Please Stop Trying To Invalidate My Feelings! ‘Oh Jungleland’ Live And What It Means To Be A Fan

I can’t help how I feel. For the most part now I am staying quiet because as soon as a speak my mind and express how I feel I get all the crap retorts of akin to “I don’t hear what you hear,” “Just be lucky to get what you’re getting – they’re not getting any younger” (Like that should excuse the fact that, to me, a certain singer, in particular, gets carte blanche to offer performances that are very good at BEST but not actually THE BEST, and certainly not night after night and not in the endlessly espoused trope of “we give 100% night after night” – with heavy emphasis on the ‘Royal We’ in which everyone else is doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting), and lastly having my feelings invalidated by being told I am too cynical to love.

I would like to think that I have never invalidated another fan’s feelings in this way. What happened to it all being subjective? What happened to the understanding that we all don’t feel the same things in the same way?

A decade ago I was sssooooooooo in love with this band. I’d like to think I still love them. To me I do still love them. I just don’t love them in the way I did a decade ago, 5 years ago or even 12 months ago. If there wasn’t love there, would I have shed tears of joy listening to them perform ‘Sons and Fascination’ in Bournemouth and praying for them to perform it in Glasgow a couple of nights later? And then shed tears all over again seeing them perform at the Hydro?

I am very happy where I am in terms of no longer feeling that this band and their music is my whole life. That I was defined by their existence. I used to feel like I had no life until I properly ‘found’ them and that my life changed irrevocably when I dived wholly into their back catalogue. It took over and became my life. Years later, wise people were telling me I was in too deep and for the sake of my health I should find another outlet. I ignored them. I thought they were talking pish and I believed I had control of it. But I didn’t.

So, you can choose to call me cynical all you like because I know that what I no longer am is blinkered. What I used to be happy with and accepting of is now something I am no longer willing to accept. I spent around 28 Simple Minds gigs being happy just to be there and be in the presence of someone who I thought was “great.” I mean great as in a person I held in high esteem. A person who I naively believed was, although flawed, someone with an inherent desire for self-improvement and had some semblance of an empathetic nature to him. Over the past two years that observation and believe has slowly washed away. It overshadowed any path for me to still feel in love with the music. I’ve had to fight to somewhat restore it.

I read a very interesting article last week to do with King Creosote and how sticky the notion of divorcing the artist from the art is. It really spoke to me because this has been the exact thing I have been grappling with, especially over the past 12 months. It still has played on my mind recently. Those few recent Simple Minds posts prior to the tour beginning with Jim Kerr referring to former drummers in the band with a mere chronological numbering system (Drummer Number One, etc) and offering himself up as some superhero for seemingly adapting well to life on the road. Always referring to this ability to being ‘a type’ and how ‘special’ he is for that. Yet, in a recent interview he stated that his mother instilled in him the notion that he was ‘no greater or no lesser than anyone else.’ How I feel he really does need to practice what he preaches because it never truly comes across that way. There is always an underlying air of superiority and those two posts in particular were the complete antithesis to that philosophy he spoke of his mother having.

I wish I was one of those types that just likes the music and couldn’t give a toss about the lyrics. It’s not the case for me. What captivated me most when taking my deep dive into Simple Minds was the lyrics. I guess one could ask ‘Which came first? The crush on Jim Kerr or the love of the lyrics?’ If I go back to a decade ago, I’d say the lyrics did. And they have meant enough to me to have them tattooed on my skin. And had I had the finances and the nerve to continue going to the tattooists, I’d have even more lyrics than the single line of ‘I’m singing memories’ etched on my skin. I never wanted anyone’s likeness on me. Never wanted peoples names on me, but lyrics? Yes.

That significance of the lyrics makes it hard for me to divorce him from the songs. He’s written a lot of the lines, a lot of the words that I love. It breaks my heart still when I read interviews where he dismisses the meanings of the lines, where he talks about ‘not being a poet’ and that the words go with the music. Of course they do! But he was constantly trying to dilute their significance. And he continues to do that now but not in the way he used to. Now he tries to dilute them by just not giving enough of a shit to perform them properly!

As I say, I have been quiet recently. I’ve stepped away from the fan pages, and commenting on any of the band Facebook posts. I still read the SM posts but I rarely comment. I can barely conjure up the enthusiasm to give a post a like. Most of the time I don’t even give them a like because I don’t really like them. A decade ago, Jim Kerr was truly engaging with fans. Another element that drew me in so much. Ten years later, they are posted on his behalf and there’s no ‘heart’ to them any more. It’s just an exercise in promotion and that’s it. Hollow words. Soundbites. Self-congratulatory post-gig entries with photos taken at certain angles to hide the half-empty arenas I can only assume they are performing to. Save face. Also, kick those that helped you to get there while you’re at it.

The only fan page I continue to see posts from is Simple Minds International. A post from a couple of days ago shared a link to a recording of ‘Oh Jungleland’ recorded at Seattle, Washington. I had been looking at the setlists that were being shared from the shows so far and had been excited at the prospect of hearing the song being performed at Bellahouston Park next month. I decided to give it a listen. I almost instantly regretted that decision. It just didn’t sound quite right musically. Much like ‘Sanctify Yourself,’ all the funk had been washed out of it. I stuck with it a little longer, with my fingers firmly crossed that maybe, just maybe, Kerr would deliver a decent vocal with as near as damn hell as he’d ever get to delivering the lines as they should be sung. Seconds later, my heart sank further down to the pit of my stomach. I’m not sure exactly how long I lasted watching the clip but it was definitely no longer than 60 seconds. I was ‘gone in 60 seconds.’ I wish I could bring myself to endure the rest of it but I can’t. (I’ll place the video below for you to watch if you’d like to.)

Emotionally dented I decided to share my feelings through a Facebook post. I should have known better. Because I feel like I am not allowed to express my upset. I can’t even begin to explain how frustrating it is to have had something you have loved so much now be such a painful thing. That is why I have decided to remain quiet about it all now. It serves no purpose to me. All it does is confirm how far removed I am from being where I was ten years ago. If you had asked me on this day ten years ago where I would see myself in 10 years as a Simple Minds fan, I’d have said ‘Still in love. Still going to gigs. Still doing everything I’m doing now. This is it for me. I’m in for life.’ I’d have believed that.

After that 60 seconds of video I came up to my bedroom and played a vinyl copy of Once Upon a Time just to try and remedy what I’d heard. I WANT to be excited for Bellahouston! I don’t want to be here thinking about it in terms of it being £95 that I won’t get back and all the other things I could have done with that money. The other gigs I could have gone to, the other artists I could have seen, the other venues I could have gone to. I don’t want to think of it in terms of ‘Well, at least I’ll see Hamish again and KT again, and I’ll get to see Future Islands. Sod that other band that’s performing last.’ They’re meant to be the MAIN draw after all, aren’t they? I want to be excited to see them!

A point about the band being different to the one that played on the album and therefore that can’t help but make it sound ‘different.’ I don’t expect it to sound EXACTLY the same. Not at all! But I expect it to sound ….. meaningful. Musically vibrant and lively.

My counterpoint to it would be to give the example of The Anchoress’s most recent gig in Glasgow, or in fact any of her shows that I’ve been to over the past two years. Her band is made up of musicians that didn’t play on Confessions of a Romance Novelist or The Art of Losing, or on the new reissue of her first EP, Communion II – yet, Leoni Jane Kennedy, Charlie Cawood and Keir Adamson have a level of musicianship that means they have adapted wholly to delivering the songs in the way Catherine desires them to. In fact, I’d go so far as to say they make the music sound BETTER than it does on record. And that should also be the case when it comes to Simple Minds, should it not?

Then again, a lot of the time when it comes to Simple Minds and their live performances, it’s not the musicians letting the side down but the man who is front and centre. The same one who expects everyone to perform at the very best, yet very obviously has a different bar for himself to reach. One that I feel he increasingly struggles to reach, as low as it gets. I am not fooled by his rhetoric.

Well, either I’ll let you know in just under six week’s time what I thought of Simple Minds at Bellahouston Park or the post after the show will be all about Hamish, KT and Future Islands. We’ll see!