A story about Jim Kerr
Now, I went to the Simple Minds concert in Oslo a few weeks ago. We came quite early and after having a few drinks we moved forwards to the stage. There weren’t many people there yet, so we ended up on first “row”.
Great concert, and standing that close to the stage was fun.
Rockefeller Music Hall in Oslo is quite small, so the band was right in front of us. Jim even touched my hand once.
At the end of the concert Mel Gaynor threw some drum sticks and some towels and I’m now the proud owner of a white towel used by Mel Gaynor. LOL.
After the concert we stood outside thinking about what to do. One of my friends, which I will just call G here, suggested that we should get a beer. We wanted to wait some minutes to see if the band came out, but G pushed for the beers. I said: “Let’s just wait 3 minutes, and then we’ll go have that beer.”
G: “No. I’m going now!” Then he left. And the other four of us just followed him.
When we had crossed the street, the whole band came out (except for the bass player), walked around the corner and into the band bus.
As one of us said to G later that night: “Think about this. When you’re 80, you will still remember a snowy sunday night in Oslo, us wanting to wait for Simple Minds, you wanting to have a beer. You won, the band came, passing right where we were going to wait for just 3 more minutes.”
I think I’ll add the link to this post in all my e-mails to G for the next 40 years.
Now, if we had been standing there when the band came out, they propably wouldn’t have time to speak to us. I don’t know. I would have told them it was a great concert, that “New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)” is the album I would have picked if I were going to have just one album for the rest of my life. And that the lyrics of Simple Minds is poetry. It’s not following a straight line from A to Z, but plays with words, with associations, with feelings and with rhythm.
