New Gold Dream

I was listening to Simple Minds today. It was a live recording of their recent greatest hits tour. All pretty good and they gave us a fair spread of hits from Glasgow Art Rock, to Euro motorik travellers, to stadium kings and beyond. Most people say that the Minds achieved an almost perfect bell curve career with the very early eighties being their absolute peak. They're probably right in that the signs were all there on Sons and Fascination and in follow up New Gold Dream, they achieved pretty much perfection. I can't think of another album that sounded so out there but of its time. They created new music and to my ears nobody has ever tried to replicate what they and producer Peter Walsh achieved. If you look on YouTube there's a cracking interview with John Foxx singing the bands praises and it's nice to see some form of reassessment of their contribution to modern music. That brings me to New Gold Dream, the song itself. On the live album, it kicks in and proceeds to travel across its own world producing a pulverising sound which moves in only one direction and that's forward at an alarming pace. I never tire of hearing it. It not only takes me back to a time when everything was possible but it also takes me forward, into an unknown future, bearing down on whatever barrier is in its way. It is an awesome piece of music. There's a version on their Live in the City of Light live album which is monumental. The pace has been slowed down but it takes on an even more majestic slant as Jim utters gnomic sentences to the crowd. As he says good night, Charlie Burchill goes all Phil Manzanera, laying down spidery runs on guitar which make the song even more magnificent in my eyes. Whenever anyone talks about Kraftwerk, Can, Faust and most importantly Neu, play them NGD in all its original glory. It has a momentum that takes it onto another level. For a thirty five years old record, it is surprisingly modern and dare I say it, different. Every car journey should have one.