Simple Minds – The famous 19 Themes CD-singles 

Simple Minds-addictism. It happens.
We stopped following them after the ‘Real Life’-album; therefore we cannot judge Simple Minds after 1991.
But even then “Kick it in” doesn’t mean anything to us, “Sign O’ the Times” is a bad cover and might as well be referred to as “Sign O’ The Peterborough Evening Express”, “Biko” should have been left alone. 

Simple Minds to us means eye-mascara, black trousers tight at the ankles, ballooning around the thighs, J.J.’s ‘Im The Man’-shoes, dangerous looking belts, microphone vertical, index-finger stretched.

“Life in a Day”, the album, has its pearls, but does not fulfill; “Real to Real Cacophony” is good, but clearly a band in developing-gear, “Empires and Dance” difficult to digest.

But than there was Sons and Fascination / Sister Feelings Call: these twins really turned us into Mindsians. The albums’ after-taste makes it clear: approaching the end of growing pains, gone any comparison with U2 and Hello! History-making-rockgroup-in-spe!
To us, both albums (having been intended to be one anyway) are great, coherent, finished work-pieces, containing mesmerizing, ground-braking, unclassably strong, be it rather doomish stuff. The only problem was that they were going to follow them up by “New Gold Dream”, the best pop-album ever made.

With “New Gold Dream”, the album, Simple Minds promoted themselves into the super-league. We never came across a pop record that changed our lives the way NGD did. Alright, it might sound slightly dated now, too soft, too synthy. That’s, unfortunately for the critics (about 5.6 billion of you), not the point. NGD was, is and always will be different. So was Spinal Tap, you might throw out. Beautifully, symphonically different then. Synthesis of sparks of genius. One might argue that Bono’s “The Unforgettable Fire” (the song) contains more superiority, flat-out mastership and genius than Simple Minds’ whole oeuvre (and Paul did it all alone). No problems with that. Simple Minds however is just more our cup of tea, and that tea was served to perfection on NGD. Which of course doesn’t take away that we admire the natural talents of the Bowie’s and Joel’s alike. 

We understand that it must have been living hell trying to write a follow-up to NGD. We know Kerr decided to start all over again, realizing he was just creating “New Gold Dream, part II”. We still think they surprised us all. Imagine, for a couple of years, everyone’d been dreaming away on “Somebody up there”, “Colours” and “Hunted” and the first new sound you get to hear is the mighty “Waterfront”-intro… Hats off. Mission impossible made very possible. The whole “Sparkle” album is one big, joyous celebration. Miles away from NGD’s pursuit to perfection, “Sparkle” is filled with sheer energy, a triumphant fuck you to all who ever accused Simple Minds of stodginess, utter boredom. Just listen to “Kick Inside Of Me” and you know what exactly we’re talking about.

The quintet-de-maximus was realized with the release of ”Once Upon A Time”. Not as brilliant, but a worthy encore to a thrilling ride. One of the highlights, and again we’re up against the crème de la crème of the rock-critics, is the wonderful “Come A Long Way”. While both “NGD” and “Sparkle” had their instrumental en pure, “Come” takes the honours in its supreme finale. We were in Belgium when they played this (on a warm Summer night) live in front of 60.000 fans. Shivering. Produced by the Rolls Royce of the then American rock-industry, Iovine & Clearmountain, OUAT was stripped of many of Simple Minds’ earlier subtleties and exposed a simple weight and clarity on most of the tracks (not at least derived from Mel Gaynor’s huge drum rhythms).

The 19 Themes on CD-single… 

Each of the four existing rare Simple Minds Boxsets Volumes (now deleted) were issued by Virgin Records in 1990. They document Simple Minds’ music/sound in (nearly) chronological order from 1979 to 1990 by reissuing their early 12″ vinyls on CD for the first time.

Forget the comments found in certain magazines: they are NOT a best of, nor a purely commercial rip-off. As mentioned on the Boxes themselves, they are an official collection of existing vinyl-12″-singles, be it done in a very original, aesthetical fashion (crucifix-shaped boxes, containing 5 picture discs – ‘Themes’ - each).

The same year 19 of these ‘Themes’ were individually sold as 5″ ‘Theme’-CD-singles, though not as picture discs. Theme 20 from Boxset 4 was taken from the live video ‘Verona‘ and never released separately. These individual CD-singles ought to be the official replicas of the ‘Themes’ from the Boxsets; there are however a few (important) differences… (for example Theme 3 & 7).

For a full overview of all 19 Themes, please go to:

http://imageheaven.wordpress.com/simple-minds-19-themes/

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Yesterday, while comfortably speeding in my rented Morris, I suddenly realised one is in dire need of some Greatness de scripta.
Being of non-Anglo origin & up bring, I am of course excused of any wrongdoing in this matter.
Let my spelling & syntax mistakes rule.
Anyway, one is right to assume that the big T. accomplished the biggest achievement in literature in his Historiae.
Indeed, et omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset is, though being mono-sentenced only, by right considered to be the most important combination of Western characters.
The Magnum Opus Supremum.
Of more importance, beauty, genius & difficulty than anything else produced in die Welt Literatur by human kind. Amen.
And A. Nobel knows it.
So, where can our closest pendant be found…
Shakespeare’s oevre? Nope.
Oscar Wilde’s intriguing masterpieces? Closer, but still no cigar.
The best effort so far, and we are talking nearly two millennia, was brought to us in 1968.
December the 5th, 1968.
Michael Philip Jagger’s Sympathy for the Devil comes – indeed – very close.

Who-ever gets Lord John Lennon going genuinely bananas on its video-edit of the song (4’53″, inter alia), by the way, can assume something really special has seen the world.

Click the play button below to view the full clip 

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