Simple Minds' aggro days

Before they were John Hughes movie staples and inevitable stadium draws for a brief time in the '80s, before the singer fathered a kid to Chrissie Hynde, moved on to future Mrs. Liam Gallagher Patsy Kensit, and followed in the footsteps of messianic bretheren U2, Glasgow's Simple Minds had quite a few beercans lobbed at them as under the not-likely-to-be-endorsed-by-Greenpeace monicker Johnny and the Self Abusers. The band cut one 7" on the Pickwick label in 1977, "Saints and Sinners" b/w "Dead Vandals" and singer Jim Kerr dodged loogies while guitarist Charlie Burchill played in a pair of shoes covered with an erector set. The single was called by the NME "a drab parade of New Wave that jerks off aimlessly into the void" and the band was short-lived until Richard Branson signed them as Simple Minds to Virgin to follow a definitely more artrock/Roxy-inspired muse on their first album Life In a Day. Here's an MP3 of  the never-released Self Abusers track "Pablo Picasso".

Comments

[Bridget Unnel]

You forgot the part about them rehearsing in a building that also housed a restaurant and the manager complaining that the music was so damn loud it was making his customers' peas dance on their plates.

Huge SM fan here. Great callout from the stacks.