Simple Minds

stop including the bloody transcriptions under the album category ffs!!!!!

Really wish they would produce a compilation album of their instrumental songs, that would be immense, they often of get overlooked or forgotten about, but they are among their strongest songs they ever produced !

I have divided feelings towards their post-83/onwards era work myself - meaning some of the work is decent (personally, I enjoy some of it in the wake of "Sparkle In the Rain" and "Once Upon a Time"), the rest I find sadly a victim of its own pomposity ("Street Fighting Years" being a somewhat obvious example that is on my black list, too)... Not because the earlier work is "oh-so-arty" that everyone these days continuously raves about, but because of the potential the group showed on those - forever loved - first five albums; the potential later seemed to have been sacrificed for the sheer stadium appeal of their music, past or present. And let's not shy away from the fact, their music always seemed to have aimed for that kind of exposure. Ever since "Life In a Day".

Of course, earlier Minds' records will forever sound far more adventurous, listeners discovering something new with every spin - something their later, more polished but just as pompous material lacks in large quantities despite the group's great playing skill always remains in place. Sadly this is always the same story - groups come along, we expect them to stay "uncommercial" or "experimental", but where is the limit to this - or say, where to find the right key to success, be it creative or commercial... Simple Minds may have compromised theirs eons ago - blame it on "breaking America" or the so-called "U2 complex", but a certain quality keeps informing their (newer) work. But that's more got to do with a certain "generation gap", people with different tastes approaching one such group's work. Sons and fascination.