In response to the Long Players series which I've just completed, I thought I'd do the same with 12 that meant and mean a lot to me. All from the Eighties, between the times that I was 15 and 25 an indication of the ages perhaps when music hits you hardest, signalling key moments in your life and momentous sea changes on your personality and in your experience.
Starting with this. I was a rather geeky adolescent. NHS specs and spotty complection, hiding my way through secondary school. In my final year in 1982, I discovered this, a truly transcendent album and to my mind Simple Minds career peak, the destination they'd been heading to for several years.This was their point of arrival.
I used to come back on a pretty much daily basis from school and play the record in the front dining room of the family dining room, lying horizontal on the carpet with my parent's cheap Fidelity speakers pressed against my ears. Told you I was geeky.
Nevertheless, the record stays with me. It gave me something. Quite intangible perhaps but it definitely gave me something. From there the band made the wrong career turn, something I think lead singer Jim Kerr realises now. They took the U2 stadium route and shed almost all of their mystery, romance and drama over the following decade.
Nevertheless, this is still a quite majestic record. The sounds of dreams being realised.
No comments:
Post a Comment