It's been a year of contrasts. This year Simple Minds released four albums worth of material (Néapolis, The Early Years 1977-78, Real Live 91 and all those remixes!) only to see Néapolis perform badly in the charts, and no US release at all.

The world could tune in to their first Cybertheatre gig, but demand killed the feed for many. So a repeat performance at the Cybertheatre kicked off their European Tour. It was a great tour for those on mainland Europe, but UK fans were disappointed as the band didn't play their two UK events. But it was going to be a short tour anyway.

simpleminds.com finally launched, and the new Travelling Man fan club arrived. And with all that said, it's been one hectic year from Simple Minds. More of the same for next year?

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More bootlegs have been added to the Bootleg Discography. Alive And Singing, Alive And Kicking, Above This Highrise Land and a 7" called Simple Minds document the first European concerts of the Once Upon A Time tour.

Happy holidays, and thanks for all the e-mails and support over the last year.

(And apologies to Jim, Charlie and Mel for digging this image out of the archive!)

Celtic sends off Dalglish and Kerr's takeover bid Celtic, the Scottish Premier League champions, have shown the red card to a bid led by former Celtic and Scottish international great Kenny Dalglish and Jim Kerr of rock group Simple Minds. Vice-chairman Brian Quinn said the board had unanimously concluded that the proposal "is not in the best interests of Celtic, its supporters and its shareholders." He said the proposal could lock in small shareholders and burden Celtic with debt, but did not match Celtic's £91m market value or show adequate commercial skills. Mr Quinn said chairman Fergus McCann's plan to distribute his 51% stake among the shareholders was the best way to maintain the balance between the shareholders and Celtic's "wider role in the Celtic community." Mr McCann said: "I have not given five years of my life to Celtic to take it from bankruptcy to a point of strength and then recommend a proposal which fails to reflect Celtic's values and aspirations." Copyright: The Daily Telegraph

Back to the Celtic story! Over the last half a year, it's become common knowledge that Kenny Dalglish is heading a consortium to buy Celtic football club. Jim is a vocal, and active participant in the consortium, his name being linked with it the longest. Last week, Celtic rejected the offer being made by the consortium (an interesting statement, considering their later statement that they never received an offer.) This was reported widely in the press. A cutting from the UK's Daily Telegraph is reproduced left, but more can be found on the BBC's website here. Yesteday, Jim Kerr and Kenny Dalglish faced the press. The event was widely reported on the early morning news programmes. But their interview, including audio files of the key quotes, can be found here. Whilst this is a very serious matter, with millions of pounds being discussed, the view of several Simple Minds fans was to express shock at seeing Jim in a suit!

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Check out the For Sale section in the Marketplace. More additions have been made: can you help out? Do you have spare copies of The Amsterdam EP, Themes Volumes or CD bootlegs?

Triple serving of fanzines. First up is a huge, double issue of Mission In Motion. This long running Spanish fanzine covers the Neapolis tour, takes on the remixes, and remembers Malcolm Foster. For a full list of contents, and subscription information, follow the Mission In Motion link from here.

Who's Doing The Dreaming Now? issue seven is now being mailed to subscribers. It finishes the Néapolis discography, tracks down an interview with Jim about the purchase of Celtic, and includes the definitive account of Mick MacNeil's activities since leaving Simple Minds (complete with discography.) There's also reviews of the summer shows, Travelling Man and Real Live 91. And Who's Doing The Dreaming Now? subscribers are being offered the chance to purchase Simple Minds sheet music at a discounted price from Rose-Morris: London's 6-Floor Music Store.

An incredible picture of Jim glares from the cover of Travelling Man (hats off to Andy Earl and Toorkwaz - it's a great image.) The fanzine's contents are mainly taken from simpleminds.com, but there are some interesting Néapolis pictures.

More information about these two fanzines can be found in the fanzine section.

Finally, some updates on this web site!

Firstly, some minor additions to the discography. A new radio show turned up, a Westwood One CD of the 1995 Glastonbury performance. This can be found in the US Radio Show section of the discography. A more recent discovery is an Italian 12" of Glitterball. This can be found on the single's own page in the discography.

A more substantial addition is the next round of bootlegs. This finishes the Sparkle In The Rain tour and includes Summertime In Glasgow, one of their most important bootlegs. This brings us up Once Upon A Time - the bootlegs for that tour will be posted soon. The new additions are: Look Up To The Sky, Hometown, Disc Of Brilliant Things, In Summertime, Wheels Of Fame, Summertime In Glasgow and Live In Glasgow.

There's been some additions to the Marketplace as well. Eduardo Palandi is after some LPs on vinyl. Can you help out? - you'll find his details in the For Sale,Wanted And Trades section. Plus Patrik Friberg is selling some Simple Minds records - including some promos from the Neapolis period. You can find his list here.

News of the 1999 convention. Clive and Shaun have been working behind the scenes on this, and they should be able to start making definitive statements next year. This includes a final decision on the venue. In the meantime, if you want to e-mail Clive with any ideas, then you can contact him at his new e-mail address : cliveminds@aol.com

The new issues of Endless River and Le Menti are now out. Endless River features an exclusive interview with Mel Gaynor. Mel's been busy - he also complained to the editors of Le Menti that he wasn't on the cover enough... hence Mel's presence on the front of their latest issue (absolutely huge issue - 104 pages with colour insert!)

Who's Doing The Dreaming Now? issue seven will be out soon!

And finally the latest news that everyone's talking about! Finally, after months of rumour, it seems that Jim was involved in talks to purchase Celtic football club. Kenny Daglish is named as the head of the consortium who've expressed interested in purchasing the club - Celtic have confirmed that they know of the consortium, but no offer has been made yet.

The story even made BBC Nine O'Clock News, but it was left to ITN's News At Ten to print a picture of Jim (looking very young) and show some footage of one of the Mandela concerts.

Fans of The Breakfast Club will be interested in the following one-off fanzine. Primarily a comic book, this A4 black-and-white fanzine also includes information about John Hughes and the Keith Forsey produced soundtrack album (which includes the movie's title song Don't You (Forget About Me))

It costs 1.80 UKP (which includes P&P) and is available from:
John Gilheany
134 Mackintosh Place
Roath
Cardiff
CF2 4RR

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I'm on holiday from September 11th to September 27th. Mail will be answered after this period.

The Néapolis mailing list will continue to run as normal.

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The next round of the bootleg discography is now online, with the first of the Sparkle In The Rain bootlegs. All the bootlegs are also reviewed (with the exception of Look Up To The Sky which will be added later.)

Click here for some of the LP bootlegs from The Tour De Monde.

The radio matharon all went according to plan. Co-host Todd Richards wrote: "I'm thrilled to say that the marathon went extremely well. I even played requests from as far away as Germany! I'm encouraging the management at WBWC to pursue "Real Audio" capabilities...next year...if I'm lucky the marathon will be heard via the Internet!"

Todd Richards and his co-host Aaron Burke plan a return to the airwaves early summer next year.

Many people have asked after a playlist for the show. They've been posted at www.concentric.net/~Bri421/simpleminds.html. The playlist reflects Simple Minds entire back catalogue, even mixing songs from Life In A Day with Neapolis.

Other highlights included the full broadcast of The Street Fighting Years BBC documentary and Real Live 91. It was also probably the first time New Warm Skin has ever been heard on the radio as well!

US Radio station WBWC 88.3Fm The Sting in Berea, located in Ohio, just outside Cleveland, are running a Simple Minds Marathon on Thursday. (20th August 1998).

The broadcast will feature 18 hours of Simple Minds material ranging from their debut as Johnny And The Self Abusers through to Néapolis and the fan-club only Real Live 91.

More information about the marathon broadcast can be found at www.internerd.com/simpleminds whilst the radio station's page is located at www.radiolink.net/wbwc.

Hervé's auction is continuing to run with lots of interest and bidding. Collectors seem to be most interested in the bootlegs, although there's much more to the collection than that. Check it out in the Marketplace section. There's also a link to Hervé's site, where he keeps an up-to-date list including the current bids.

I've also updated Hermes Carylon's set sale. This sale closes at the start of October and Hermes has now announced a 25% discount on all prices published. Again, this is an extensive Simple Minds collection. There are also some new items included in the memorabilia section of Hermes' list. Hermes also asked that his 'phone number be put on line, which you'll find on his page in the Marketplace.

More additions to the MarketPlace: H. Lockhart is looking for trades, whilst Eric Simon is after a particular remix of Promised You A Miracle. Check it out.

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Last months Q Magazine listed the top 100 richest rock stars in the UK, and what they spent their money on. Jim and Charlie made the list, and the magazine reported that Jim was heading a consortium to purchase Celtic. It then came up with an extremely dubious reason as to why.

Needless to say, a full apology appears in this month's Q. If you want to discover what the original misquote was then buy it. (Or rather just flick through it at the newsagents.)

However Q redeemed themselves with their Top 10 UK Albums Of The Eighties feature. New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84) was cited as one of the top ten. One of the tracks they especially picked out was the oft-ignored instrumental Somebody Up There Likes You. (Interestingly U2 haven't made the list - I'm sure The Joshua Tree should've been included - but not at the expense of New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84)!!!).

I've added some more information about Hervé's auction which can be found on his auction page here.

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The 1998 tour is over - the tour date page has been updated and archived away (the final list can be found in the Tour Section.) Simple Minds are not expected to tour again until a least the end of 1999.

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Clive Johnson and Shaun Tranter are thinking of holding a Simple Minds Convention next year. They have lots of ideas and are looking into booking places, but they want more input. What would you like to see at a Simple Minds Convention?

Flyers have already been distributed at some of the summer shows, and will also be sent out with Who's Doing The Dreaming Now? issue seven.

The bigger the response, the better the chance they will have in succeeding to hold the event. So send your comments and ideas to:

Clive Johnson
Cherry Tree Cottage
Woodbridge Lane
Bedchester
Dorset
SP7 0JU

Shaun Tranter
27 St. John's Road
Weston Hills
Spalding
Lincs
PE12 6DG

The latest Endless River fanzine has just arrived. Volume Two Number Two includes the latest news, bootleg reviews, web site tours, a review of the second CyberTheatre Gig and more.

Details (including a link to their web site) in their fanzine section in the Other Info area.

The 1998 festival tour has now finished. The band, after a short break, will get straight back into the studio to continue work on the follow-up to Néapolis. As detailed in Who's Doing The Dreaming Now? #5, Simple Minds want the next studio album released by September 1999.

A major tour will then follow.

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There are two new Simple Minds sales on the web site. Eduardo Akins is selling a collection of mainly Australian and American items. Whilst Hervé Henry is auctioning his entire collection - there are many rarities included.

Check out both lists in the For Sale, Items Wanted and Trades section.

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And after promising for a long time, the new bootleg discography is starting to take shape. The pictures in this section are the sleeves of Simple Minds earliest LP bootlegs - all are fully documented and reviewed in the new bootleg section. Over the next couple of months, the entire bootleg discography will be gradually uploaded and completed.

It's the first time that some of these bootlegs are actually mentioned, let alone pictured and reviewed, on the Internet. In fact, some of them have escaped mention in any fanzines or Simple Minds documentation, so this will become the most extensive bootleg inventory for the band.

Click here for the LP bootlegs from Johnny And The Self Abusers to the New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84) tour.