing the fantastic 12” version of it to highlight for today’s MMM. Enjoy! Happy Anniversary, Up On The Catwalk.
(P.S. I do recommend having a watch of the video on YT as well though if you haven’t seen it for a while. Jim is looking mighty fine in the video, albeit worryingly artificially tanned! Lol. Another dividing point – peely wally Jim of 1982 far removed from artificially tanned and coiffured Jim of 1984. No more of that “New Romantic” poncing, it’s all that “commercialism” now boys!)
