How to be Charlie Burchill in 10 easy steps

1. Confuse your fans by looking and sounding a little like Gordon Brown [see 'Is Burchill The New Prime Minister?' posted September 2006]. Keep all your hair unlike other guitarists we could mention that you never see without a hat.

2. When playing live, mouth the words to the songs,…..but wait, those arent the same words as the songs. In fact, they’re not words,….they’re sort of words but are slightly closer to random mouth movements. Do this whilst smiling an nodding at the audience.

3. When playing live, remember to pull the ‘rev up the guitar moves’ on your magic music making monstrosity. As you pull off a fantastically classic minds riff, pull back on the guitar a little to show how powerful and ‘only just under control’ your axe really is and wail away with those cat sounds. See the Nelson Mandela 1990 tribute concert intro [click on link] for some of these moves.

4. Its 1989 and you’ve just finished the Street Fighting Years tour. You tell Michael McNeil that if he ‘doesn’t stop playing those bloody piano-harpy noises and throw more sawtooth into the mix’ you’ll wrap his squeezebox round his head, hide his Book of Brilliant Things, poke him in the Glittering Prize and make him Cry’.

5. Its 1991 and you’ve replaced McNeil with the Mc Midi guitar for the Real Life album but you dress the guitar in a curly wig and glasses just to retain the mood in the studio.

6. Speak with such a broad Glaswegian accent that you need to take an interpreter with you on tour. Also, never sing or try backing singing [though random mouth movements are allowed].

7. Play a guitar that is at least as big as you. Preferably a guitar so big [such as a White Falcon Deluxe GTI 16 valve] that its even more difficult to keep the beast under control and therefore this accentuates the need for some classic ‘guitar rev moves’ in step 3.

8. As with Jim, refer back to your happy days in the sandpit with Jim but don’t mention that this was only 3 weeks ago and that you actually take a sandpit on tour with you to keep the romance alive.

9. Its the 80’s and you buy an echo machine but realise that you need at least 3 other state-of-the-art echo machines to barely touch that Simple Minds sound. Remember that at least 15 patches are required for each song as just when you think you re loaded up on phaser, delay and distortion….what have we here….well, lets load on some Harmoniser to give it that bagpipes ‘Big Country p*ssing contest’ sound.

10. Wear cool clothes except for the red table cloth worn on the Verona video.

Other than that, there’s a brand new Simcoemedia YouTube Channel and here’s the artwork for the cover of the Soundtracks 4 album available at the end of May. You can also download prints from the Simcoemedia iStockphoto archive!

10,001

Congrats to blog viewer 10,001. If you can prove you were visitor 10,001 then you can claim your free Simple Minded Tour T-Shirt along with a free trip to one of the many gigs in the busy schedule and a tour programme showing some of the high-lights of the latest tour. Next posting: How to be Burchill in 10 easy steps

How To Be Jim Kerr in 10 Easy Steps

Follow these 10 easy steps and you’ll be Kerring with the best of them in no time.

1. Wear tight leg-ins, boots and frilly shirts with the occassional waistcoat for that “dapper, poetic, philosophical gent type of fellow” vibe. If you need some practice of being in a ’stage’ situation you can get the old hairbrush and mirror and strut away using the double bed as a good platform for some of the moves indicated below.

2. Ask people “is everything OK?” at least 3 times when you appear in public even when it’s quite evident that people are quite happy with it all (having parted with their kids ‘Christmas present fund’ for front row tickets in a giant plastic tent in Liverpool).

3. Dance your heart out with moves taken from the “Kerr School of Choreography” [see All The Things She Said video to learn some of the moves].

4. Remember its the 1980’s there is no political issue that is toooooo grand to comment upon or champion in some way. If you do this then make sure you’re holding that all important ‘license to be a politician white dove’ in your serious po-faced hands.

5. If you’ve reached that terribly serious political issue part of your gig then you can use the “tied-and-beaten-arms-locked-together-over-my-head” pose for full effect to really make sure the crowd know what you were going through when you penned the lyrics.

6. Tell stories from the “me and Charlie playing in a sandpit on a Glasgow housing estate” days to the crowds of people who’ve brought their teenage kids to the gig to show them what real music is like. The best bands start in sandpits.

7. Sorry, you got stuck in a musical time-warp on step 4 so suddenly recall that its not the 1980’s and politics should in no way feature in music as its the 00’s so remove the “Mandela-Biko-Belfast” vibe and replace with the more cuisine, reflective issues of the day such as “chocolate”, “stars” (or “chocolate stars” if you need to combine two tracks so you can add more food related songs to your album) and “Andy Warhol” with a few new age “dolphiny” tracks thrown in for good measure.

8. Create a series of gravity defying poses when playing live - for example, hanging off the edge of the stage upside down whilst bringing ‘Oh Jungleland’ to a dramatic conclusion.

9. Karate kick your way through any situation where you need to impress an audience, boss, client or possible love interest quickly and effectively.

10. Never ever stage dive. I don’t know why,….Dave’s done it, Bono’s done it and I’m sure Michael’s done it [God rest his soul]. Just don’t do it. However, it’s ok to go to the audience and pat some of them though.

OK, next time….how to be Burchill in 10 easy steps.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, its time to reveal the latest Simple Minded collaboration between Christophe Avril [vocals], Simon Hayward [keyboards / arrangement] and myself [guitars].

> Love Song

Someone Somewhere at Easter

It’s been a while since the last Simple Minded blog….but hopefully its been worth the wait as Christophe Avril and I bring you a new version of Someone Somewhere In Summertime! I always enjoy these collaborations and look forward to more musical endeavours with both Christophe and Simon Hayward in the near future. Feel free to leave your comments and discussion on this blog.

Download Someone Somewhere In Summertime

As a matter of other issues - heres a list of other creative things that are going on with Simcoemedia:

Soundtracks 4 album available for web download at the end of April May.
Photos on Flickr.com from Cuba and Mexico
Photos available for commercial purposes on www.istockphoto.com/

80’s Guitar Sounds Appreciation Society on Facebook

Hi,

I ve set up the 80’s Guitar Sounds Appreciation Society on Facebook - if you click on this link you should find yourself on the group page and if you appreciate the fantastic sounds of Burchill, Edge, Farriss and those other excellent 80’s guitar innovators then add yourself, keep yourself up to date with what strings your heroes are twanging, discuss your favourite moments in rediculous amounts of guitar detail and find others who appreciate those classic sounds!

> 80’s Guitar Sounds Appreciation Society!

Dolphins [100% Tuna Friendly]

There’s been some interest in the new Simple Minded setup [indicated in the last blog entry] and even got a call from George Porter the other day to register his interest. So, I m hoping you’ll be able to hear some new examples soon and we can get some lyrics to one or two of the tracks listed in the AUDIO section.

In the meantime, I’ve been busy working with Simon Hayward on a new instrumental track originally named ‘Lament’. There’s myself on guitars and bass and the keyboards and piano are, of course, played by Sample Mind’s very own McNeil: Simon Hayward. Download this track: Soundtrack_4_Track_5 ‘Lament’

To rate Simple Minded or Simcoe / Hayward collaborative tracks then go to the reviews page and write a review!

taking a step back….

OK, so the band project is shut down. Shame. However, its about to be reborn as a more ‘electronic’ based site where the site is the gig itself. Basically, Simple Minded is going to become a site for collaborating with other musicians such as singers, keyboard players and bassists to create new versions of old Simple Minds tracks and possibly create some new tracks in that Kerr/Burchill/McNeil style of old.

As you may have already heard, Simon Hayward of Sample Minds fame has very kindly made a big contribution to this site in that he provided some much needed backing tracks featuring keyboard, bass and drums. We’ve also worked on another non-Simple Minds track together which has turned out pretty well - Soundtrack 4_track_3

So, this is a call to any musicians with some POLISHED VERSIONS of Simple Minds covers. I can only work with high quality and polished material such as you hear from Simon Hayward and I don t want HUGE files being sent to my email address! You need to MP3 your version of the song you would like to work on at very high quality [192Kb/sec and above] and send it to me via www.yousendit.com which is a very useful FTP site - you can send up to 20Mb without even registering! Do not send direct to my email address but you will need it to send on You Send It - design@simcoe.co.uk

I won’t make any promises of commiting to putting guitar work down but will give the material a listen and see what we can do - so don’t book your £1000 / hour studio time [I know there's people out there who would just to prove that they are a REAL FAN of Simple Minds!]. Hopefully, there will be some singers who would like to contribute to create some interesting finished material for posting on this site.

I’m going to leave the reviews page open for comments to be posted. Lets see what happens and give this a ONE MONTH TRIAL PERIOD.

Is Burchill the new Prime Minister?

Is Charlie Burchill the alter ego of Gordon Brown?…now there’s a question. I suppose being a guitarist myself, this is a conspiracy with limited interest. Whilst Jim is usually the focus of attention - Charlie could be off leading a double life which has remained, so far, unexposed. Has anyone ever seen them both on TV at the same time? They both share similar accents and a similar hairstyle….but are they two separate people? To add to the confusion….a Venn Diagram of areas common to the Chancellor and the legendary guitarist himself would create another suspect in this conspiracy - Charlie Brown. So could it be that the cartoon we watched as kids is actually a precursor to some of the greatest music of our time?
Anyway, latest news is that unfortunately due to the keyboard player withdrawing his interest in the band, the 30 June meeting is off and we’re still in need of a keyboard player! Is this you? Give me a shout on 07704 629906! In the meantime, Simon Hayward [keyboard player from Sample Minds] and I have been working on a completely original track which will go on my next ‘Soundtracks Collection‘ album - to download the track click below:

Soundtracks 4, track 2

One Step Closer….

Well, we’ve got some interest from bass players, a drummer and a keyboard player or two! We’re currently in the process of organising the very first Simple Minded meeting at an undisclosed location in the West Midlands [however, keep your keyboard applications coming!]. The date for this first meeting is most probably going to be 30 June 2007 and it looks set to be an exciting event aimed at getting the group together, trying out a few tracks and checking out the general vibe [which so far has been really positive!]. There is even rumour of a provisional booking for a first gig in November…….well, that’s forward planning for you.

The current first meeting set list will be:

SANCTIFY YOURSELF [Live In The City of Light version]
DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME [1986 Rotterdam Version]
ALIVE AND KICKING [album version]
WAR BABIES [Simple Minded version!]
ALL THE THINGS SHE SAID [album version]
EAST AT EASTER [1991 tour version]