Simple Minds: 70 Cities as Love Brings the Fall [Extended Version 2024, Unofficial]

All sounds by Simple Minds, no added artificial ingredients. The previous “remix” of this track was rather faulty, thus this update. Here’s the original blurb, written in 2023: Cities heavy, moving, breathing. Bonkers track from the dizygotic twin albums Sister Feelings Call/Sons & Fascination. But what on God’s green Earth is this…stuff? Random thought #81: The entire Stoner Rock™ guild is essentially based on the first four Sabbath albums (with astoundingly fertile results e.g. Sleep’s Dopesmoker). What if the Mind’s 79-82 oeuvre had spawned its own genre as well? Let’s call it Trance Rock™ or whatever. Would that have been viable and what would it have sounded like? Obviously it did not happen, but sometimes one wonders. Graeme Thomson (author of the superb biography Themes for Great Cities: A New History of Simple Minds) notes that early Minds’ music stubbornly refuses to be canonized. While everyone and their auntie has the Unknown Pleasure tee, the pre-Breakfast Club Minds remain intractable. Why? You can’t really play these tracks on an acoustic in your greasy bedsit, but that’s also true of Berlin-era Bowie or Joy Division - both of which continue to exert a presence on contemporary music. I’m told that of late the Youth Generation™ is adopting The Cure. Good for them. Great band. Hopefully they’ll also discover groups such as Killing Joke (who continue to kick arse), The Fall, and maybe our beloved early Minds (aka Simps). Video repurposed: ‘Koyaanisqatsi’, Godfrey Reggio    • Video