Of Stephen Fabrizi
Closing a weekend between Rotondo Music and Warner Bors Tour, Senigallia welcomed Simple Minds on Monday 1st July waiting for Pooh on Wednesday 3rd July (who are being organised by Best Eventi), both in Piazza Garibaldi.
And Simple Minds have bewitched the city of the velvet beach with an unforgettable concert, part of their Global Tour 2024. The band led by Jim Kerr revived the great successes of the 80s, dragging the audience into a vortex of emotions and energy. Piazza Garibaldi was packed with fans of all ages, ready to sing at the top of their lungs the timeless hits such as “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”, “Belfast Child” and “Alive and Kicking”. The band showed off an impeccable performance, playing with great passion and involvement.
And it wasn’t the few drops of rain that scared the audience halfway through the concert to the tune of Glittering Prize. Everyone was there, standing after Kerr had invited the audience to go under the stage and dance: “It’s not an opera concert,” he said.
Greetings in Italian (Jim Kerr has lived in Taormina for a long time) and phrases in Sicilian dialect such as “minchia”. Visibility and applause.
There were also moments of great emotion. The concert was a real success, which confirmed once again the greatness of Jim Kerr, the charismatic leader of the group, who captured the attention of the audience with his powerful voice and his magnetic stage presence. There were also moments of great emotion, such as during the performance of “Theme for the West”, dedicated to the memory of the late Stuart Adamson. In addition to the timeless successes, there were also some songs from their latest album, “Direction of the Sun”, welcomed with great enthusiasm by the fans.
On the song Alive and Kicking the final greetings and they immediately set off in a black van.
A bit of history
Formed in the 1970s and taking their name from a lyric – “so simple minded” – from David Bowie’s 1972 hit single ‘The Jean Genie’, Simple Minds became one of the most successful groups to come from the UK, selling over 60 million records worldwide, with number one singles on both sides of the Atlantic and number one albums worldwide, including five UK number one albums – ‘Sparkle In The Rain’ (1984), ‘Once Upon A Time’ (1985) and ‘Street Fighting Years’ – as well as the concert recording ‘Live In The City Of Light’ (1987) and the compilation album ‘Glittering Prize 81/92’.
On OndaRock, however, we had the opportunity to delve into what we consider to be the most creative period of Jim Kerr and his companions, that is, the period of the first five albums, culminating in the classic “New Gold Dream”.
In their current lineup, Simple Minds consists of Jim Kerr (vocals), Charlie Burchill (guitars, keyboards), Gordy Goudie (acoustic guitar), Ged Grimes (bass), Cherisse Osei (drums) and Sarah Brown (vocals).
The latest release from the historic wave group is “New Gold Dream – Live From Paisley Abbey”, a live album celebrating the 1982 masterpiece with a live performance at Paisley Abbey, in their hometown of Glasgow, where they were invited by Sky Arts to record an episode of “Greatest Album Live”. One of the many celebrations carried out by the Scottish band in recent years, on a path inevitably more focused on the past than the present, but not without some pleasant twists, such as the two albums of unreleased material “Big Music” (2014) and “Direction Of The Heart” (2022).
