— Mark Steels
I have a pair of anecdotes from my adolescence to share this week. First, I used to aspire to being a pop star. I began plotting this career path while living in England. A year's worth of Smash Hits issues and Top of the Pops episodes gave me the idea that fronting my own group was the thing for me. We returned to Canada and these goals were put on hold as my then friends weren't similarly interested. I eventually did join a group and I tried my hand at singing poorly, playing the bass guitar almost adequately and writing some embarrassing lyrics. Songwriting was probably the one area I might have had some talent for but I was never inclined to collaborate with someone of musical competence and tended to give up on ideas too rapidly. During the lovely summer of 1990, I had a couple of tunes floating around in my head (the moody, soulful "Underground" and the techno rave-up "The Flight") both of which were abandoned due to my inability to make anything of them beyond vague a melody or a chorus without much of a song behind it. If only someone had told me...
Starting off in the post-punk scene, Simple Minds were one of those acts who didn't sell many records but everyone who did ended up going into music journalism. Their early string of albums from Real to Real Cacophony to New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) are essential to everyone who likes to think about pop music, even if enjoying their work is an altogether different matter. Like most of their contemporaries who found themselves similarly trapped in a critically acclaimed bubble, they wisely began giving it all a big rethink with big eighties drums, choruses with which to punch the air and so much bombast. (But while their sound changed, my disregard for them has been a constant. From post-punkers to rock gods and further down to well-intentioned do-gooders with their creative eyes taken off the ball, one element of ver Minds that has been a constant is their dour, irony-free earnestness) Sparkle in the Rain, the accompanying album that would follow the present single a few months later, isn't my sort of thing but at least I can appreciate that they finally seemed content to allow their work to be listened to and not just furrowed over. Which is for the best really since "Waterfront" doesn't do much on the contemplation front.
"Get in, get out of the rain / I'm gonna move on up to the waterfront": yeah, it sounds pretty good, my thirteen-year-old self would've been dead chuffed to have come up with an opener like that. Of course, I would never have been able to expound upon it but that's precisely the point. It's easy to imagine Jim Kerr and his fellow Minds being impressed with what they'd come up with and, after struggling for a good while on some kind of song story, just resigning themselves to repetition — but the kind of repetition that works wonders in the arenas and stadiums they were beginning to fill (but less so in the tiny Glasgow clubs in which they and a whole generation of budding music journalists cut their teeth). Musically, too, it's kept simple with a bass line so comically easy that even this humble blogger could work it out. Mark Steels is blown away by "guitar chords that will take your head off" and "haunting keyboard lines" and he's not wrong but they're hardly challenging parts.
And now for the second anecdote from my youth. In the midst of joining a band and dabbling in songwriting, I took it upon myself to expand my musical interests somewhat. Figuring that rock music was important and was still attaching itself to worthy causes, I decided that the Greenpeace: Rainbow Warriors compilation was just what I needed. Well, at least I felt good about supporting a charity I respect. One of the cassettes was of poor quality with frequent dropouts and the music I was able to listen to I could only get through the once due to boredom (I couldn't imagine wanting to hear John Farnham's "The Voice" again and it was one of the reasons I bought the bloody thing!). Rainbow Warriors was promptly filed away in a junk box in my closet in favour of Pet Shop Boys' Behaviour and The Beautiful South's Choke. I'm only relating such a forgettable part of my music collection because the second tape kicked off with a live version of "Waterfront". A passionate performance, it goes over a bomb even if the Minds sacrificed what little subtly the original had. Better yet, its presence on a Greenpeace album meant that fans could connect it to oceanic pollution or rising sea levels or acid rain: a meaningless song suddenly meant something.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Julian Cope: "Sunshine Playroom"
A jam-packed fortnight of singles with the likes of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax", The Stones' "Undercover of the Night", The Smiths' "This Charming Man", The Style Council's "A Solid Bond in Your Heart", The Thompson Twins' "Hold Me Now" and Yes' "Owner of a Lonely Heart" all up for consideration, so at least Simple Minds didn't grab Single of the Fortnight by default. To opt, then, for the recently solo, increasingly irrelevant Julian Cope might seem to be the ultimate in contrarian buggery but for the fact that "Sunshine Playroom" is the most thrilling of the lot — and by some distance at that. A psychedelic/progressive bit of quintessentially Copeian madness, it abruptly darts between various genres, a aural complexity which contrasts with a lyrical simplicity not unlike that of "Waterfront". Stupidly wonderful but surprisingly sophisticated, no one could have merged Arthur Lee, Keith Emerson and Iggy Pop all into one figure and still managed to be so original. All hail Julian Cope!
I have a pair of anecdotes from my adolescence to share this week. First, I used to aspire to being a pop star. I began plotting this career path while living in England. A year's worth of Smash Hits issues and Top of the Pops episodes gave me the idea that fronting my own group was the thing for me. We returned to Canada and these goals were put on hold as my then friends weren't similarly interested. I eventually did join a group and I tried my hand at singing poorly, playing the bass guitar almost adequately and writing some embarrassing lyrics. Songwriting was probably the one area I might have had some talent for but I was never inclined to collaborate with someone of musical competence and tended to give up on ideas too rapidly. During the lovely summer of 1990, I had a couple of tunes floating around in my head (the moody, soulful "Underground" and the techno rave-up "The Flight") both of which were abandoned due to my inability to make anything of them beyond vague a melody or a chorus without much of a song behind it. If only someone had told me...
Starting off in the post-punk scene, Simple Minds were one of those acts who didn't sell many records but everyone who did ended up going into music journalism. Their early string of albums from Real to Real Cacophony to New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) are essential to everyone who likes to think about pop music, even if enjoying their work is an altogether different matter. Like most of their contemporaries who found themselves similarly trapped in a critically acclaimed bubble, they wisely began giving it all a big rethink with big eighties drums, choruses with which to punch the air and so much bombast. (But while their sound changed, my disregard for them has been a constant. From post-punkers to rock gods and further down to well-intentioned do-gooders with their creative eyes taken off the ball, one element of ver Minds that has been a constant is their dour, irony-free earnestness) Sparkle in the Rain, the accompanying album that would follow the present single a few months later, isn't my sort of thing but at least I can appreciate that they finally seemed content to allow their work to be listened to and not just furrowed over. Which is for the best really since "Waterfront" doesn't do much on the contemplation front.
"Get in, get out of the rain / I'm gonna move on up to the waterfront": yeah, it sounds pretty good, my thirteen-year-old self would've been dead chuffed to have come up with an opener like that. Of course, I would never have been able to expound upon it but that's precisely the point. It's easy to imagine Jim Kerr and his fellow Minds being impressed with what they'd come up with and, after struggling for a good while on some kind of song story, just resigning themselves to repetition — but the kind of repetition that works wonders in the arenas and stadiums they were beginning to fill (but less so in the tiny Glasgow clubs in which they and a whole generation of budding music journalists cut their teeth). Musically, too, it's kept simple with a bass line so comically easy that even this humble blogger could work it out. Mark Steels is blown away by "guitar chords that will take your head off" and "haunting keyboard lines" and he's not wrong but they're hardly challenging parts.
And now for the second anecdote from my youth. In the midst of joining a band and dabbling in songwriting, I took it upon myself to expand my musical interests somewhat. Figuring that rock music was important and was still attaching itself to worthy causes, I decided that the Greenpeace: Rainbow Warriors compilation was just what I needed. Well, at least I felt good about supporting a charity I respect. One of the cassettes was of poor quality with frequent dropouts and the music I was able to listen to I could only get through the once due to boredom (I couldn't imagine wanting to hear John Farnham's "The Voice" again and it was one of the reasons I bought the bloody thing!). Rainbow Warriors was promptly filed away in a junk box in my closet in favour of Pet Shop Boys' Behaviour and The Beautiful South's Choke. I'm only relating such a forgettable part of my music collection because the second tape kicked off with a live version of "Waterfront". A passionate performance, it goes over a bomb even if the Minds sacrificed what little subtly the original had. Better yet, its presence on a Greenpeace album meant that fans could connect it to oceanic pollution or rising sea levels or acid rain: a meaningless song suddenly meant something.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Julian Cope: "Sunshine Playroom"
A jam-packed fortnight of singles with the likes of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax", The Stones' "Undercover of the Night", The Smiths' "This Charming Man", The Style Council's "A Solid Bond in Your Heart", The Thompson Twins' "Hold Me Now" and Yes' "Owner of a Lonely Heart" all up for consideration, so at least Simple Minds didn't grab Single of the Fortnight by default. To opt, then, for the recently solo, increasingly irrelevant Julian Cope might seem to be the ultimate in contrarian buggery but for the fact that "Sunshine Playroom" is the most thrilling of the lot — and by some distance at that. A psychedelic/progressive bit of quintessentially Copeian madness, it abruptly darts between various genres, a aural complexity which contrasts with a lyrical simplicity not unlike that of "Waterfront". Stupidly wonderful but surprisingly sophisticated, no one could have merged Arthur Lee, Keith Emerson and Iggy Pop all into one figure and still managed to be so original. All hail Julian Cope!
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