YOU WENT TO SEE SIMPLE MINDS?????

Then I read the final paragraph. Hats all round should be in the "off" position. The moral high-ground is well and truly yours.

I first saw OMD when their support was the Cocteau Twins. A similar lack of interest for the support band was apparent - in spite of the fact that they were jaw-droppingly brilliant.

I would have stayed for Simple Minds - New Gold Dream is still magnificent, as is some of their other stuff. However, I would have had trouble holding in the boos for Belfast Child. What a heap of kerrapp that was. Next stop The Dumper.

..was the only one of theirs I liked, not for its patronising lyric, but for its peerless melody.
(Though, of course it was first used on "She Moved Thru The Fair")

... they didnt do Belfast Child - surprising but a relief

always have, always will. One of the best singles bands this country has ever produced. Some great albums, too. I never understood why they were always considered to be so uncool. Okay, there's the Atomic Kitten thing, and Andy McClusky dances like a geography teacher having a stroke. But by jove, let's not forget the band were originally signed to Factory and their album covers were designed by Peter Saville. I also think that Dazzle Ships is one of the bravest and most avant garde so called mainstream pop albums ever.

Austin, I believe the Cocteau Twins take their name from the track of the same name off the first Minds' album.

I dearly love OMD but have only seen 'em once live, coincidentally supporting Simple Minds back in '92. My phone ringtone is of OMD's bizarro Jap-ad-sampling "Crush", still sounds like nothing on earth.

As with Simple Minds, I ignore OMD's lacklustre late middle period output - specifically around the "Sugar Tax" period when everybody bogged offski apart from McCluskey. I do hope the new album returns to the gothic choirs of 'Architecture .....' and Krautrockian riddims of 'Dazzleships'. Futurenoir, I went to the Futurist exhibition at Tate Modern recently and hoped to find the Edward Wadsworth's picture "Dazzleships In Liverpool Docks" which influenced said album's brilliant Saville-wrought cover but I couldn't bloody find it! Did you get the recent rerelease of "Dazzleships", with its extra tracks? Here's hoping a remastered "Junk Culture" edition is hot on its heels - the title track always reminds me of them eastern European cartoons like "The Mole" that the BBC used to show back in the early 70s!

BR
Freaky T.

is indeed a remarkable piece of work FT, kudos for releasing such a piece of work at the height of their popularity. I saw them several times during the early 80s, and they were quite an unusual group even then. A friend saw them a year or so ago on one of the re-union shows, where Andy McCluskey obviously frustrated at the lack of interest, said 'thats enough of the weird stuff lets have something cheesy' or words to that affect, before launching into Tesla Girls or Locomotion, like Simple Minds they seriously lost it mid to late period.

And like OMD, Simple Minds early period was wonderful, witness the glory of 'Real to Real Cacophony','Empires and Dance' and the peerless 'Sons and Fascination', now there is a few cds that could do with re-releasing