Somewhere in summertime

Were there movies that defined your teen years?

These were mine:

Can’t Stop The Music (1980): Mind blown by New York in the late 70s and The Village People, had no idea they were gay, simply thought they were glorious.

Footloose (1984): Prayed to God every night to let me meet Kevin Bacon.

The Breakfast Club (1985): Totally tapped into my teen angst.

St Elmo’s Fire (1985): Oh to have Andrew McCarthy pine for me.

About Last Night (1986): Demi Moore and Rob Lowe … what a love match!

Each movie really spoke to the teen version of me.

I saw Can’t Stop The Music and The Breakfast Club 12 or 13 times each at Newcastle cinemas.

So, when Simple Minds started singing the theme song from The Breakfast Club – “Don’t you forget about me” – at Sydney Opera House last night my heart soared.

DD, on the other hand, decided it was a good moment to duck to the loo. He’s a purist and isn’t keen on the song because Simple Minds didn’t write it.

But, as Forbes notes, the association with the movie pushed the next Simple Minds album, 1985’s Once Upon a Time, to gold sales.

The band had to be convinced to even record it. Writer Keith Forsey wrote it specifically for the film and artists like Bryan Ferry and Billy Idol both passed on it. 

Their loss. It went to No.1 around the world and the audience at the Opera House went crazy when the band started playing it. It was so uplifting to see thousands of 50-70-year-olds rocking out.

I was already crying at that point.

Their previous number, Somewhere in Summertime, set me off. Usually I don’t know why a song sets me off, but I did this time.

The tears were for my lost youth.

Listening to Somewhere in Summertime took me straight back to the 80s and being an awkward kid who wanted to be pretty and popular like Clare from The Breakfast Club, but was more like weird Allison.

I was determined to teach everyone not to underestimate me.

The pressure I put on myself was intense and exhausting. Every perceived “failure” was so wrenching.

I still struggle with it now and wish I was less hard on myself.

Live music, the ocean and time spent with DD help me unwind.

Simple Minds were awesome last night. We had great box seats and lead singer Jim Kerr was a sweet, generous performer. He spent half the gig waving to people in the audience, blowing them kisses and holding their hands.

It freaked me out a bit that I remember him looking like this:

But now he looks like this:

It brings home just how long ago the early ’80s were. But his voice was still powerful and wonderful.

Jim sang so many amazing hits: Glittering Prize, Belfast Child, Promised You A Miracle, Love Song … He was surprisingly limber for a 64-year-old, doing lots of stuff like this throughout the gig.

Very impressive, especially considering how tight his jeans were …

Jim talked about coming to Australia in the early 80s to play at the Coogee Bay Hotel (DD saw the gig!). The band didn’t know what jetlag was and took what felt like eight connecting flights over three days to get to Sydney. They finally landed and saw that Echo and the Bunnymen were playing at the Manly Vale Hotel, so they hopped straight on a ferry to see the gig, hung out with the band afterwards, didn’t realise the ferries stopped at a certain time and got stranded!

But he said Sydney Opera House has always held a special place in their hearts and they were so excited to finally play there.

We would have liked to see them play another encore, but they had to wind it up because they were doing another gig at 9.30pm, so we wandered sadly out the doors.

And it was still light when we walked outside!

Gotta love that. So we shared a choc-mint ice cream cone at sunset as we wandered back to the car. What a night!

Song of the day: Simple Minds “Glittering Prize”