Shoulder pads ahoy! Simple Minds ca. 1986 in all of their glory.
In 1986, Simple Minds had broken almost completely with their past as they parlayed a fluke hit single into an attempt to see how big they could take this. Material earlier than “New Gold Dream” was treated like an embarrassing family member with an extra chromosome who had been kept locked up in the basement. The band, no slouches to extensive touring, worked that action like the fiends that they were. They played on Saturday Night Live when Madonna hosted. Over a one year period ending at the end of 1986, the band had given 150 shows. Here’s the list:
- Huston Civic Centre, Poughkeepsie, USA
- Tower Theatre, Upper Darby, USA
- Radio City Music Hall, New York, USA
- Constitution Hall, Washington, USA
- Civic Centre, Providence, USA
- Wang Performing Arts Centre, Boston, USA
- Maurice Richard Arena, Montreal, Canada
- Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Canada
- State College Ice Arena, Buffalo, USA
- Crisler Arena, Ann Arbor, USA
- Welsh-Ryan Arena, Evanston, USA
- Oriental Theatre, Milwaukee, USA
- Orpheum Theatre, Minneapolis, USA
- Queen Elizabeth Hall, Vancouver, Canada
- Paramount Theatre, Seattle, USA
- Arlene Schnitzer Hall, Portland, USA
- Henry J Kaiser Auditorium, Oakland, USA
- Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, USA
- Ahoy Sportpalies, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- Ahoy Sportpalies, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- Ahoy Sportpalies, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- Palais Des Sports, Lyon, France
- Parc Des Expositions, Avignon, France
- Palais Des Sports, Toulon, France
- La Patinoire Meriadec, Bordeaux, France
- Forest National, Brussels, Belgium
- Forest National, Brussels, Belgium
- Brielpoort, Deinze, Belgium
- Brielpoort, Deinze, Belgium
- Parc Des Expositions, Caen, France
- Parc De Penfield, Brest, France
- Halle De La Beaujoire, Nantes, France
- Westfalenhalle, Dortmund, Germany
- Philipshalle, Dusseldorf, Germany
- Festhalle, Frankfurt, Germany
- Stadthalle, Heidelberg, Germany
- Olympiahalle, Munich, Germany
- Deutschelandhalle, Berlin, Germany
- Alsterdorfer Sporthalle, Hamburg, Germany
- Drammenshalle, Drammen, Norway
- Scandanavium, Goteborg, Sweden
- Johanneshov Isstadion, Stockholm, Sweden
- Valbyhallen, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Valbyhallen, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Eilendriedehalle, Hannover, Germany
- Sporthalle, Stuttgard-Boblingen, Germany
- Hallenstadion, Zurich, Switzerland
- Palasport, Bologna, Italy
- Palasport, Reggio-Emilia, Italy
- Palasport, Padova, Italy
- Palasport, Padova, Italy
- Palasport, Padova, Italy
- Palaeur, Rome, Italy
- Palaeur, Rome, Italy
- Palasport Nuevo, Modena, Italy
- Palais Des Sports, Nice, France
- Parc Des Expositions, Grenoble, France
- Halle De Rhenus, Strasbourg, France
- Bercy, Paris, France
- Bercy, Paris, France
- NEC, Birmingham, UK
- NEC, Birmingham, UK
- SECC, Glasgow, UK
- SECC, Glasgow, UK
- SECC, Glasgow, UK
- Wembley Arena, London, UK
- Wembley Arena, London, UK
- James Knight Centre, Miami, USA
- Curtis Hixon Hall, Tampa, USA
- Gaillard Auditorium, Charleston, USA
- Fox Theatre, Atlanta, USA
- Orpheum Theatre, Memphis, USA
- Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
- Cajundome, Lafayette, USA
- Lakefront Arena, New Orleans, USA
- Southern Star Amphitheatre, Houston, USA
- Palmer Auditorium, Austin, USA
- Majestic Theatre, San Antonio, USA
- Bronco Bowl, Dallas, USA
- Pan-Am Centre, Las Cruces, USA
- McKale Arena, Tuscon, USA
- Mesa Amphitheatre, Phoenix, USA
- Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, USA
- Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, USA
- Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, USA
- Open Air Theatre, San Diego, USA
- Pacific Amphitheatre, Costa Mesa, USA
- UC Events Centre, Santa Barbara, USA
- Cal Poly University, San Luis Obispo, USA
- Greek Theatre, Berkeley, USA
- Recreation Hall, Davis, USA
- Public National Coliseum, Vancouver, Canada
- Northlands Coliseum, Edmonton, Canada
- Saddledome, Calgary, Canada
- Arena, Winnipeg, Canada
- Memorial Hall, Kansas City, USA
- Fox Theatre, St. Louis, USA
- Memorial Coliseum, Columbus, USA
- Richfield Coliseum, Cleveland, USA
- Welsh Auditorium, Grand Rapids, USA
- Civic Centre, Ottawa, Canada
- Forum, Montreal, Canada
- Civic Centre, Portland, USA
- Fieldhouse, Troy, USA
- Memorial Coliseum, Rochester, USA
- Memorial Coliseum, New Haven, USA
- Stabler Arena, Bethlehem, USA
- Radio City Music Hall, New York, USA
- Radio City Music Hall, New York, USA
- Radio City Music Hall, New York, USA
- Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow, UK
- Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow, UK
- Amsterdamse Bos, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Nuremburgring, Nurnburg, Germany
- National Bowl, Milton Keynes, UK
- National Bowl, Milton Keynes, UK
- 22nd June 1986
- Croke Park, Dublin, Ireland
- Torhout-Werchter, Torhout, Belgium
- Torhout-Werchter, Werchter, Belgium
- Piazza Grande, Locarno, Switzerland
- Piazza Della Riforma, Lugano, Switzerland
- Stadio San Siro, Milan, Italy
- Les Arenes De Frejus, Frejus, France
- Les Arenes De Nime, Nimes, France
- Le Zenith, Paris, France
- Le Zenith, Paris, France
- Estadio UD Levante, Valencia, Spain
- Koseinekin Kaikan, Tokyo, Japan
- Koseinekin Kaikan, Tokyo, Japan
- Koseinekin Kaikan, Tokyo, Japan
- Shi Kokaido, Nagoya, Japan
- Festival Hall, Osaka, Japan
- Entertainment Centre, Perth, Australia
- Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide, Australia
- Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide, Australia
- Entertainment Centre, Melbourne, Australia
- Entertainment Centre, Sydney, Australia
- National Indoor Arena, Canberra, Australia
- Entertainment Centre, Brisbane, Australia
- Entertainment Centre, Sydney, Australia
- Entertainment Centre, Sydney, Australia
- Entertainment Centre, Melbourne, Australia
- Entertainment Centre, Melbourne, Australia
- Entertainment Centre, Melbourne, Australia
- Town Hall Auditorium, Christchurch, New Zealand
- Town Hall Auditorium, Christchurch, New Zealand
- Michael Fowler Center, Wellington, New Zealand
- Michael Fowler Center, Wellington, New Zealand
- Western Springs Stadium, Auckland, New Zealand
It bears mentioning that I saw one of these shows.
The fateful ticket…
I’ll digress here and mention that at this point it was finally possible for me to see the group live. It’s a fine kettle of fish, when after liking a group for five years in the wilderness, you finally get to see them when they’ve just released their big, bad sellout album. I had a friend who had seen Simple Minds in Los Angeles in 1981, at the height of his admiration of the band, but things like that didn’t happen at all in backwater Florida where I lived. My friend Tom and I thought we’d go to the show anyway since this would in all probability be the first and last time we ever got to see the group. And after all, we imagined that they couldn’t ignore their entire previous and excellent repertoire in any case.
Tom’s van had been going through some hard times. The previous week we went to Daytona Beach to see The Bangles with several friends and a flat tire nearly did that excursion in. Those that took the trip will never forget the experience, suffice to say. I could invoke Scooby Doo here… but I won’t. That is a story for another post. Let me see if I can remember the motley crew that made the trip. Tom who was the driver/owner of the van, myself, my friend Jayne, who was also a pre-fame Simple Minds fan, and someone from where I worked who wanted to go with us. There might have been one more person – five seems about right, but I can’t remember the possible fifth member of our motley crew.
We arrived in Tampa and immediately went to Vinyl Fever to shop for records; back when a truly great record store was a wonderful thing. I had mentioned to my friend Elisa, who was living in Tampa, that we’d try to make it by for a quick visit to her apartment but with the excitement of record shopping in a fantastic store I had only been in once before cutting into time, we had to go straight to downtown where we promptly got lost trying to find the venue. To make matters worse, Tom hadn’t really replaced his tire from the week before. He just patched it up at the service station that the two helpful [but scary] guys took Tom off with while the rest of us waited in Cassadega, Florida on a Friday night. Wondering if we’d ever see Tom again.
Tom had wanted to stop at a service station and fill up the tire, which he was convinced had a slow leak, but a scary fact of life in the big city is that there are no service stations open after 5 pm in depressing downtown Tampa. Thus Tom was unable to boost the leaking tire’s air level prior to the show. This, in retrospect, was a crucial detail. I can’t call it an error simply because there were no gas stations downtown. We ate perfunctory foodstuffs and made our way to the Curtis Hixon Hall. The opening act was The Call, a thoroughly mediocre outfit who were also friends with Peter Gabriel, who inexplicably liked them to no real effect on their modest career. After the allotted 45 minutes, the headliners came on and the show was a bit sad to say the least.
Jim Kerr looked his usual jerky self wearing an appalling outfit [as seen in this post] and acting as stiff as ever in concert. Derek Forbes wasn’t there so I really had to ask myself why I was. The setlist never once touched past New Gold Dream material save for the encore medley where they blended “Sun City” with “Dance To The Music” and their own “Love Song” for a few miserable bars. Robin Clark was a nice presence and that was about as good as it got. Put bluntly, Simple Minds were bloated dinosaurs. An embarrassment to the band they once were. They were entering the American market at the sports arena level and it was a hideous thing to behold. I don’t really have any memories of the show itself, only a lingering [to this day] sense of profound disappointment. I knew what I was getting into by going to the show and I have no one to blame but myself.
As our presence was perfunctory, so was the show. After the show we ran into some college students we knew who no longer had a ride home. Could they come with us? Why not. We had a van. And it had a flat tire. It was NOT leaving the lot and we were stuck in downtown [ghost town] Tampa on a Wednesday night. What were our options? Well, for starters, Tom was definitely NOT a triple A member!
I eventually called Elisa, the only person anyone knew in Tampa and we pleaded with her to come to the parking lot with a can of fix-a-flat but she was less than happy with us. As it turns out, she made a big pot of chili in anticipation of the visit that never happened. Gulp! Well, we ran out of time due to getting lost in Tampa and [yes] spending time at Vinyl Fever, but I never realized that dinner had entered into it until the fateful phone call. After about 30 minutes of cajoling, Elisa finally ventured out to save our bacon. Little did she know that she was begrudgingly aiding the owner of the van who would be her second husband in 15 years.
The can of fix-a-flat worked fine. It got us home and we carried our extra travelers with ease. Since the two extra lived near the local University, it was no hardship whatsoever. Jayne had parked her car there and the other 1-2 people from my work also lived on/near campus. By the time Tom dropped me off at my parent’s home, the last such duty for him that night, it was something like 3:00 a.m. and never before had I endured such hardship for such a lackluster program of entertainment. The group I had traveled so far to see after so many years of fandom were a disappointing bunch of old has-beens – middle aged far before their time. As I suspected, that was it for Simple Minds. I might never get a chance to see them again, but after this show I couldn’t have cared less.
Their career in America as superstars was effectively over by the end of the tour. Along the way, the decision had been made to issue a live album from this long world tour and this put the headstone on their career in the States, since to Joe Sixpack, they were effectively a new band. Their eighth album functioned as a debut for America, for all intents and purposes. Zero interest domestically for that bright idea. On the face of it, knocking out a quickie souvenir double live album would have been, in theory at the very least, a fast and cheap followup to a successful album and tour… except that it took over a year after the tour to get the thing in the shops!
Next: …The great dissipation of inertia begins
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Post-Punk Monk 
To be honest I am sure I saw SM on one of the Radio City Music Hall dates in ’86, but I may have just blocked it out.
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Echorich – I completely understand. You have my deepest sympathies. On the other hand, it makes the last show you saw that much more amazing, eh?
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Very true.
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If you were at the one where someone ran onstage during “Sun City”, I was there too and it was my friend who did that and as a result we had to wait over an hour after the show for him to be released from detainment. On another note I also came on board with DYFAM so I had nothing to compare it to and as a result I quite liked OUAT. I have since listened to the older material and like it also, so perhaps I am the rare one who likes both phases of SM. A final note for The Monk – I also saw The Bangles in ’86. It seems we were mirroring each other – you in FL and me in NY.
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mroktober – Welcome to the comments! Does your screen name perchance take its origins in a certain Duran Duran B-side. I guess the Simple Minds and The Bangles were within a week of one another in many markets. So your friend was “detained?” Sounds ghastly.
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Well spotted with the screen name which is an amalgamation of the Duran Duran song and a homage to my favorite baseball player as a youngster, Reggie Jackson. IIRC during that same period in ’86 (29 years ago- unbelievable) I also caught Depeche Mode on the Black Celebration tour. And yes, my friend’s detainment was quite unpleasant as he described it he had to strip to his underwear while threatened with arrest if anyone in the audience complained of being stepped on while he fled the security guards by running through the crowd on the backs of the chairs, which was quite a feat in itself. The joys of being 17!
PS enjoying this series (and others) and your writing style
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This series is like reading Tolkien. There’s a lot of setup, then the boring middle part, then the triumphant return just when all seems lost! Also, this is approaching Tolkien-esque word counts! :)
Shall we call it the Sim(ple Minds)arillion? :)
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chasinvictoria – Like I indicated, this series is why I wanted to start PPM in the first place! I had to wait all of these years since I was holding back for their next album! It’s been two months and we’ve still got a long road ahead of us. I hope that I haven’t bored the non-fans too badly.
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Not at all Mr. Monk! I’ve been eagerly anticipating this as well and it’s everything I hoped it would be. As a member of the Scooby gang on that wild ride to the Bangles Daytona show, I had a good chuckle with this post.
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Brian Ware – Yeah, you can laugh! You had the wisdom to sit out SM @ Curtis Hixon! Hopefully you’ll finally see them on the [crosses fingers] Big Music US tour.
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Monk, this has to be done! The greatness of Simple Minds is that they (as we will see) saw the errors of their musical path and worked to regain that spark, that magic that made them Simple Minds. A critical assessment of their success is required.
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It’s been interesting reading this series because Simple Minds never showed up on my radar until “the hit album” which always turned me off largely due to having an amateur U2 vibe to it. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that there was maybe a bit of Blur vs. Oasis going on here. To date I’ve never really taken the plunge. A blogger by the name of Dreamtime did some great mixes, pretty much anything he touched was gold, and I downloaded the lot off his site before he folded up shop so I have a bunch of the tracks that Monk & co hold in such esteem and yet to this date I still….dunno. I think it’s because I first was aware of them concurrent to the S.S. NeWave hitting an iceberg that I just can’t muster the jump to exploring them further.
I’m going to stay away from TLOTR comments further, I’ve had my foot in that pile of doodoo on another comment thread for about a week now.
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tim – I appreciate the LOTR avoidance. This Tolkien-hater thanks you from the bottom of his heart. I often think that had I first encountered Simple Minds during act 2 [mid 80s], never would have bothered with any other phase of their career. But then, I could say that about most of the bands I’m passionate about. That I first heard them in 1981 was a gift, I guess. In two years I had all of their early albums, and they really, really worked for me.
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You’re in good company. My stepping in it elsewhere resulted from calling LOTR a turgid pile of wordbarf and for unfavorably comparing Mr. Tolkein to Stephen King.
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tim – Tolkien/Stephen King. Looooooooong does not equal good [except for this blog]! I dislike them equally, but I’ve only actually read Tolkien, so my disdain there has proper critical authority. How I hate the Fantasy genre! Anyone as popular as Stephen King is automatically suspect with me. Thought I once did find a Dark Tower volume [in the shrink wrap] at a yard sale, which I parlayed into several hundred dollars better spent on, uh, food during financial hardships. So thanks to Stephen King for that much!
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We had a 1st edition Dark Tower at the library I used to work at. It was before a mass market reprint and it had a waiting list a mile long. I agree with you that long (or in this case big books) doesn’t equal good.
LOTR reminds me of Salieri’s critique in Mozart – it has too many notes.
Had to bring it back to music…
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As a post script to your story about the trek to Tampa, Curtis Hixon Hall was torn down in 1993. I had to look it up, as I have lived in Tampa since 1994 and never heard of the place. I suppose demolition was the only way to get rid of the stink of the SM show from ’86.
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zoo – Yeah, that was the only show I ever saw there. Not optimal, but it was a heck of a good site for the Tampa record shows I used to hit in the early 90s. Nice – big -record shows. We drove 90 miles to see Simple Minds and we didn’t even get that lousy t-shirt! Actually, I didn’t wear T-shirts from 1980-1990 for some reason. I spent all of my cash at Vinyl Fever, so I passed on the [boring] Anton Corbijn-filled tourbook. I only got the badge at the merch table.
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I was googling what year that Simple Minds and The Call played Tampa. I can’t find my ticket stub in the stack, so tried the Internet. I remembered 3 things about the show. Going with Jayne, The Call was boring, and we had car trouble involving a tire and “fix-a-flat”. So I’m reading your article, to see if it’s the show I went to…, I nearly fell out of my chair reading about the van, Jayne (CF Future!) and the can of fix-a-flat. I don’t remember how many of us were there, but I promise you, I was one of the group.
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Gail – Welcome to the comments! Holy… ! I guess it’s hard to forget the van incident. Luckily you found this long winded story about not just the show but the whole, loopy ball of wax. So you were one of the handful of Central Florida Future staffers who came with us? I remembered a lady with glasses. I think her name was Kris [I just now plucked that name out of my memory] and you also worked there. When I wrote about this I only vaguely remember two ladies from the CFF coming along. Were you a writer or in charge of classifieds, maybe? So let’s see if I can work up a list of the Dramatis Personae in this lurid episode:
• Tom – lowlife scum friend of mine since high school and van driver of [very] dubious tires
• Myself – Ad production manager for the Central Florida Future. Tom and I spearheaded this excursion [for better or for worse].
• Jayne – my Simple Minds fan friend who had also done some writing for the Central Florida Future now that I think about it
• Gail – a student who worked at the Central Florida Future
• Kris – an editor [features?] for the Central Florida Future
• Student A – A guy we knew and ran into after the show there who needed a ride back. I knew him from another friend of mine. I remember this guy would come over to my place every six months for a mix tape, which we’d throw together while catching up.
• Student B – another guy who was there with Student A
• Elisa – A friend of mine from college who was attending USF in Tampa. She saved our bacon with the fix-a-flat. My wife and I invited Tom and Elisa along to a Jonathan Richman concert in 1997 [I think] and as divorced and free agents, they hooked up to our astonishment. They married in 2001 and now live in my state as we still have many adventures [but none involving flat tires]
So that’s five out from Orlando to Tampa with seven on the trip back. What I can’t believe was that I had already gone through the flat tire the previous weekend with Tom, and yet I got in the van the very next week [with still more innocents like yourself] and went through the drama all over again! Still, I have to say that yours has been the
BEST.
COMMENT.
EVER.
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I got to traveling down memory lane after posting and realized if I was there with Jayne, Krys Fluker (CFF features editor, and my best friend) had to be along for this adventure.
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Gail – Ah. Krys with a “Y.” Jayne was writing reviews for Krys at the time, I think.
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Hey, that’s Lowlife Scum™ to YOU, buster :)
As an aside, I’ve periodically tried finding that classic strip which coined the phrase in the intervening decades since high school, to no avail. Do you by chance remember what music mag it appeared in? I’ve described it to many but words can only limn the edges of such brilliance and having the original would make life better for all and sundry, to my way of thinking…
Hi Gail! Tom here. A very belated “sorry” (to Krys as well if she reads this) for the awkward conditions of the trip. The van was retired with suitable honors very shortly after that last fiasco. At least we can all likely agree it helped continue the dismal oeuvre created by the show itself…
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Bif Bam – For everyone else’s elucidation, Bif Bam was referring to the comic strip I ran across [“The Lowlife Scum”] in the glory days of reading The Village Voice [r.i.p.] by Jim Ryan who nailed our generation, and how. As seen below. Now digitally remastered! Click here for luxurious, full-res version!
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And THIS, sir, is why you will forever remain our One True Media Maven…
Ciao Bella!
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Bif Bam – Y’know, I just got my device out to email you that I had subsequently tidied up the image [stolen from a tumblr that was faded and crooked] that I had hastily posted in the comment thread last night and saw the notification that you were already on it! What I can’t believe is that Jim Ryan seemingly doesn’t have some web presence of his own. Every other cartoonist of his era is all over the web. When I just now searched for him I found a UX designer at Medium.com named Jim Ryan who said that he had started out as a cartoonist. His illos look pretty similar, allowing for 38 years of style drift. Weird. I used to be a UX designer before they had a name for it.
Follow-up: Yup. That’s the same Jim Ryan. Here’s his 1996 form courtesy of WFMU-FM [who else??!!]. Definitely the same sensibilities here that brought us “The Lowlife Scum®” 14 years earlier though his style had mutated to something cartoonier.
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Bif Bam – …and for the record, I take umbrage sir, at being referred to as a beautiful woman in Italian!
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First, no apology is needed Tom. Especially at this stage in our lives. The whole crazy adventure adds to the colorful fabric of our lives. Besides, so much of it I no longer recall. Case in point, I had to call the then editor of the sports section of CFF (who I dated at that time) to tell me who the ad production mgr was because I was drawing a total blank on PostPunkMonk’s name. I was a humble news reporter. All of this unearthed a motherlode of buried memory. People, places, events and of course music.
It still bugs me that I can’t find my Simple Minds ticket stub, or the Bangles’. Because now I’m thinking my faulty memory of seeing them in Daytona might not be faulty. I probably DID see them, but likely with Krys. Or I think, since a misadventure involving Cassadaga lurks in my memory. Probably unrelated.
Either way, I’m grateful for the Serendipitous flight created by my innocent Google. PPM’s blog has sent my thoughts in a million directions. Vinyl Fever (I went back many times after that first introduction), Scritti Politti (when was the last time I listened to them?) Jayne (who I thought the coolest person), where are all the missing tickets (oh! I finally found the Violent Femmes @ Visage ticket!)
But also the rabbit hole journey that is PPM’s latest: Cabaret Voltaire: Here To Go—>Jeremy Shatan’s comment—>Stormy Six’s Al Volo—>iTunes—> finally some good Italian music to help me with my Italian language learning!! La mia testa è in fiamme!
Grazie a tutti!
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Can’t Forget the show Winnipeg Arena May 1986! The Very Morn after this show… The Love of my life woke and ended 8 yr. Relationship without Ever being told Why… It was a show….
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Todd Cook – Welcome to the comments! So you also have painful associations regarding your 1986 Simple Minds concert, I take it?
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Oh yeah Vivid. Unfortunately what years of Rx Opioid use didn’t punch holes in, the Memory of this plays like a film loop. PTSD is a bitch…. TOO!!!
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