You might scoff at what Simple Minds evolved into come the mid 80s, but this 7″ single from January 1980 is very worthy of your attention:-
mp3 : Simple Minds – Changeling
mp3 : Simple Minds – Premonition (live, Hurrah Club in New York, Oct 79)
This noise was coming out of Glasgow at the fag-end of the 70s and was well ahead of its time. If the band had broken up there and then or maybe 2/3 years later on, then I’ve no doubt they would be getting hailed today as one of the most distinctive and influential bands ever to set foot in a recording studio. Instead, their defining legacy to most is that they, together with U2, were at the forefront of the drift back into stadium rock in the wake of Live Aid.
Oh and that b-side is how it is on vinyl…a dreadful edit with the final notes of the previous song followed by applause and then the intro to Premonition…all very sloppy.
Enjoy.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
“If the band had broken up there and then or maybe 2/3 years later on, then I’ve no doubt they would be getting hailed today as one of the most distinctive and influential bands ever to set foot in a recording studio”
So, so true
Completely agree with acidted, the would be pure cult. And we would have been spared the ‘Belfast Child’. Anyway, ‘Real To Real Cacophony.’ is their best record anyway.
Love this, and Premonition is one of my top 3 SM tracks. Today’s hipsters would do well to listen to Real to Reel and Empires and Dance to find out where their fave trendy bands come from.
Leiber Gott, that bassline in “Premonition” slays me every time! I was so happy when some time in 1999 when I needed to complete my Arista Simple Minds collection for my first crack at a Simple Minds Boxed Set Of God®, I went to my favorite local vinyl emporium,Rock + Roll Heaven in Orlando, Florida, and though I didn’t see it in the racks, asked owner Ray Ehmen if he had a copy; whereupon he pulled out a box of 7″ers from a storeroom that was filled with pristine copies of virtually the entire SM Arista 7″ canon. $8.00 later, it was mine! Even though they vexed me soundly for at least a decade, this band still thrill me.