There's optimism for ya!
It's true on the one hand that they will never be able to re-capture what they had in those early, pre-fame years. However as skilled musicians, I'm sure there's some sort of chemistry, if you like, that happens when they get together to play, so maybe there will be some good ideas that come out of this trial session.
It doesn't say they have reformed for good or anything - just to record a couple of tracks, so I guess it's a bit like testing the water.
I say go for it - it's worth a try. Although the current line up of Gaynor, Duffy, Gillespie, Kerr and Burchill is probably the strongest since the classic years, and they managed to capture the energy of this present line up on their last album.
Sadly though, I've been put off seeing them live in the last few years because of recurring ill behaved, drunken crowds. Proper pissed hooligans. Fags in faces, abusive, agressive, drunken people, old enough to know better, sadly attempting to relive their teenage years "with a bit of 80s music" and get unspeakably drunk. Simple Minds deserve better fans than that. Or "real" fans. And in those circumstances, it was the true fans that suffer.
I walked out of the band's gig at Manchester Academy in 2005 - it was unbearable and way over capacity. A similar thing happened in 2004. You go to a gig to enjoy the music, not fear for the safety of you and your wife!
Funnily enough, this only seems to happen in the UK. A week after the Manchester incident, we saw them in Paris - all in all a great gig, except for a PA power cut during the second song!
