Culture, Music, Record collecting, Rock, Simple Minds, Vinyl

Floor To The Fore

Cold, sleek, angular, metallic, military disco anyone?

Of course you want it, who in their right minds wouldn’t? Simple Minds I Travel, 6:14 of staring out of the window as you zoomed around an Eastern European city at night in the early 80’s.

Cities, buildings falling down
Ideal homes falling down
These pictures I see on the wall
Timeless leaders stand so tall

It’s a funny one for me Simple Minds were the not-quite U2 when I was at school, hugely popular, hugely earnest and not very interesting apart from the two tracks I liked*, neither of which was the atrociously atrocious atrocity that was ‘Belfast Child’. I remember a load of my sixth form going to see them in Cardiff with the Alarm supporting, I sneered, after all I had tickets to see Skid Row in Bristol.

Flash forward a frigazillion years and my son bought a copy of Empires And Dance, their 1980 LP** and it blew my mind. This was frenetic, sharp, jerky music occasionally with a really danceable beat. Stand out track was ‘I Travel’, which to me sounded like Giorgio Moroder having a sordid liaison with Kraftwerk and Roxy New Order Division in a darkened alley off Sauchiehall Street.

In central Europe
Men are marching
Marching on and marching on
Love songs playing in the restaurants
Airport playing Brian Eno

Last year my son bought me the 1983 reissue 12″ of I Travel, seamlessly souped up from 3:56 to 6:14, reissued when Virgin Records picked up Simple Minds after Arista dropped them. It gets a lot of play. The feeling of movement in the music, hell the title, contrasting with homeworking stasis being a big driver for me, I reckon.

Not that I have ever been out for a night to anywhere that was cool enough to play I Travel, but it is hugely danceable existing at that strange nexus between sexy and mechanical^. As the scenery flashes on past…

Travel round, I travel round
Decadence and pleasure towns
Tragedies, luxuries, statues, parks and galleries

The B-side is an instrumental entitled ‘Film Theme’ which, umm, sounds like a film theme. It’s rather moody and very good but at only 2:25, like love, it’s over far too soon and then it is back to the car.

Evacuees and refugees
Presidents and monarchies
Travel round
I travel round

1093 Down.

PS: Bloody love this early performance – absolutely cracking guitar solo in here too:

*’Sanctify Yourself’ and Waterfront’, both of which I still think are ace.

**rabidly beloved by Manic Street Preachers, who stole their type face as a loudly declared acknowledgement of its influence on The Holy Bible.

^apologies to any robotophiles, or mechanophiles amongst my readership, this is a non-judgemental space where you dirty freaks can just be yourselves without fear of being cast out for your ungodly perversions.

Published by

Jat Storey

A man with too much vinyl and an itch in his typing finger.

28 thoughts on “Floor To The Fore”

  2. I was unaware Simple Minds did this stuff. I seem to have stopped in the years we all know better. If you played this for me and told me to guess the band, we’d be there a long time before I guessed who it was, even with the vocals.

    Also, in my life, I’ve had the pleasure of strolling Sauchiehall Street. I had great fun saying it.

    Reply

      1. Cool! I really loved that town. I could have moved there, honestly, but all the young blokes I met were asking me what the work situation was like here in Canada because, at the time, it was pretty shite there, apparently.

      2. I’m currently working on a project where we can send you back in time to rectify that, you’d be surprised how different alternate reality 2021 is.