28 Apr, 2009 When We Were German !
I have now fully recovered from last week’s promotional trip throughout Germany where I soon lost count of how many towns and cities that I visited to talk with their local media. I received the warmest of welcomes and more importantly the music of Graffiti Soul received praise throughout. That made it all very enjoyable as did the sunshine which was with me every step of the way making what could have been an exhausting few days anything but.
I know that many artists find media and promotion etc, something to be tolerated if not embraced, but I have never felt that at all. Additionally I have struck up some good contacts with many of the journalists through the years and find it easy to share a laugh with them about most things. Of course I do still occasionally face the odd daft question as well as having to sometimes to put up with the kind of ditzy incompetence demonstrated a few days ago by Kate Muir from the UK Times, who had Simple Minds down as part of current tours featuring numerous reunion band!
Please someone out there, anybody! Do me a favour and let Katie darling know that being no mere quitters – Simple Minds have been in the game consistently for over 30 years – and that she owes us an apology on the grounds that she is obviously plain lazy when it comes to checking the most basic facts. (I am honestly too busy or I would do it myself.)
I mean what is the point in critics at all when they cannot even get the most fundamental facts right? Pretty shoddy all in all!
One chat I truly enjoyed was with Jim Gellatly at BBC Radio Scotland, and it was during the visit to Jim’s show that he informed me of having recent contact with Alan McGee.
For those who do not know, Alan is a fellow Glaswegian and former boss of Creation Records. A one time chum of Tony Blair, he soon saw the folly in that, as we all did after about two weeks, but that is neither here nor there and anyway it is the Alan McGee’s of the world that have made the music industry a pretty exciting place to be at times.
But I digress as usual, so lets get back to Jim who had informed Alan that I was due on the show, to which McGee allegedly quipped – knowledgeable as ever. “ I preferred Simple Minds when they thought they were German! ”
Well let me say, that quip as strange as it may seem, made me laugh a lot. Particularly as I myself preferred Alan when he thought he was both Andy Warhol and Brian Epstein at different times. And actually, he may well have been, had it not been Oasis and Primal Scream that he nurtured, and if he instead discovered some genuinely earth shattering talents such as the Beatles and the Velvet Underground.
Nevertheless Mr McGee had ‘allegedly’ made a point that I kind of agree with. His view evidently is that back in the deep past when Simple Minds wore more of their Kraut Rock influence on their sleeves, they were indeed that bit more special in my view also. Least I think that is what he meant, and if he did then I actually take it as a considerable compliment. More than that even, I would say that the influence of early 70’s German rock music still resonates loud and clear throughout our group and indeed through the history of rock music, even if it does not get anywhere near the profile and kudos that it deserves.
Ironically you can blame some of that negligence partly on people like me who occasionally point too much to the works of Bowie and Eno’s Berlin phase as the year zero of art/electronic/rock. Brian and David were instrumental in spreading the word to a much bigger audience, but as always within their careers, they were also major magpies, and even they would agree that the musical jewels that lay at the heart of much of their late 70’s productions belonged to the Germans first and foremost – since it was they that invented it after all.
I say that part of music history needs to be rewritten and Germany’s role be both included and broadcast much louder. Will we ever see a German band inducted in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame? The answer to that is laughably, probably no! But we should. Can you really believe that Kraftwerk have been overlooked for most awards? Imagine the entire world of electro pop and hip -hop without the influence of Kraftwerk?
It is impossible and it is tragic that they have been so woefully ignored. A joke really, but probably not quite the kind of thing to keep Düsseldorf’s finest up all night fretting, or so I would imagine.
And if there should be any doubts concerning the genius of many other German artists, you only need to think of, or even better still why not check out such bands as Neu, Can, La Dusseldorf, Holgar Czukay, Amon Dull, Moebelius and Roedelius, Faust, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Michael Rother and many other German artists who laid the foundations for a style of music that we and so many revert to when we go on the search for a compulsive rhythm track. You can hear their effect now on the tom-tom rumble that drives forward our new single ‘Rockets’, and you can easily identify it currently on ‘Moscow Underground’, the lead track from ‘Graffiti Soul”.
So there you have it. As Alan say’s, we are indeed much better when we think we are German! That said, when it comes to World Cup football matches and on those great occasions in particular when it is England v Germany. Does not every Scotsman suddenly become more than a little German? Strange that!
Jim Kerr
pic by David Ellis