Simple Minds - Theme For Great Cities 12'' (RSD Edition)

The Record Store Day 12" vinyl edition of Simple Minds' "Theme For Great Cities" is universally acclaimed as a masterpiece of atmospheric post-punk and electronic rock. Critics and fans consistently praise the pressing's stellar audio fidelity, which highlights the track's hypnotic, krautrock-inspired motorik beat, Derek Forbes' driving bassline, and Mick MacNeil's sweeping, cinematic synthesizer washes. Deprived of Jim Kerr’s vocals, the instrumental stands out as a dizzying, futuristic highlight of the band’s early catalog, making this specific high-quality 12" release a highly sought-after collector's item for audiophiles.

Producer John Leckie first announced the single when he wrote about Empires And Dance in the 5X5 Tour Brochure: "I'm currently mixing a new version of I Travel which the band will release on vinyl for Record Store Day in April 2012. It still sounds a fantastic song more than 30 years on." The single was confirmed in March when it appeared in the listings for Record Store Day. A limited edition run of 1000 12" records worldwide would be pressed which would only be available at various independent record stores.

A remix of Theme For Great Cities by Simple Minds fan Moby was later revealed as the singles title track. The artwork simply reused the old I Travel sleeve from 1980 although Virgin was more imaginative with the labels.

Jim and Charlie took part in a record signing on the 21st April at Sister Ray Records in London where they personally signed 100 copies. The queue took over three hours to reach the doors. A signed copy was sold on eBay several hours later. It was quickly snapped up for £100. (Those signed copies from Sister Ray should also come with the Sister Ray Record Store Day list, the Last Minute Info list, till receipt and Sister Ray bag.) Themes was the first commercial 12" single released by Virgin since 1991's Real Life.

Simple Minds - Celebrate 12''

Simple Minds’ 1981 UK 12" vinyl single for "Celebrate" is a highly regarded post-punk release, praised by fans for its raw, industrial-leaning energy and driving basslines. Collectors heavily favor this specific 12" format because it contains the extended version of the title track alongside superior, punchy mixes of "Changeling" and "I Travel" that outperform their digital counterparts. While originally issued in a generic black Arista sleeve, the record remains a sought-after staple for vinyl enthusiasts looking to capture the peak of the band's early, electronic-tinged new wave era.

Simple Minds - Empires And Dance

Hardly content with fumbling around with the same sound, Simple Minds shifted gears once again for album number three, Empires and Dance. The "dance" aspect of the title needs to be emphasized, but it's apparent that the group's globetrotting and simmering political tensions in Britain affected their material in more ways than one. One gets the idea that Simple Minds did some clubbing and also experienced some disparate views of the world. The opening "I Travel" is the most assaultive song in the band's catalogue, sounding like a Giorgio Moroder production for Roxy Music. Think "I Feel Love" crossed with "Editions of You," only faster; gurgling electronics, a hyperkinetic 4/4 beat, and careening guitars zip by as Jim Kerr delivers elliptical lyrics about unstable world affairs with his throaty yelping (this was still before he developed that predilection for foghorn bombast). The remainder of the album repeals the blitzkrieg frenetic of the beginning and hones in on skeletal arrangements that focus on thick basslines and the loping rhythms that they help frame. The hopping/skipping "Celebrate" isn't much more than a series of handclaps, a light drum stomp, some intermittent bass notes, and some non-intrusive synth effects. It goes absolutely nowhere, yet it's more effective and infectious than most verse-chorus-verse pop songs. The seven minutes of "This Fear of Gods," which boast another dense rhythm abetted by trebly atmospheric elements (distant guitars, percolating electronics, sickly wind instruments), come off like an excellent 12" dub, rather than an original mix. Just as bracing, the paranoiac disco of "Thirty Frames a Second" should have been played regularly at every club in 1980 and should live on as a post-punk dance classic. It's a true shock that this record was released with reluctance. The band coerced an unimpressed Arista into pressing a minimal amount of copies for release (fans still had trouble locating copies), but thankfully Virgin reissued it in 1982.

Simple Minds - I Travel 7" + 2nd and 3rd Edition 12"

The 7" Vinyl Edition (1980, Arista): Hailed by critics as Simple Minds' first true masterpiece, this original release is celebrated for condensing the frantic, prophetic energy of the Empires and Dance album track into a punchy, radio-ready format that seamlessly blends political commentary with a Euro-disco pulse. Highly prized by collectors for its rare turquoise flexi-disc inclusion, reviews consistently praise the release not just for the urgent A-side, but for introducing "Film Theme Dub," which is widely regarded as the band's first brilliant foray into radical studio remixing.

The 2nd Edition 12" Vinyl (1982, Arista): Released to capitalize on the band's growing fame, this reissue is revered by audiophiles on platforms like Discogs for its spectacular pressing quality, which beautifully separates Derek Forbes' driving bassline from Mick MacNeil's machine-gun synthesizers. Featuring John Leckie's unedited, extended album mix, this pressing earns near-perfect scores from fans who note it delivers a much deeper, punchier club-ready soundstage than the 7" edit, with the rare translucent red vinyl variation standing out as a holy grail for collectors.

The 3rd Edition 12" Vinyl (1983, Virgin): Issued by Virgin Records on the heels of the band's massive New Gold Dream breakthrough, this edition is sometimes viewed historically as a cynical label cash-in due to arriving so soon after the previous reissue, yet its musical legacy remains unassailable. Though it features altered artwork and different B-sides, contemporary reviews and retrospectives look past the marketing tactics to praise the record as an essential, definitive document of an electronic dance revolution that laid the groundwork for modern synth-rock.

Simple Minds - Life In A Day 7" + Chelsea Girl 7"

Life In A Day 7"
Released in March 1979 as the band’s debut single, "Life in a Day" is a vibrant slice of post-punk and art-pop produced by John Leckie. The track captures Simple Minds at their most energetic and experimental, driven by sweeping synthesizers, sharp guitar riffs, and Jim Kerr’s theatrical vocal delivery. Strongly influenced by contemporaries like Roxy Music and Magazine, it pairs a darker, fatalistic lyricism with an infectious, danceable groove. While it only achieved minor commercial success by peaking at number 38 on the UK charts, retrospective reviews celebrate the single as a thrilling statement of intent that perfectly encapsulates the creative spark of the late-70s new wave movement.
Chelsea Girl 7"
Their second single, released in June 1979, "Chelsea Girl" is widely considered a masterpiece of early new wave and a pinnacle of the band's initial era. Inspired by Nico and Andy Warhol's film of the same name, the track opens with a delicate, sparkling keyboard melody before locking into a thumping, muscular bassline and drum groove. It brilliantly fuses driving rhythms with sophisticated 1960s-inspired pop hooks, complete with lush, harpsichord-like synthesizer textures recorded at Abbey Road Studios. Although the single inexplicably failed to chart upon its original release, it has aged into a massive favorite among core fans who praise its perfect balance of dark tension and crystalline pop melody.

Simple Minds - Sister Feelings Call

Sister Feelings Call was a bonus LP sold with part of the initial pressing of 1981's Sons and Fascination. A month after Sons and Fascination was released; Sister Feelings Call was issued in its own right at a budget price. Simple Minds were finally coming into their own and releasing material that was uniquely theirs with Sister Feelings Call being a prime example. "Theme for Great Cities" is a remarkable opening track and one of the finest instrumentals in the band's repertoire. It's truly an amazing piece that is worthy of endless accolades. Seminal, sublime, and stunning. The compelling as well as commercial "The American," is driven by Derek Forbes' hypnotic bassline and made all the more impressive by Charlie Burchill's exquisite guitar solo near the end of the song. "20th Century Promised Land" features some of leader Jim Kerr's better lyrics. The urgent "Wonderful in Young Life" is highlighted by some exceptional drum work courtesy of Brian McGee. "League of Nations," although unique, does sound a little like "Houses in Motion" by the Talking Heads while "Careful in Career" is one of the band's most musically accomplished compositions. The final cut here is another instrumental piece, "Sound In 70 Cities." Sister Feelings Call is a confident and passionate work by a band that has embraced their strengths, and moved past their influences.

Simple Minds - Sons And Fascination

For their fourth album in three years, Simple Minds signed on with Virgin and enlisted Gong's Steve Hillage as producer. The sessions continued the group's impressive run of high-quality output, but there are instances where ambition gets the best of them. Though their work with Hillage hardly spawned anything on a plane with the two albums that preceded it and the one that followed it, it's still a substantial piece of the Simple Minds puzzle. Bridging the art disco of Empires and Dance with the pop masterpiece New Gold Dream, the album falters when the band seems to be reaching a bit too far for their own good. The other stumbling block is Hillage's production: Where the basslines of Empires and Dance snapped and tugged and where the drums hit with brisk smacks and thick thumps, the echo-gauze of the production work diminishes the impact of the band's greatest asset and makes everything sound bigger and busier than necessary. The record isn't without moments of brilliance, like the exquisitely detailed "70 Cities As Love Brings the Fall" (a great balance between grand melodies and bizarre noise), the insistently snaking "In Trance As Mission," and "Sweat in Bullet," which has sparkling keyboard parts and crafty guitar interplay. Aside from these moments, the mind tends to wander and wonder if the band was trying to do too much.

Simple Minds - Real To Real Cacophony

To the delight of some open-minded post-punk fans (fans who also had space for the relatively new, untraditional likes of Devo, Kraftwerk, and Eno in their record collections) the relative simple-mindedness of Life in a Day was blown to bits and left for dead on the pub floor by Real to Real Cacophony, the wide-eyed carnival-like follow-up released only seven months after its predecessor. The artistic leap from Life in a Day to Real to Real has to be one of the most mesmerizing ones imaginable, an improvement that is even more impressive when the short time between release dates is considered. It's where Simple Minds ventured beyond the ability to mimic their influences and began to manipulate them, mercilessly pushing them around and shaping them into funny objects the way a child transforms a chunk of Play-Doh from an indefinable chunk of nothing into a definable chunk of something. Aside from a mercifully brief lapse into aimless murmuring and doodling that occurs during the middle of the record, Real to Real Cacophony is rife with countless bizarre joys. It knocks you on your back with pretentious artsy-fartsiness as instantly as New Gold Dream dazzles with its art pop pleasures, but its challenging melodicism through jerky time signatures and an endless supply of varied sounds and textures keeps you coming back for more. "Real to Real," a sinister rewrite of Kraftwerk's "Radio-Activity," is a good, quick point of reference. Guitars are employed less frequently and are replaced by burbling electronics and further use of keyboard shadings, though the absolute high point of the band's early years, "Changeling," benefits from plangent, angular jabs. The record is certainly as much of an achievement as New Gold Dream; an achievement that's on a plane with other 1979 post-punk landmarks like Metal Box, 154, Entertainment, and Unknown Pleasures.

No kidding.

Simple Minds - Life In A Day

Immediately, there's no real indication of the Glaswegians' past as Johnny and the Self Abusers. Life In A Day – Simple Minds' 1979 debut – owes an undeniable debt to Roxy Music and the David Bowie of Station to Station and Low, mixing curt piano lines and glam rock but also hinting at a sense of fun that would in later years be wiped clear. Chelsea Girl even sounds like the hit that would nevertheless elude them for the next three years.

Simple Minds' astonishingly rapid ascent from humble and derivative post-punk to platinum and transcendent art pop is just as remarkable as the descent that followed it. More remarkable is the fact that a fair portion of the band's fans have such a strict discographic line drawn in the sand (right at the chart-crashing masterpiece that is New Gold Dream) where both sides overlap but don't dare cross. While fans of the band's earlier work essentially drop off with that record (and choose to live in blissful denial that the band existed after that), those on the other end are more or less oblivious to what's on the other side. So what's on that other, earlier side? Five studio albums released within the span of three years. Five studio albums that range from safe to bold, from impenetrable to accessible, from strange to puzzling, and from good to pee-your-pants phenomenal. Life In A Day, the first of the five records released during this fascinating pre-fame period of Simple Minds' career, is easily the least of the first five. Despite the growing pains, this is a skilled and assured assemblage of guitar-heavy post-punk, with Jim Kerr's over-caffeinated voice taking the lead role. The arrangements are full, direct, and sharply executed. The high points: the teeter-tottering title track and the J. Geils Band like swagger (honestly!) of "Someone." The low point: "Pleasantly Disturbed" an epic Velvet Underground inspired limp that lasts eight very long minutes.

Simple Minds - New Gold Dream

The below review was written by the Guardian journalist Peter Walker.

There's a whole PhD thesis to be written on when – and why – good bands turn crap. Perhaps someone's already written it. If so you can only hope Simple Minds' disastrous turnaround features prominently. That the band who slumped to the nadir of Belfast Child had, not so long before, been very good is well documented. Usually the evidence cited is Theme for Great Cities, their almost preternaturally futuristic-sounding instrumental from 1981's Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call double album. Heavily influenced by krautrock, it anticipated large elements of modern dance music and has been sampled dozens of times.

But I'm moving closer to the precipice, to the last decent Simple Minds album. New Gold Dream (or New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84 if you're being pedantic) is so interesting because while you can already see the traits that soon made the band unbearable – overblown melodies, a yearning for pop success, and the essential absurdity of Jim Kerr – on this occasion the result is transcendent beauty. The title track is probably equal best on the album with Someone, Somewhere in Summertime. As well as deeply cryptic lyrics, both songs are underpinned by the band's then-trademark metronomic-yet-fluid rhythm. Contrast this with the thudding, plodding backdrop to Waterfront, lead single for the follow-up album, 1984's Sparkle in the Rain. The song was their first major hit but heralded a new, lumpen Simple Minds, who in pursuit of U2 and world domination shed all that was good about their sound. Before long Kerr had married Chrisse Hynde and they were recording Don't You (Forget About Me).

I always believed the rot coincided with the departure of bassist extraordinaire Derek Forbes, whose flowing style was at the core of the old sound. But no, Wikipedia tells me he left after Sparkle in the Rain. I'll have to wait for the PhD to explain it.