In September Simple Minds return to Australian for a series of concert and club performances that is certain to leave a trail of audiences stunned by the performing power of a band recently hailed by England's NME as "great, grandiose performers in a category of their own." Simple Minds current single Promised You A Miracle has only just dropped out of the Australian Top 10, and CBS will release the band's latest album New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84) to coincide with the tour. Glittering Prize is the first track from the album to be released as a single, out August 31st.

Ogletree, formally with Cafe Jacques, has recently replaced Kenny Hyslop, who joined the band shortly before their first Australian tour as temporary fill in for the original drummer Brian McGee.

In November 1981 Simple Minds arrived in Australia as special guests on what was to be the final national tour by Icehouse, who had themselves supported Simple Minds on an English tour some months earlier. Virtually unknown when they arrived, the live impact of Simple Minds soon catapulted their single Love Song and album Sons And Fascination into the upper reaches of the Australian charts. Encouraged by the enthusiastic audience response they had received when opening for Icehouse, Simple Minds headlined a short series of pub dates at the end of their visit, all of them sell-outs with hundreds of disappointed fans turned away every night. So well received were the band that Australia's rock press were virtually unanimous in rating them the best live group to tour Australia in 1981 (no small compliment in a year crowded with overseas tours). Their return visit is certainly much anticipated.

Though most of the band's Australian audience have discovered them through the hit singles Love Song and Promised You A Miracle, Simple Minds had in fact released six albums and numerous singles, supported by incessant touring through the U.K., Europe and the U.S.A, before they arrived in Australia. Simple Minds have received strong critical acclaim since the release of their first album, but until recently commercial success has eluded them. Leading musicians are among their strongest supporters, and both David Bowie and Peter Gabriel have consistently expressed strong interest in producing them. Gabriel invited them to support him throughout his 1980 European Tour, and again at his invitation Simple Minds recently headlined at the large WOMAD outdoor festival in England.

Simple Minds has painstakingly crafted a unique sound, a transcendental dance music that melds an architectural sense of structure and rhythm with Jim Kerr's fevered lyrical imagery to produce small epics of mood and suggestion. Their songs bind opposing moods into a relentless (e)motion, a harmony that can be at teh same time both sad and jubilant.

Nevertheless, the growing confidence of Simple Minds' recorded musci is still overshadowed by their strength as a live act. Today, Simple Minds are posed on the brink of unqualified success, seemingly destined to be one of the major musical influences of the 80s. Don't miss them!

Distributed as a three-page press release photocopied on white paper.