I have vinyl listening sessions when the mood takes me. I usually listen to two or three albums in a session. For yesterday’s session I had the firm idea of listening to Hamish Hawk’s Heavy Elevator and from there I was going to see where the mood took me. Most likely a David Bowie album from there. I never nearly listen enough to DB these days. Perhaps it is a little too painful to delve into his back catalogue too much? As I find with the passage of time that his passing feels like there is an ever-deepening void from his absence on planet Earth.
Alas, my plans immediately changed when I came to go through my vinyl stack and found that I actually don’t have a copy of Heavy Elevator on vinyl. My only copy is on CD. I wasn’t in the mood for the HH music I have on vinyl – Heavy Elevator was what I wanted to hear – particularly the opening track ‘Vivian Comma.’ It had been playing in my head all that morning. It was the lines of ‘The perils of Scorpio ascending / A will to tell a world I’m pretending.’ They were hitting me yesterday. There’s a beautiful melancholia to that song – and its instrumental has recently been used as the band’s ‘walk-on’ music at the gigs. So the song has this duel pull on me of being something to wallow in but something full of joy of knowing that any second, Hamish would hit the stage and be thrilling me with his joyous spirit, off-kilter stage moves and brilliantly baritone vocals.
I digress.
So, a change of plan was needed. My choice was The Anchoress’s The Art of Losing. The tears flowed with songs like ‘Unravel’ (which she had previously dedicated to me at a gig), ‘5AM,’ ‘The Heart is a Lonesome Hunter,’ and ‘My Confessor’ (the most recent dedication which I was given in Glasgow). Yes, I wallowed in its beautiful catharsis.
After that, I did reach for a Bowie album. Heathen – one of my all-time favourites of his. ‘Slow Burn’ is beautiful, as is ‘Slip Away.’ I used to listen to ‘I Would Be Your Slave’ so much, thinking about “that man from that band” and playing it whilst in the depths of utter devotion. Even though the lines would hurt, feeling true ‘Do you laugh out loud at me?’ and ‘Open up your heart to me / Show me all you are.’ Be careful what you wish for, folks!
I don’t think David’s voice sounded any better than it did on that album. It left me with a feeling of just how very much I miss him. That my devotion to him was always so very different to what came with Kerr.
Finally, I felt cleansed enough to reach for Sons and Fascination. I wanted to feel something of that love again. The love of the music. The beauty I hear on that album. The words, his voice, the instrumentation. The brilliance of it. There is so much on that album – from that opening of ‘In Trance as Mission’ – that sense of travel and movement, to the utter funk of ‘Sweat in Bullet,’ to that line that always gets me on the next song ‘When the other side of midnight calls / Remind me I’m glad to be here.’ Yes, I needed reminding! ‘Boys From Brazil’ is the apex for me. It was from the very beginning and remains so. Then over to side two. Dance floor anthem ‘Love Song’ – it has it all. Burchill’s guitar on ‘This Earth That You Walk Upon’ still hits me in “the feels” as the Gen Zee’ers like to say. The title track…the title track – yes, ‘Thank you for the voice / Thank you for the eyes / Thank you for the good times’ because they were good times.
I want to remember those ‘good times.’ To be thankful for the past decade. I shared my vinyl plays on my socials yesterday and when I started to play Sons and Fascination I had captioned my photo with “because I still want to be in love.” I do. I can’t even begin to describe how much that album and its “twin” Sister Feelings Call mean to me, have meant to me this past decade.
I have been accusing the fans that are seeing the band at gigs recently of getting caught up in all the nostalgia that comes with an act like Simple Minds. That this nostalgia blights their objectivity to see the band for how they really are now. All that ‘Jim Kerr is like a fine wine’ pish – all wine tastes the same to me, supposedly “fine” or otherwise – it just tastes like vinegar. Always has, always will. I’d rather have an Irn Bru in all honesty. If we want to talk in analogies, then Kerr was like champagne – full of fizz and left me heady, but is now just a corked old bottle of vinegar. A bottle of Bucky. But that’s just my own feeling. I’d rather dabble in the memory of the champagne – remembering its headiness and watching its fizz from videos of the past. I’ll let my own nostalgia take me there. I’d rather that than continue to add to the echo chamber. I want to keep the love for that time. The time where I feel that maybe there was something salvageable within him. The one who was wary of those who declared their love for Simple Minds so sycophantically. The one who hated the cynics but doubted the sycophants too. Not the one of today who wallows in it all without any sense of irony or sardonic wit.
For the past week I have been wondering what to do with this blog, yet again. It feels like a facade to continue to refer to it as being a Simple Minds blog and I feel like an idiot for the web address to be “priptona weird.” I wore every bias on my sleeve when it came to my fandom. It was so obviously all about Jim Kerr and was rarely about Simple Minds. It would have been much more accurate back in the day to have labelled it a blog dedicated to Jim Kerr. It really isn’t that any more. But what the hell is it? If I want to keep it going under the guise of being a Simple Minds blog then I have to rise above my own feelings about them (him) in the present. Or I keep it as what it has always been – MY BLOG focussing on MY love and MY feelings for the band which would pretty much put an end to it being anything like contemporary. Which I guess is okay. I mean, if it’s okay for a band to keep making new music but then never play it live because that’s not what the promoters want, and that’s not what brings in the punters and the funds, then…
I don’t want there to be anything ugly here! So, I think it’s where I have to go. When it comes to live music and gigs these days, so many other acts are appealing to me and getting me excited these days. Simple Minds just don’t do that for me any more – that’s the cold, hard truth of it. It’s not bitterness talking. There’s a disappointment, sure, but I have chosen to seek my live music joy elsewhere. To the grassroots. To the burgeoning. To those who put on a fantastic show for at least one third of the cost of a Simple Minds show. I no longer find them value for money. The only thing that is allowing me to see Bellahouston Park as something remotely akin to “value for money” is the calibre of support acts on the day, Hamish, KT Tunstall and Future Islands. I’m excited to see them. I’m excited to be with friends. I’ll be praying the weather returns to being good because MY GOD we had a really great spell of fantastic weather these past few weeks. Amazing. You’d never know it to see Glasgow today! Lol.
Jim Kerr gave me that love of live music. Before him, my experience of great live bands was an exception to the rule. I was spoiled by my geography as the only bands I held in any esteem for having a great live sound were Aussie bands and even then it was only a few. Over the past decade that has grown, and particularly within the past two years – I have found so many great live bands.
I want my love for Simple Minds to live on. But that won’t be by going to any more of their shows. Bellahouston Park will be my final show seeing them. It really has been a great ride, but my nostalgia for the band will be buried deep in the past so my love can hopefully live on (and on).
