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Rating: In some ways, the '80s were innovative years. To be honest, not everyone thinks so. To be sincere, those who think differently are the majority. A big mistake in evaluation, no doubt: let's take a moment to reflect.
We agree that the show didn't give its best before. The ‘years of lead’ of the seventies had covered the previous economic boom with a heavy shroud, sure, yet a moment before, the revolutions of the '60s and '70s had still brought novelty and hope in that second half of the 20th century.
And yet, everything was a shot: presidents shot in Dallas, men shot to the moon, men shot on the street, John Lennon shot in America…
Then, finally, they arrived, shiny and drunk: the '80s! With those events behind their broken backs, some and more than some thought history from that moment could only go downhill: just smiles, rich prizes, and cotillons! No more presidents collapsing into the arms of American wives and first ladies. No more shots. But do historians really think it all went this way?
Let's take music as a witness and, specifically, a band too far ahead, so far ahead that they were left behind. Many of their peers are still in the limelight because their pace is slow and too considered. They're probably there because those around them support every cry, shouting a miracle.
Not them. Simple Minds had good weapons and well-calibrated bullets on the pentagram. They devised a good attack plan and won. Their notes found asylum in a world equipped with ears to hear and minds to understand, but not simple minds!
Simple Minds, like the Swedish Europe of Tempest (those of "The Final Countdown", just to be precise), owe something to Mister David Bowie. Simple Minds is indeed a combination of words borrowed from a verse by the White Duke (the latter, according to Joey Tempest himself, owe their inspiration for the song with blaring trumpets ready to say goodbye to the '900 and move on, as it obviously happened, to a new era).
Now, in the second decade of this grumpy and promise-dry millennium, Simple Minds, after some discographic trials launched in the post-1999 era that pleased some and displeased others, are on the move with ease and more stories to tell.
In July 2014 they were extraordinary guests in Ferrara. Here, they held, not even a month ago, a thunderous performance in the name of 'madness' (as a cheerful Jim Kerr declared, using a stumbling Italian).
The Scottish band opened their load of stories and notes with energy never tamed. The audience found themselves battling with "Waterfront". Smartphones and iPads rise to the sky, wanting to capture moments frozen in those summer images of an exceptional event. Then comes the turn of the recent "Broken Glass Park", one of Simple Minds' incursions into the less distant repertoire. Then it’s time for the historic albums "New Gold Dream" and "Once Upon a Time", preceded by a "Love Song" that turns the clock of these artists back quite a bit. Iconic classics like "Mandela Day", "Hunter and the Hunted", "Promised You a Miracle", and "Glittering Prize" could not be missed in quick succession. Jim Kerr interacts with an audience in mystical ecstasy. His "evergreens" are tackled, from a vocal point of view, with mixed success but always with great prestige.
Closing these notes, it is worth pointing out how, in those years considered so carefree by everyone, Simple Minds began to engage politically, much like Edoardo Bennato or De Gregori, or, to bring it to our times, Bologna’s singer-songwriter Mimmo Parisi. Kerr & company support Amnesty International and produce concerts against South African apartheid. To mark more precisely their social commitment, should anyone have missed it, the release of the album Street Fighting Years is remembered.
Within the bouquet of compositions in that heartfelt work, there is room for a song, obviously written for a character that history books will always have as their decisive guest: the anti-segregationist leader Nelson Mandela
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