Seeing as it’s summer solstice this week, it seemed obvious to have this week’s Minds Music Monday be the seeming fan standout track from Direction Of The Heart – Solstice Kiss. Perhaps you could enjoy listening to it while having taken out a re-mortgage on your property to afford a glass of Macallan Rare Oak with it?
Wednesday’s solstice also falls on the anniversary of the album’s release. It’s now eight months since Direction Of The Heart hit the music stores and … I still can’t bring myself to listen to it! This state of affairs does disappoint me. Am I disappointed in myself? Or just more disappointed in how I am letting it affect me? I don’t know. I can’t escape my feelings. I don’t want to be left with this stigma attached to it. I’ve had such an emotional investment in this band for so long now…in the music, in Jim, and his words. All the bands I loved before them I discovered at a time looong before the Internet and social media. That made for a certain mystique and “rock stars” just felt otherworldly, inaccessible and intangible. Yes, you could write a letter and send it off to a fan club or perhaps if you found out who the artist’s management were but that really wasn’t something I did at all. It was very rare – INCREDIBLY RARE to hear of anyone getting a response from their favourite rock or pop star. So when I came to getting into SM, the last thing I ever expected was personal interactions. Genuinely. I started following their FB page because I wanted information about their history and to keep up-to-date with tour announcements and new music release news, etc. Never in a million years did I think that Jim was hanging around there and interacting with fans. You just think these things will be looked after by a band or artist’s management, not by the artist or band members themselves.
So, yeah…despite the rationale in my head that tells me not to take things personally, I had this strong personal interest and attachment to this band from very early in my new-found, diehard fandom. It’s slowly dissipating…by the same token, I’m a little fearful that rather than just getting to being at a more tempered and healthier level of fandom, that it’s dying away completely. I hope not. But I am noticing lately that it’s not so ‘Simple Minds this and Simple Minds that’ anymore. I’m no longer wanting to absolutely wax lyrical about them. I look at SMOG tentatively and don’t really feel inclined to be active on there or any of the group pages. I’m happy to wait for the tour details to hit whenever they do so. I’m not DESPERATE to know WHEN they are touring again. Hell, I’m even starting to not miss Jim so much. There’s a little niggling part of me that wished that he posted more regularly still but I think the interactions that happen from those posts are so rare now that…well, the posts themselves hardly matter anymore. Of course I love his writing, but the thing that made those posts most special was the interactions and they’ve largely been gone for around 4 years, maybe 5 years now.
The last time I wrote about this aspect of my fandom was around the album’s six month anniversary. Shortly after that I went to listen to it. Opened up Spotify, chose it, went to hit play and just …. Couldn’t bring myself to do it. I went and listened to Sparks instead.
I would listen to them EVERY DAY. They were my whole life. It was weird. Like I found a purpose or a reason for being. Life FINALLY started to make sense. Not even as passionate a fan as I was with David Bowie’s music, did I ever feel like his music gave me a reason for being. A reason for being alive, feeling like the world and my existence had purpose and meaning. But Simple Minds did that. To an extent where I couldn’t remember a time before them and before Jim.
Now? I’m kind of scared that I’m reverting back to “normal”. That it’s all petering out. The flowers in the vase have soaked up the last of the water and are limply hanging on to life. That Simple Minds will once again be my “also ran” band. That band that would pop up in the front of my mind when wanting something different to listen to. “Oh, yeah! Simple Minds – I haven’t listened to them for AGES!” Except this time I’ll be armed with knowing the whole back catalogue like the back of my hand: and it’ll be crying at the beauty of Kant Kino or Wonderful In Young Life, singing “Semi-Monde” and still dying to know where the fuck Jim got that from when listening to Sons And Fascination, pretending I have a hobby horse in my hands while listening to the galloping rhythm of Murder Story, picturing ‘heilan coos’ mooing during 70 Cities As Love Brings The Fall, seeing myself on the waters of Loch Lomond during Speed Your Love To Me, titilating tambourine touches through Celebrate… I could go on, but you get the gist.
I don’t want to change the name of this blog! I don’t want to fundamentally change its content. But where is its future? I’m just talking out loud.
Until then…happy solstice!
