I had to reply to Toni Masson’s post on SMOG.
I totally get the critique coming in for the setlists so far that we’ve seen in the Antipodes. The biggest concerns for me are to do with the number of songs and the length of the set.
Firstly, it shouldn’t take over 100 minutes to perform 16 songs. There’s lag there if that’s happening. (As an example of how tight a set can be, when I saw Hamish Hawk at King Tut’s last July – he and the band performed a 14 song set (full length songs, exactly as they are on the albums) in just over one hour. In 90 minutes you should be able to perform at least 18 songs.)
Don’t You (Forget About Me) takes up TEN MINUTES of the set. Ten minutes! The original single is 4 minutes and 20 seconds long. I just looked at the timings for the Melbourne gig (the person who posted the whole of the Sydney and Melb. gigs broke the upload into individual parts with timing breaks so you can see how time is used for each song) and Don’t You goes for FOURTEEN MINUTES! That’s insane. I’m sorry, that is just so ridiculous. Two other songs could be performed in that time – I mean, as in Don’t You AND two other songs! You don’t need the crowd singing along for 10 minutes. It gets boring. Trust me! I’ve been in the crowd enough times to know that there is only so long that you’re willing to sing along to this song. To me, six or seven minutes is MORE THAN ample time to perform the song and have a short sing along. Ten minutes is too long. Fourteen minutes is taking the piss!
Belfast Child is also taking a minimum of 10 minutes to perform. The original single is 6 minutes and 39 seconds long. Allowing for a bit of time sequence shift, the song should be no longer than seven and a half minutes when performed live.
Now let’s add a couple more things and consider it within the context of the amount of time Jim is singing. He takes up about several minutes by chatting. In Sydney it was memories of first arriving on Australian shores; in Melbourne it was the appraisal (or otherwise) of Sarah’s dress; then there were band intros and most likely other bits of chit chat here and there. Okay…a minimum of 5 minutes for all of that (minimum!). Cherisse’s drum solo takes between 2 and a half to 3 minutes to perform. Sarah’s taking approximately 3 minutes to perform Amazing Grace. Theme For Great Cities is taking around 5 minutes to perform. Also within the performances of Belfast Child and Don’t You, there’s plenty of space for Jim to rest his voice.
Now, here’s my bone of contention with one of the things Toni said. He said ‘given their age and fysical work on stage [sic], we should understand’. Should we? Are The Who, The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, Bruce Springsteen and many other acts older than Jim and Charlie expecting this “allowance”? Either you’re match fit, or you’re not.
Toni then goes on to stress the same as I have done – that Belfast Child and Don’t You are much longer songs. With that point I’d argue they are already making their own allowances for their age and supposed physical exertion.
He also makes the point that in 2006 on the Black and White tour, the Brussels show was a 22 song set and went for just shy of 2 hours. I’d say let’s consider the 2012 setlists for 5×5 Live which needed to be a minimum 25 song set, given the manifesto of the tour (ie: five songs from each of the first five Simple Minds albums). Those gigs, on average, went for over 2 hours. Granted, there was no support act. But from what I can glean, there was no support for the indoor gigs in Australia, either. So, WHY did the Australians get such short sets? Why? Considering the length of time they had waited for the band to tour again, also the fact that it may just well be the band’s penultimate tour (if not final tour – given how Jim keeps talking in finality terms) – why was it so short?
Can we consider it in terms of value for money as well? The outdoor shows are a different beast, yes. The crowds are getting several acts performing on stage and for SM to perform a shorter set there is absolutely understandable. But when it came to Sydney, (okay, still possibly some leniency should be offered as they were performing two shows in one night – then again, I was at the Copenhagen gigs in 2020 and I have a setlist of one of the shows and it’s 19 songs long!) Melbourne, Adelaide and Gold Coast indoor shows, that shorter set just seems a bit of a letdown to me. The cost of good tickets for the shows in the UK are averaging around £90. That’s a LOT of money for a 16 song set! I know there are all these other factors involved. The size of the touring band entourage, the calibre of the act, the venues used, the promoters, etc, etc. But if we talk about it purely in terms of what you pay as a punter versus what you get on the night as a performance with the list of songs v duration of set, then…I feel that a 16 song set (or fewer! Sometimes there seemed to be as few as 14 songs) for the equivalent of £90 for Oz audiences is a bit…steep?
I’m also preparing myself that the sets won’t be any longer here in the UK or in Europe. They have Del Amitri touring with them as their support. It doesn’t mean the set couldn’t be longer. Yeah, I know I’ll be slaughtered for this but as an example: Hamish Hawk had support acts during the shows I saw him perform. I have two setlists of his to compare against. One from the MacArts at Galashiels. This gig had support from Alas De Liona. Hamish’s set on the night was 18 songs. Factor in the relatively small amount of original material he has under his belt and that’s a good sized set. Compare it to a similar time in the career of Simple Minds and they are performing 11 song sets! Whaaaaa?! Sometimes with repetitions of songs in the encores.
Sooo many factors to consider here, really. It’s amazing to me that SM were only performing 11 song sets in 1981 into 1982. Expanding it up to a maximum of 14 songs for the New Gold Dream tour.
So, seemingly, the crux of Toni’s post was to make song requests for the UK and European tour. Pleading for ‘not the same shows as 2022.’ He then had two lists. One titled ‘the songs we want to hear’ (not sure about the ‘we’ used there. Everyone is going to have their own list – which he has gone on to ask other fans to contribute to) and then one titled ‘songs we are bored [of]’. His lists were as follows (the wording in brackets are his):
SONGS WE WANT TO HEAR :
1) Street Fighting Years (full of drama, even more than Belfast Child, very rarely played live)
2) Premonition (that really dark masterpiece grunge-avant-la-lettre)
3) Speed Your Love to me (original, just to sing higher and higher and higher)
4) The American (ultimate bass synth to make the arena thrill)
5) Solstice Kiss (the best song of DOTH)
SONGS WE ARE BORED :
1) Sanctify Yourself
2) Let there be love
3) Dolphins
4) Promised you a miracle
5) Vision Thing
Mine would waver somewhat from that. Firstly, he can keep dreaming with song three on the first list. The only way I think Jim will do that is to perform the acoustic version. He doesn’t have the sustain in his voice to do the original. It’s too fast paced and he wouldn’t cope with it. He barely copes with the pace of Sannyfy as it is and only sings half the words and still completely fucks up the second verse by singing lines of the third verse instead and then when it comes to the third verse, he just sings it all over again. I can tell you now, he won’t take it off the setlist. It’s Yumi’s fave, so it’s here to stay everyone! If only she’d tell him he keeps fucking up the lines with each performance, maybe he’d pull his finger out and fix it! FFS.
Premonition would be fab. SFY…not my fave. It was performed in 2022 as well anyway. It did get an outing from time to time, Toni. Yes to The American – but I’d take a leaf out of Toni’s book here and stipulate that it needs to go back to that wonderful 1995 version in which all the backing vocal lines were in (in collective fame / Nassau Club days / across a curved earth / the eventful workouts – with some ‘here comes the flag’ and ‘handshake – this world’ repeated lines in for good measure).
I’d say yes to Solstice Kiss (Birdy) too. It may end up being the only song that survives being performed live from Direction of the Heart. Strange that for a band that is steadfastly wanting to buck against being seen as a ‘heritage’ band, that they are only performing two, sometimes only one song from their current studio album.
I can’t believe Toni is already tired of Vision Thing. Lol. That’s hilarious! So, ONE song from Direction of the Heart is enough? Nothing else in its place? First You Jump? Traffic? Perhaps even Planet Zero? Nothing else? Really? Okay….
I don’t get why ‘Dolphins’ is on his ‘kill’ list. Why? Promised You A Miracle? Nope. If we can endure Don’t You night after night, we can keep in PYAM in as well – especially as now Jim is starting to sing ‘belief is a beauty thing’ even if it is only once when he sings the line the first time. But, I understand why Toni is getting tired of it. I do at least understand why it has become draining.
Let There Be Love? Meh…I can take it or leave it to be honest. I’d prefer a TON of other songs in its place, for sure.
In summary: If they are going to stick to a 16 song set, then that can only disappoint many fans with the setlist. There is so much to question with it. If you are adamant you’re not a heritage act then….where are the songs that the band have produced since 1991? Why are songs like Belfast Child and Don’t You (Forget About Me) taking up such a huge chunk of the set (other than to give Jim as much downtime with his voice as possible)? This continuing fallacy that the setlists ‘change’ night after night. Hmmm… shifting 2 to 3 songs around hardly mixes it up well enough. I mean, in the case of something like 5×5 Live, rotating 2 to 3 songs made sense, as there was so much on the setlist to begin with. That made sense. Now? I also get the gripe that many have for Amazing Grace being there. I saw that Jim was saying in a recent interview he’d love to have Mahalia Jackson on his ‘dream dinner guest list.’ If so then, why don’t we hear Sarah sing one of Mahalia’s other songs on the tour? Didn’t It Rain? I’m On My Way? Walk Over God’s Heaven? Something actually more musically uplifting than Amazing Grace. I just feel that it lowers the mood and we don’t want that at a Minds gig, do we? Besides, doesn’t Belfast Child lower the mood enough already?
And…here I am. Still so invested in it all!
What do I want? How would my ‘Ins and Outs’ list look compared to Toni’s? Let’s play Devil’s advocate shall we? Here goes:
Songs I want to hear – with the caveat that I’ve never seen them be performed live before:
Sons and Fascination
Lightning
Pleasantly Disturbed (full version – not the truncated version from 5×5 Live)
Soul Crying Out
Premonition
Songs that can go:
Don’t You (Forget About Me) – yep, I’ll keep dreaming. God, I wish I’d have been around for 5×5 Live!
Sannyfy Yasel
Let It All Come Down
Alive and Kicking – controversial, I know…but I am pretty tired of it.
Mandela Day
I’ve put my two bob in on that one. Geez, I can waffle on about this band so much!