More from my Throwback Thursdays Retro Video Project. This week; Simple Minds.
I know everybody remembers them from "The Breakfast Club", "Don't You Forget About Me", and that terrible hit album they followed it up with, blah, blah blah. But they had actually been around for several years by that time having recorded six fine albums full of atmospheric, almost cinematic songs (including several instrumentals) that naturally lent themselves to silent film. At least I always thought so.
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "PLEASANTLY DISTURBED";
The epic closer off their 1979 first album "Life In A Day" mashed up here with a 1915 film "The Portrait", based on a Nikolai Gogol story directed by Polish director Władysław Starewicz, who would later be better known as a pioneer in stop action animation. This little known film is one of the first real horror films and was an obvious influence on the later German Expressionist films especially the classics "The Student Of Prague" and "Faust".
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "REAL TO REAL";
A song off the 1980 second album "Reel To Real Cacophony" using an odd French farce "The Magic Prisoners", which experiments with backwards projection to show some prisoners apparently falling upstairs and breaking into jail.
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "SCAR";
Another song off the second album using a using a short art film, "Tails" from 1976, by Paul Sharits. This film spliced together the faded, underdeveloped ends of other films, hence the title. I used this same film for songs by Cabaret Voltaire and Siouxsie & The Banshees but couldn't decide which version I liked better so I kept them all.
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "CACOPHONY";
An instrumental off the second album using a 1907 film "En Avant Le Musique" by Spanish director (albeit working in France) Segundo De Chomon, a contemporary of George Melies whose style he built upon.
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "VELDT";
Another instrumental off the second album using yet another Segundo De Chomon film "Les Lanatiques" from 1908.
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "FILM THEME";
Yet another instrumental from the second album, this time using some newsreel footage from Edison Studios of an gas refinery explosion from the early 1900's.
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "KANT KINO";
Another track off of "Reel To Real", this time an instrumental, using an early (1902) stop action film "The Destruction Of The Star Theatre" by Edward Armitage
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "ROOM";
Another track from "Empires & Dance" using a 1969 performance art film by Ben Vautier
Next time; More Simple Minds.
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