"Time got excited..."

"...That's when we all got started."
- Once Upon a Time

Since I'm currently writing a series about the albums that have most affected me throughout my life, my first post of the new year will be ironically looking back a few years. Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all have a great 2008! Now for the feature presentation...

Like most teens of the 1980's, I grew up on "Brat Pack" movies. One of my favorites was The Breakfast Club. Like many American teens of the time, the theme song from this movie was my first introduction to the Scottish band Simple Minds. I desperately wanted to hear more from them, so when their album Once Upon a Time was released, I snapped it up and started listening eagerly.


I was not disappointed. This album just doesn't seem to have a weak spot. I've read a review that called Once Upon a Time "the album that U2 wished they made." I quickly wore out my first copy of this album (on audio cassette) and had to purchase another. For about a year, I listened to this album almost every night before I went to sleep. Now, with the digitization of music, I have it on my ipod. While my wife thought it was good, but like listening to an 80's movie soundtrack, and many of the group's longtime fans considered this album a sell-out and an artistic compromise, I think the songs are excellent and have stood up well to the test of time. These eight songs combine to form an incredible album (yes, there are only 8 of them... it was definitely quality, not quantity). In fact, Simple Minds declined to include Don't You (Forget About Me) from The Breakfast Club because they felt it would detract from the production as a whole and because it was not written by the members of the band.

"You lift me up when I know you're around."
- Once Upon a Time

From the opening of the album, the almost conversationally written Once Upon a Time, I was hooked. Sure, it was all pop hooks and big production, but it was also pure poetry.

"Anywhere you go, you know I'll still be waiting."
- All the Things She Said

The album's second track, All the Things She Said, seems to echo the words of a wise departed mother, speaking hope to a frightened child. It continues the conversational style of the first track's dialogue, and alternating lines form more complete thoughts.

When I look into your eyes, I see a new day rising
Oh all the things she said, she said
Through the eyes of love, and never know what hate is
- All the Things She Said

The third song on the album is the socially aware Ghost Dancing.

"You talk about the Lebanon
You tell me 'bout the Dawn in Eden
You talk about South Africa
I tell you about the Irish children."
- Ghost Dancing

Strong social consciousness is a hallmark of 80's music. Things like Live Aid and Farm Aid showed us the crises of peoples far and near. We also saw the power of music to bring people together for a common cause. Bands like Simple Minds and U2 became more than musicians. They became spokespersons and activists. They sought to enlighten as many people as they could reach about the world's less fortunate and encourage us to be resonsible humans by recognizing that we are a part of the same people as these suffering multitudes. We became aware of massacres and mass starvation, government repression and suppression of human rights, and political indifference. Even an album that sounded so happy and filled with pop hooks could contain references to trouble spots around the globe.

"What you gonna do when things go wrong?
What you gonna do when it all cracks up?
What you gonna do when the Love burns down?
What you gonna do when the flames go up?
Who is gonna come and turn the tide?
What's it gonna take to make a dream survive?
Who's got the touch to calm the storm inside?
Who's gonna save you?"
- Alive and Kicking

The next track returns from the gloom of social crises and presents a more personal crisis. Alive and Kicking contrasts the joful highs of new love with the loss of those feelings of rapturous infatuation through a long relationship, but encourages the lover to wait it out. The promise is that those feelings return, the magic can come back and the love can be saved. Like the topics of Ghost Dancing, this is heady stuff for a teenager, but like the call to social awareness, many of us got it, or could at least tap our feet and sing along.

On my old audio cassette, this was the end of side one. Most albums always seemed to flag after the flip, but this one keeps going. Indeed, some of the best is yet to come.

"Boys are building up to be men."
- Oh Jungleland

The first song of side two is what I consider the best song on the album. Oh Jungleland is filled with captivating rhythms and just seemed to suck me in with its rhyming lyrics and hypnotic pulse. As a sort of coming of age story, it is filled with imagery I could relate to at that time in my life.

"Oh jungleland
They call you home sweet home
You make me feel so sad, to leave here all alone
But there's a kid called hope
And he's holding out his hand
He sees the northern lights
Above the highrise land."
- Oh Jungleland

The short chanted section has always been one of my favorite parts ("Blood is thicker than water"). This song still pulls me in every time.

Simple Minds was adept at couching darker subjects within their bright and airy sound. The dark, yet hopeful I Wish You Were Here continues this with lead singer Jim Kerr musing about the death of a loved one and asking the inevitable questions about the possibilities of a reunion after death.

"Footsteps, I can hear footsteps in the hall
I hear footsteps, seems like Ive been through this before
Some time has come now, some time has passed
But things still look the same
Is heaven all above, and paradise below
And the questions still remain
Ooh, can we see you?
Ooh, are we near you?
How could you disappear out of here?
I wish for something, I wish you were here

Footsteps, I can hear footsteps in the hall
I hear footsteps, it seems like Ive been through this before
Well we loved you then, I guess we always will
We love you still from here
Birds of a feather always stay together
And never separate, no fear
Ooh, can we see you?
Ooh, are we near you?
How could you disappear out of here?
I wish for something, I wish for something
I wish you were here, I wish you were here
I wish you well

Footsteps, I can hear footsteps in the hall
I hear footsteps, seems like Ive been through this before
If all the world was turning blue and gold
Like through your eyes so clear
The time has come to celebrate our past
And crystalize this sphere
Ooh, can we see you?
Ooh, are we near you?
How can you disappear out of here?
I wish for something
Ooh, can we see you?
Ooh, are we near you?
How can you disappear out of here?
I wish for something
I wish you were here, I wish you were here
I wish you well

There will come a day
Oh some day our day will come
Our day will come, our day will come..."
- I Wish You Were Here

This was pure poetry. Death was a scary topic to me then and it still is today, but the thought that "our day will come" was reassuring to my teenaged mind, and the rhythmic, almost ritualistic chanting at the end of the song forms a mantra of reassurance.

"You can pour back the love, sweeping down from above
Giving hope and making more chances
Well, I hope and I pray that maybe someday
You'll come back down here and show me the way."
- Sanctify Yourself

Though the entire albums contains undertones of belief in a higher power, Sanctify Yourself is the most openly religious tune. Faith is at the core of this song. Faith, wrapped in a catchy sparkling paper and delivered so that we barely even notice until we've listened and then listened deeper.

"Swing low, could be the last call for two of us
I said swing high, reach out and touch the sky
But dont cry yet, its not time yet..."
- Come a Long Way

Kerr and company, with the addition of the beautiful voice of Robin Clark, never let up. From start to finish, they hold us with every song. When this album ends, I always catch myself listening to the silence at the end and wishing for more. Come a Long Way is yet another great song, and yet somehow not enough, not final. It is an epilogue that leaves us wanting. That Simple Minds has failed to satisfy us with the eight songs of Once Upon a Time, has left us eternally wanting more, may be their, and the album's, greatest triumph.


"Dont look back, never look back."
- Oh Jungleland