The autumn and winter of 88/89 spelt a sea-change in my life. The previous summer, the class I’d grown with since 1981 were disbanded and sent to the four corners of the Attractas sixth class corridors. Fifty kids per class whittled down to sixty-six. Made no sense then and it doesn’t now. And we had four teachers during our sixth class term. Four. We were the great unwanted. It was like being at Atletico Madrid with Miss Hosty the principal as our Jesus Gil (look it up on Wikipedia, Gil that is...not Hosty). It was unsettling to say the least. I found refuge down the back of the class sat next to my neighbour Thomas ‘Skippy’ Kavanagh. We whiled away the days pea-shooting at an ever more disgruntled Alan ‘Lynchie’ Lynch whilst a trainee teacher called Miss Collins fucked with our minds. Even the nicknames smacked of a football dressing room but I certainly don’t remember either of us nailing his shoes to the floor whilst he was doing PE.
My mother must have realised the effect all this was having on me because The Doobie Brothers album was loaned out to my Auntie Vera, never to return. In its place came Shakatak and George Benson. From the rubbish to the utter ridiculous. I’d needed something to fill The Beatles void. To turn off my mind, relax and float downstream if perhaps you might. INXS did the job for a brief period. ‘Need You Tonight’ primarily. Santy brought me their album ‘Kick’. I played it on loop. ‘New Sensation’ and ‘Mystify’ were particular favourites too. I quickly bored of it, as I suspect so too did Michael Hutchence.
One evening in spring ’89 I was sat watching Top Of The Pops as I was want to do, trawling my way through Yazz & The Plastic Population and any Stock Aitken & Waterman creation you could care to imagine when the number one song in the land, not our land, their land was announced and on came the video. Two magnificently coiffured Scotsmen standing on a hill overlooking the Harland & Wolfe shipyards in Belfast came into view. A brave move, particularly in 1989. Jim Kerr, Charlie Burchill and their mates. Simple Minds. The song was ‘Belfast Child’. Seven minutes of an Irish trad song (‘She Moved Through The Fair’) set to guitars and keyboards coupled with their own lyrical take. Magnificent. It built and it built to a crescendo and then came back down again. I had to buy the album.
By this time my old man had gotten tired of funding my musical whims. “Save up your money and buy it yourself, you’re twelve now” was the response I got for asking would he pick it up for me.
I was not disheartened for my Confirmation was on the horizon. I tried taping ‘Belfast Child’ off the radio but Larry Gogan and Simon Young were not forthcoming with the tunage. Young and cohorts had a particular talent for sporting country and western style string ties with silver buckles, but as far as their musical tastes, well, let’s face it; it was rammed right up their arses.
I waited til that fateful June day having to stand there in a fucking stupid cardigan, cream chinos and wine slip-on shoes all so it could just be the following Friday when me and my new, yet brief, classmates tootled off down to Nutgrove to spend our winnings. I returned with the album ‘Street Fighting Years’ and the full United away kit and about twenty pence change. Skippy had picked up the yellow Celtic away shirt at the same time which he ended up wearing in the Confirmation class photo shoot. He refused to take it off. And why would he? I bet he still wears it underneath his doorman’s uniform.
I’d been dragged off down to Wexford and missed said photo thus erasing myself from existence. A bit like ‘Back To The Future’ but with no need to get my Mam and Dad to have a smooch.
Wexford broadened my Simple Minds song cannon. My older cousin Geoff for some reason had an album of theirs called ‘Sons And Fascination’ in a cassette holdall along with Queen, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. ‘Fuck that lot’, I thought to myself. Upon a summers morn he taped ‘Sons And Fascination’ for me and suddenly I was a fifteen year old at twelve. I probably had more luck with the ladies as a result of hanging around with him, my cousin Colin and his mates at twelve than I ever did at fifteen. Then again I’m probably in possession of rose tinted spectacles. Spectacles were something which I thankfully had consigned to the cloakroom in Attractas at this stage.
My Mam couldn’t understand why I was listening to ‘that racket’. But it was sublime. It had been recorded in 1981 but even now it sounds current. Song titles like ‘Seeing Out The Angel, ‘In Trance As Mission’, ’70 Cities As Love Brings The Fall’ did not sit with what other pre-pubescent geezers were listening to. Sure, we played football every day until we dropped but I’d grown up, if only by a little bit.
We had called down to my Dad’s mate in Kilmuckridge. He had a son called Jason who was about eight years older than me. We were kicking a ball about but the ball was as flat as a witch’s tit. Jason struck on the idea of hopping in his Renault 18 and driving up to pump the ball up. On the way he asked what music I was into. Panic on the streets of Wexford. “Oh, eh, I like Simple Minds a bit, I suppose”...”Really? Well listen to this!” He popped in a tape and turned it up. Fucking loud. ‘Once Upon A Time’ rattled the speakers. To a kid in 1989 it was manna from fucking heaven. Little did I know that Jason Bushe was the biggest Simple Minds fan known to man? Street cred with the older lads turned up a notch.
We called around to his Mam and Dad’s the following Christmas Day. I had started in Benildus by this stage but was already being written off as what the chess-loving, bullshit-spouting, Doc Marten wearing brigade termed a ‘Soccer Head’. (It’s called fucking football lads, just a point I think needs making). I played up to it. I kept my musical counsel. I can’t remember what Santy had brought me as I found it quite strenuous to keep the pretence up as I had a sister eight years my junior and a brother who was nine. But I do remember receiving a gift that day that ranks as high as any gift I have ever been fortunate to be presented with.
Jason, massive Simple Minds fan that he was and still is, handed me vinyl copies of every Simple Minds album recorded to date. “Now. Bring them home. Tape them. And give them back”. Sure, yeah, no problem. “Oh. And every one of them is signed by Jim and Charlie. Even, look! Brian McGee the original drummer.”. FUCK. I carried them home in the old man’s car like someone coming home pretending to be sober at three in the morning to a waiting narked wife. I listened to them for days. And I gave them back unharmed. I couldn’t sleep for the worry that my little sister might use them as a Frisbee. Happy fucking Christmas and a Happy New Decade. I returned to Benildus in the New Year as a man of musical wisdom. Thanks Jason.
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