06 Mar, 2008 CELEBRATE
In the end it was inevitable that we would not let the year ghost by without playing live.
How could we? It is after all the year that marks 30 years of Simple Minds and although we would not want to risk going overboard too much about it,
on the other hand it would have been kind of dour to let the year pass without some sort of note or underline.
Hence the recently announced “Celebratory” UK dates that are set to happen towards the tail end of this year.
30 years in music is a big deal after all, or is it not so!
Don’t tell me you don’t agree with me on this unless your name happens to be Dylan, Bowie, Lou Reed, and Jagger etc.
If so then yes, your right, – 30 years is perhaps not that big a deal, but it is a deal nevertheless.
And if I am sounding not that convinced by my own thinking here, it is that ironically I am normally awful when it comes to birthdays and any other commemorative events. I tend get embarrassed by the fuss!
Oddly, as a band with quite some history we have never been that comfortable dwelling too much on the past, no matter how glorious it may have been.
The future is what excited us and it still does as we work on another new set of songs.
However, strangely enough, now that the time has probably come for us to maybe give a nod to the past and the journey that has evolved over three decades, I find that I am enthusiastically up for it.
Or at least I am now after a period of some doubts.
And that’s because I realise that it is important to occasionally look around, take stock, and take a pause to consider where we have been in order to grasp where we should be going with our music next.
Equally so it is only right to consider graciously that there is more involved in the story of Simple Minds than ourselves.
By that I refer of course to the people who have supported us with great commitment along the way, those for whom Simple Minds are more than merely another record purchase or just another concert among many that occurred in the hazy past.
That being so we recently decided to organise shows aimed at giving those people the chance to somehow celebrate with us, but also among themselves!
All of which seems right, given that much friendship has been struck up between so many over the years through fans following our music and our concert tours.
It will be those people I will be thinking of mostly during this rare set of shows. Fully aware that many will have travelled from all over the country and indeed the continent to be with us during those nights.
Some will even have travelled from truly far off places such as the States, Canada, South America, Australia and Japan.
And all just to be in the UK when Simple Minds celebrate thirty years.
How can we do anything in return other than to make sure that these shows are the most memorable they can possibly be.
That above all is our aim?
JK