August 2009 Mixtape: Golden Days
This month was Crash Course month at the Monthly Mixtape group. You're supposed to make an introduction to an artist your mixpartner doesn't know much about, but is interested in. The theme was on repeat from August 2008, when i made a Nine Inch Nails mix. Since my mixbuddy didn't really respond to any of my suggestions, i went with my own infatuation, and made an old-school Simple Minds compilation. That means i picked my favourite songs from the studio albums they recorded between 1979 and 1984, when they released Sparkle In The Rain.
The Simple Minds are one of those rare bands that made a drastic change in their sound, and thus have a 'good' and 'bad' period in their career, no matter which period one would deem bad. They emerged in the late Seventies post-punk slipstream, and evolved from Sparks sound-a-likes to a band who explored repetitive patterns and trance-like rhythms before house music was even invented, and then moved on to a bigger than life rock-sound... which for me is the point where they went bad. Sparkle In The Rain is the album that devides those two periods. It hugely differs from their previous album New Gold Dream from 1982, it's the first with the Simple Minds signature 'big' rock sound, but still echoes the esoteric nuances that marked their previous albums.
Like i said, the songs i picked are personal favourites, and a bunch of them have been singles, so perhaps you'll recognize some of them. In any way, this collection clearly showcases the progress Simple Minds made from an underground band to the mainstream which made them rock superstars in the late Eighties. Tracklist is as follows:
1 Life In A Day
2 Factory
3 Premonition
4 Changeling
5 Travel
6 Thirty Frames a Second
7 Sweat In Bullet
8 Love Song
9 Theme For Great Cities
10 The American
11 Promised You a Miracle
12 Someone Somewhere in Summertime
13 New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
14 Up On the Catwalk
15 Speed Your Love to Me