Simple Minds

It's nice that Simple Minds is doing that thing for Amnesty, but Jim Kerr should get off his high and mighty trip and stop putting down people like Prince who bum "around in a jockstrap" ("Simple Minds Makes a Pitch for Amnesty," by Chris Willman, April 13). So what if he does? Does it make him less of a person just because he likes to wear funky clothes? That's pretty sad discriminating against people who dress different. It shows how simple-minded he really is. D. JACK Culver City

Teen angst doesn't belong to one generation more than any other. Isolation, awkwardness and a general distrust of authority are staples, whether kids are listening to the Beatles on vinyl or Paramore on an iPhone. But if the boomers had Woodstock, Generation X had John Hughes. What was it like to grow up in the '80s? One can reference a string of political or cultural touchstones, or one can turn to Hughes' films for the quickest, easiest and shortest answer. It sounded, perhaps, something like Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)

Congratulate Jim Kerr on Simple Minds' Top Five single, "Don't You (Forget About Me)" from the hit movie "The Breakfast Club"--and you're liable to get a sheepish grin or a grumpy "thank you." Kerr, the Scottish band's 25-year-old lead singer/lyricist, is somewhat embarrassed by the single. It doesn't matter that it's classy mainstream pop/rock and one of the year's better singles. The problem is that it's the kind of music Kerr normally wouldn't be caught dead singing.

Only 78 minutes long, "Pauline & Paulette" doesn't make any great statements or come to any grand conclusions. In fact, it barely comes to a conclusion at all. Still, this beguiling Belgian fable, very much its own droll and delicate little film, has some touching things to say about what is important in life and why.

Reporters weren't the only cynics at the Live Aid benefit concerts last year. Among the ranks of those doubting that this heralded event signalled some sort of genuine New Humanitarianism in entertainment was Jim Kerr--singer for the Scottish rock group Simple Minds, which had made its commercial breakthrough in America not long before appearing on the international telecast.

"Don't You (Forget About Me)" was the rock band Simple Minds' biggest hit. The song, featured in the movie "The Breakfast Club," reached No. 1 on Billboard magazine's singles chart in spring of 1985. But the Scottish group led by singer/songwriter Jim Kerr seems to have been away from the pop spotlight for so long now that it's easy to forget that the band once seemed poised to follow U2 to a position of voice-of-a-generation status. Instead, Simple Minds finds itself, in its first U.S.

Why would Simple Minds, the critically acclaimed Scottish rock group, put out two records at the same time? That's right. If you walk into a record store later this month, you'll find two "new" records from the band--"In the City of Light," a live double album from A&M Records, and "Sister Feelings Call" from Virgin Records. What has the band up in arms is that the Virgin disc isn't new at all.

Simple Minds opened the Greek Theatre summer season Tuesday night with a show that was uplifting for both the Scottish group's message of hope as well as its often stirring, sometimes majestic music. Like Bruce Springsteen, U2 and too few others, Simple Minds uses its rock stardom to further the humanitarian ideals expressed in the group's songs. And it does so without sounding naive or preachy.

One doesn't have to look far for an apt metaphor to describe Simple Minds' performance Wednesday at the Universal Amphitheatre. The set was much like one of the group's songs itself: slow and rather ponderous at the start, but building to an invigorating crescendo. The difference was lost on the devoted crowd, packed into the hall for the first L.A. show in five years by the sporadically chart-making band.

Simple Minds is a rock band that has its heart so much in the right place that you want to like it--despite its shortcomings. Even before the Scottish quintet stepped on stage Sunday night at the Universal Amphitheatre, it told its sound crew to play the "Sun City" album for the sold-out crowd during intermission.

When farmer Andres Nunez walks into a store, clerks act as though he isn't there. When Juana Gomez hawks embroidered bags at a marketplace, people brush by her. When Agustin Vazquez pleads for aid, government officials ignore him. The reason, these three and many others say, is simple: They are Indians. "We Indian farmers seem to cause blindness in people because they act like they don't see us," said Vazquez, an elder in Chenalho, a Tzotzil Indian town.

Mrs. Ethel Savage, an eccentric but lovable millionaire, winds up incarcerated in an elite mental institution by three scheming stepchildren determined to gain control of her fortune. There, among a bevy of endearing lunatics, Mrs. Savage finds true acceptance--and learns that sometimes madness is relative. Written and set in the 1950s, John Patrick's "The Curious Savage," at Actors Co-op, would have us swallow the lumpy chestnut that the mentally ill can be simply adorable.

Simple Minds' show at the Mayan Theatre on Monday, celebrating its comeback album "Good News From the Next World," was marked not by songs the band played, but by one it did not: "Promised You a Miracle." Back in the mid-'80s, that song heralded the Scottish band as a potential member of the rock elite, just a rung below such fellow inspiring idealists as U2 and Peter Gabriel.

Simple Minds, "Good News From the Next World," Virgin (**). The Scottish band writes lovely songs, but here again they are smothered by booming production and the hyper-drama of Jim Kerr's singing. Producer Keith Forsey, who crafted the No. 1 "Don't You (Forget About Me)," has reunited with the group (which plays the Mayan on Monday), but the subtlety of that seductive number is nowhere in evidence.

The fatal shooting of Demetrius L. Rice in a crowded Los Angeles High School classroom last year prompted the Los Angeles Board of Education to take the appropriate and necessary step of adopting a strict policy toward guns in public schools. Generally students caught with a firearm on campus are kicked out for the remainder of a semester and the following semester before being allowed to apply for reinstatement.

There's Dweeb, Barney, Shorty, oh, and Bam Bam. They exist for those who "don't want to feel like a dork," says footwear designer Eric Meyer. "They" are the sneakers, clogs and casual shoes (above) that are selling like mad under Meyer's line Simple (about $54). "The idea was to reduce down to the basics rather than add all the gizmos for a marketing appeal," says the former shoe man for Vision Sports.

The big news so far concerning the Orange County outdoor concert season is that the Bob Dylan-Tom Petty tour will make its only stop in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in June at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa. The date of the show is expected to be announced at a press conference today in Los Angeles. Beyond that show, the nearly 30 confirmed concerts at the Pacific and Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre contain few surprises.

While looking over the Times pop music reviewers' lists of the Top 10 LPs of 1984 (Dec. 30), I suddenly had an idea. Why not take all of the records by such moral midgets as Prince, Tina Turner and Sheila E, melt them down, and use the vinyl to press out more albums by groups such as U2, Simple Minds, the Alarm and Donna Summer, whose messages our morally bankrupt society so desperately needs to hear. DAVID IANTORNO Bellflower

A golfer, angered by a breach of etiquette by two other players, is charged with striking one with his club and, when the club's head broke off, stabbing the other man with the broken end. Hugo Torres, 33, was arrested Thursday at Sabal Palm Golf Course on two counts of aggravated battery, the Broward County Sheriff's Department reported. He was released from jail Friday after posting a $10,000 bond.

"James Suck," proclaimed the shirt worn by singer Tim Booth during the sweaty encore by the British band with the boy's name Tuesday at the Roxy. But the audience wasn't buying. The disclaimer seemed only to spur the packed-in crowd to find new ways to express its adoration, ending with a good two dozen fans leaping up on stage during "Sit Down" to do just that, at Booth's feet.