Simple Minds
Live @ Arena di Verona 18.07.2022

In 40 years I had never managed to see them. I missed them during the good years, the early album years, which were recalled in a fantastic tour in 2012 called 5x5, featuring 5 tracks from each of the first 5 albums.

The concert on July 18, 2022, was therefore a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me.

The venue was fantastic, the Arena of Verona, packed to the brim (a scandalous organization at the entry gates, if you were without a ticket and a bit savvy, you could sneak in whenever a gate opened – and to think they organize at least one concert a week). The audience was almost exclusively people in their 50s, a sign that there's no generational change for this music, but so be it. The Simple Minds are one of the bands I have loved the most. Perhaps for this reason, it takes me a little while to accept the fact that Jim Kerr has aged. Not having followed the Scottish band's evolution for many years now, I feel I can say that the lineup seen in Verona is a distant memory of what the Simple Minds were when they were riding the wave of success.

Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill remain, and the band, which nevertheless shares the stage with the founding members for several years, is built around them: Sarah Brown on vocals, Gordy Goudie on guitars, Cherisse Osei on drums, Berenice Scott on keyboards, and bassist Ged Grimes, who on tracks from the early '80s at times managed to evoke the lines of the great Derek Forbes. But the band, as I saw it in Verona, did not impress me in terms of presence. But tastes are tastes, and I was certainly in the clear minority, considering the enthusiasm around me. De gustibus non disputandum est.
Conclusion: I indulged myself in seeing the Simple Minds live. Case closed.
It is important to clarify, however, that it wasn't a bad concert in itself, and among the tracks performed there were some that managed to touch deep chords within me: "Love Song," "Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel," "Theme for Great Cities," "Big Sleep," "New Gold Dream." Much of the setlist consisted of tracks worthy of DJ Daniele Baldelli's setlist at the Cosmic in Lazise (but we're talking about the 80s) just a few dozen kilometers from Verona.