Category: Blog

Well, I don’t remember the experience that well. It was quite a long time ago and I have an appalling memory, but I certainly remember being deeply affected. The final scene of him laying prostrate on the bed – knowing full well he could and would die doing it?! Just so, so sad! I very rarely cry watching films. I’m never easily moved. I can never suspend my disbelief enough. But I did with this. John Hurt’s performance is astounding! I cried buckets! The final scene stayed with me for many days afterwards. And to this day, when I hear Barber’s Adagio For Strings, I can see those final scenes in my head. Adagio For Strings has a very Pavlovian affect on my tear ducts as a consequence.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the film I refer to is The Elephant Man.

Okay, two things I need to speak about here. I was going to do it on the Simple Minds Facebook wall at first…but thought I’d spare everyone (and Jim) having to read my written diatribe.

ONE:

People who leave moaning comments on the SM Facebook wall about what they dislike/would change/do different/pretend to give “advice” on/generally piss on shit. STOP IT! STFD & STFU!

My very sage (and recently departed) brother gave me a piece of advice I always stand by, “if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing”. It worked for David. It works for me.

Yes, you can by all means dislike something, many things. We all do. But in the age of the Internet and social media some appear to think that this gives them a birthright to spew verbal diarrhea (or a term I heard Stephen Fry use years ago, which I still love – arse gravy) about ALL their “opinions” – mostly the bad ones. People have no restraint. No control switch. They’ll then smack down the “free speech” card on your table. No!

Freedom of speech is knowing you live in a country/society in which you are safe to “express” that opinion…it doesn’t mean you HAVE to express it/feel compelled to do so/have your words heard despite all costs. It’s not freedom to be a dick!

But, I digress.

If I dislike something, I may discuss it on a personal level with selected people. That’s fine. It’s “one on one” conversation. But if, for example, Jim Kerr puts a post on the Simple Minds wall about a particular song I’m not so enamoured with, I don’t pass opinion on it. Why should I? What would be the point in me saying “Well Jim, I don’t really like this song…but whatevs”? What’s constructive about it? My opinion doesn’t count. For as much I might dislike it (yes, I am refraining from using the word “hate” as I like to think that there isn’t a single Simple Minds song I “hate” but merely dislike or are my “least favourites” – call it sycophancy if you must – I call it respect), there are many others that will love it, most likely including the man himself. I mean, chances are, he wrote it after all!

Just stop moaning! You don’t like the set list…why did they leave this song out?…why is this song STILL on it?…blah, blah, blah…whinge, whinge, whinge. Get over yourself!

TWO:

Someone posted a comment on an SM post saying something akin to “Oh, thank God you dropped all that American crap for the Big Music album and went back to your roots” kinda thing. That got Jim’s hackles up! (Rightfully so!) He firstly pointed out that, yeah, there is NO American influence on the Big Music album – only current single Let The Day Begin being written by an American and originally performed BY an American group! He then went on to say that without the likes of The Doors, Lou Reed and Patti Smith, there’d be no Simple Minds.

I’d extend that on to others that are deemed quintessentially “British” bands/artists. Without Little Richard there’d be no Bowie or Beatles. Without American Blues there’d be no Rolling Stones or Led Zep. Without New York Dolls/Ramones/Iggy Pop there’d be no Sex Pistols. Sssooooo many Brit acts have been influenced by American music…and inversely. So stop being such an ignorant music snob!!

Having said all this, Jim’s responses can be wonderful! Lol. Without people being dicks, Jim wouldn’t have the chance to be the “bite-back bitch” :-)) And my God do I love it when his hackles are up and someone has “lost” their “brain cells” – or “doesn’t know” their “onions”. I could kiss him! (Well, I could kiss him anyway…but…well, yeah)

Vent over.

Phew. That was cathartic 🙂

Bono put a post up on the U2 website yesterday with an “A-Z of 2014”.

He said, leading up to the post, which you can read here, if so interested…

It’s January 1, 8pm. I nearly didn’t press go on this, and I am clearly delirious in places. It’s very personal, but I feel in a not corny way that U2 has a very intimate relationship with our audience… so I’m going for it.

U2 have an intimate relationship with fans? Really? I have considered myself a fan from…about 1983 to about 2005 (I tried to get into No Line On The Horizon…but I just felt it didn’t say anything new. I’ve only mustered a single listen to Songs Of Innocence – I’m glad I got it for nowt! Suffice it to say MANY others weren’t!). I think that is when my fandom petered. In that 20 odd years, I never got to see them live (still haven’t and now no longer intend to) – never lived in a country that was close to Ireland, geographically (well, for the last 6 years of my fandom, I did). I didn’t write them letters…I never felt I’d ever get a response. For me, they have always felt untouchable. Unapproachable.

As you may be aware from previous posts, I am now a MASSIVE Simple Minds fan. I have been now for nearly 6 months. In that time, I have had more interaction with the band, and Jim Kerr in particular, than I EVER did with U2 in ALL my years of fandom! I’ve interacted with fellow SM fans. Their Facebook page is full of banter and chat between fans and the band. Jim is always posting stuff, and liking and replying to our comments. I had a personal reply myself once. It was lovely! Made me feel so included. But if he doesn’t always reply directly, he likes comments. You know he is reading our (fans) comments on the things he posts. There is FULL INTERACTION going on! Their latest video for their song Let The Day Begin is full of fan clips. It’s wonderful!

OK, we now live in the age of the Internet & for a chunk of my U2 fandom, there was no internet – certainly not as widely available in peoples homes as it is now. But given that, I still don’t see this “intimacy” with U2 fans that Bono speaks of. Yeah, they did a vid answering selected fan questions – but they must have thousands of fans that don’t feel this intimacy. Maybe if I’d have felt it, I might not have ditched them so eagerly? Hmmm. Well, to be honest, it’s their (IMHO) lack of direction musically that has dissipated my fandom.

I suppose U2 are still this monster and Bono just doesn’t have enough hours in the day. I dunno. But I never felt included as a fan of theirs, but I do as a Simple Minds fan. And it is the icing on the cake of being a Minder…Simpleton…I still don’t know what a collective noun for Simple Minds fans is! I must ask on the FB page 😉

I’ve now advanced more into the journey of my Simple Minds fandom and have become a fully hooked, dyed-in-the-wool, paid-up member of the Simple Minds fan set.

Since writing my first blog post regarding the re-energising and impassioning of my fandom, I’ve bought magazine clippings, an Empires And Dance t-shirt, CDs/DVDs and CONCERT TICKETS!! I’ll be going to my first EVER Simple Minds gig at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on April 21st, 2015 – and I am BEYOND excited!

After writing my previous piece, re: SM, I’ve obviously done more exploring of the music. I’m dipping in slowly because I don’t want to be greedy. I don’t want to OD on it all too quickly. When I became a Bowie fan in 1986, I devoured so much so quickly, having such a strong back catalogue – even by that date – that he had. Never Let Me Down came out in 1987 and I didn’t even buy it (man, was I disappointed once I finally did, though! – there are guilty pleasures to be had from it, though “87 And Cry” is NOT one of them) because I was so fixed on the back catalogue, I didn’t want to delve into Bowie’s new stuff then.

I’m trying hard not to be too greedy with the Minds’ back catalogue. It’s as numerous as Bowie’s catalogue was in 1986. Yet, what is different for me as a SM fan is that I *want* to explore what’s current! With next year’s concert tickets I ordered the deluxe CD set of Big Music, Simple Minds’ first new studio album in five years. The guys really are masters of modern marketing. The album is available to listen to on SoundCloud as a sample.

You can listen to the Big Music album sample here.

I am really excited about this album. Many people are, including “fans” who haven’t liked anything they’ve done since New Gold Dream. In fact, many are comparing the new album to NGD and Sons And Fascination/Sister Feelings Call. (By the way, I put the word “fan” in inverted commas because if you only like an artist or group until a said point, can you REALLY call yourself a fan? Yes, it’s sycophancy to LIKE EVERYTHING an artist/group does, but there is a distinction for me. There are “fans” (pernickety fuckers who only like the first two albums, for example, then ditch the group) and there are FANS (those of us with the understanding that we’re not going to like EVERYTHING, but appreciate and accept that others do, including the artist/group themselves – I mean, they’re obviously proud of the work at the time of release, otherwise, why would they release it?). The FANS will find pockets of things we do like in the areas of dislike that we have. For example: MANY “fans” ditch David Bowie after 1980’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). That’s now THIRTY FOUR YEARS of music that you refuse to explore! It’s insanity! How can you consider yourself a fan of someone if you refuse to listen to anything they’ve done for the past 34 years? It just makes no sense to me?! There are albums I absolutely ADORE of David Bowie’s recent work (I use the term “recent” loosely – meaning the past 20 years). My equal favourite albums of Bowie’s (I really, seriously cannot choose between them) are Low (1977) and Heathen (2002). Imagine if I was that blinkered. Imagine my ears never hearing Heathen because I was stupid enough to think that after 1980, Bowie was shit and never made another great record. It’s just fucking bananas!

But I digress. Back to Big Music. We’ve already had tasters of songs from the album. Both Blood Diamonds (beautiful, haunting electro-pop, co-written with Chvrches’ Iain Cook) and Broken Glass Park (poppy, pulsing, shiny, nostalgic and fun, with a tinge of sadness) have been previously released on the “Celebrate” greatest hits compilation. Blindfolded (anthemic, atmospheric – certainly harking back to that post-industrial sound the Minds’ had in 1981/2) was put out online on YouTube and various other sites for ingesting. And the most recent release has been Honest Town (a slow burner – there’s a kind of morose “groove” to it. It’s kind of “funky” musically, but lyrically, it’s sad, emotively that is) – receiving airplay on radio, as well as Jim, Charlie and Mark Kerr performing the song live (acoustically) on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2 on Friday, September 26th. Other tracks I like so far, from the sampler: Concrete & Cherry Blossom (rocking! “I’m on the rooftop / yeah yeah” – you can tell it’s going to be the one that gets the crowd going at the gigs next year!), Spirited Away (along with Blood Diamonds & BGP – the song guaranteed to make me cry when I hear the full thing. Jim’s voice is beautiful on this track), and Kill Or Cure (sounds dirty and sexy to me). Other fans on their Facebook page (wonderfully maintained, by the way, with heavy involvement from Jim himself – he likes and replies to many fans directly – being a SM fan is ace!) have expressed a liking for Midnight Walking – I need to hear the full track for that one. Ninety seconds of it is not quite selling it to me, yet. Not that I’m not liking what I’m hearing – I’m just not sure I’m as solidly committed to it as with other tracks on the album. Anyway, we can’t like EVERYTHING – that would be just as nuts as calling yourself a “fan” after ditching a groups catalogue two albums in! 😉

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubQpU2M_t90]

Honest Town – Acoustic version.

My enthusiasm for what’s coming is wholly positive. The album is setting up to be a cracker and I hope will bring the band back into the consciousness of many people – especially those “fans” who seemed to ditch them after New Gold Dream. One can but hope at least. And the boys deserve it. I am wishing the days to April away!

Simple Minds – Big Music is released 3rd November – details for purchase here

The groundswell of support is growing…

Yesterday at around 11.15 am I received an email notifying me of a competition win. It was to see Greek singing legend Nana Mouskouri at The Royal Albert Hall – THAT EVENING! Thankfully, as we only live 30 miles from London we had the funds and the time to get there. I called the phone number in the email to claim my prize and all was good.

We set off just after 1.30pm. First a bus ride to town to get the coach to London Victoria station. Once we got on the 757 coach to London, things went a bit pear-shaped. Just before the coach got to the airport, it started to overheat. The driver called it in and we were told we’d have to get the next bus. He did flag another driver down though, and we were bused the short distance to the airport’s bus terminal, saving us a walk there. The 757 bus stand was HEAVING with people, but we managed to get on fairly quickly and nab a seat. Phew!

By the time we got into London, it was a CRAWL! Peaktime traffic and we started to panic a little. Once at Victoria we needed to get a red bus to the Albert Hall so were worried traffic would still cause us delays. We made it in good time in the end and arrived at the Hall around 5.50pm. Time enough to get a bite to eat (we had these lovely – but expensive! – 3 cheese and caramelised onion paninis and shared a diet coke – not much change from £15 for that!) before making our way in.

Oh, wow!!! What a venue the Albert Hall is! It was the first time there for both Em and I (hence part of the reason we entered a comp for the Nana Mouskouri tickets – it meant getting in the Albert Hall!) that we’d been. It is architecturally beautiful. We had A-MA-ZING seats! Just right of centre stage and a few rows up the stalls that were off the floor. But OUCH! The seats! Comfy on the bum – but our backs!!! F**king OUCH! Painful back support. That was disappointing.

I didn’t realise until after the concert that Nana is very soon to be 80 years old! She was wonderful. She was joined on stage through the show by her daughter Lenou who performed some songs on her own, including one that. I think, was called “My Heart Goes Out To You” – I cried! I’m fighting back tears just typing about it, remembering it!

There was a fantastic medley encore that really got the crowd going. Lots of hand-clapping, dancing, swaying, shawl/scarf waving! And lots of Grecians in the crowd giving it a festival atmosphere. I never expected to enjoy it SO much! I mean, it’s not my type of music – but it was lovely and Em and I really enjoyed it.

Who’s the in the left-hand corner?

Our view of the stage.

The Royal Albert Hall.

Yep. I’m 14 again. Look what arrived today!!! Squeeee!!