Mid-Week Music: Simple Minds - "A Brass Band in African Chimes"
When I was a teenager, before we had cars, my friends and I would carry records back and forth to each others' houses on our bikes to share music. I distinctly remember a day in 1985, in the parking lot of Old Kent Bank at the corner of Lake Michigan Drive and Covell, meeting up with my friend Dave. I had the 12" single of "Don't You (Forget About Me)" under my arm, and the record slid out and fell onto the asphalt. I picked it back up and put it back in the sleeve and it still played fine. I still have the record.
Like most teenagers at that time, I saw the movie The Breakfast Club a few times. The song was a massive hit for us, and it's a testament to the songwriters and the musicians that it's still so well-loved. I always found it funny that Simple Minds didn't actually write that song (and that it was originally intended for Billy Idol!), and I didn't care much for what they recorded after it. (Their earlier catalog, however, is great - taut, angular new wave.)
"Don't You," as I mentioned, is a total jam. But the magic was the B-side, an extended version of "Shake Off The Ghosts," an instrumental idyll that closed out Simple Minds' 1984 album Sparkle in the Rain, which had come out the year before. It's full of dreamy breakbeats and chiming guitars, signature sounds from that era and especially from producer Steve Lillywhite. It fades in and out, like my mind grasping at consciousness as I fall asleep.
We would put the record on and sit and close our eyes and say nothing for the nine-and-a-half minutes it ran, sometimes dozing off, awakening when the "click... click..." of the needle hitting the last groove gently shook us awake.
Here's a wish to all of us that we still listen to music the way we did when we were teenagers: seriously, deeply, with explosions of joy and heartbreak. This song brings me back to that every time and I find it impossible to just have it on in the background. It's a meditation.
Love,
David
