Duran Duran Live In Chicago

After Duran Duran’s refreshingly retro All You Need Is Now released earlier this year, I’ve been seeking an opportunity to see the band live, curious to learn if these New Romantics could still translate their youthful exuberance on stage.

What I wasn’t expecting was how their youthful exuberance would ultimately be trumped by the crowd, a demographic that would ultimately be referenced by their Twitter feed (more on this later) as “M.I.L.F.-tastic.”

Yes, at least ¾ of the crowd would be of the female persuasion and, yes, at least ¾ of those ladies were 35 or older. But you would have lost at guessing the collective age of the crowd if you had closed your eyes and listened to how loud these ladies screamed the moment the band took to the stage for Friday night’s sold out performance at the Chicago Theatre.

Within seconds, the female contingency reverted to a room full of 14 year-old girls and on several occasions, their volume exceeded the band's.

It was slightly offsetting at time, particularly when Duran Duran used their perfectly composed set list to convey a sense of lineage with art rock influences while apeshit fans couldn’t remember how to use the toilet properly.

I shit you not: my wife reported back to me that the lady in front of her in the bathroom became so excited at the opening chants of “Please please tell me now!” as she entered the stall that she simply pissed all over the toilet seat and left it for my wife to negotiate.

While the lack of civility upset my wife, it only added to my environment. Suppose this woman was a lawyer just hours before? Was this the same kind of behavior she displayed a quarter century ago after a bottle of Boone’s Farm wine and a cassette of Arena?

My mind pondered the possibilities.

All of this was fueled by Duran Duran’s blatant attempt at making sure the show would be the polar opposite of what the crowd probably wanted it to be: a nostalgic trip that featured only the hits.

In fact, bassist John Taylor asked the rhetorical question “Who says nostalgia can’t be fun?!” at one point, treating it like a bumper between the healthy amount of new material right before starting on another one of their endless hits from the 80’s.

The funny thing is that it worked, thanks in large part of how All You Need Is Now acts just like an outtake from Rio or Seven and the Ragged Tiger.

Their stage featured kinetic lighting, most which mimicked old school led displays and color schemes. Above the stage were four hologram masks where they displayed male faces, the chick on the Rio cover, and-for the artsy “The Man Who Stole A Leopard”-a woman who transformed into a creepy leopard face before the end of the song.

Musically, the band was spot-on with Roger Taylor propelling the unit with metronomic qualities. He was quite impressive as was John Taylor in his low-end duties and silver-streaked hair. Nick Rhodes remained stoic and expressionless, save for the band presentation moment where LeBon called out his name and the ladies squealed, causing Rhodes to give up a smile.

Simon, not to be outdone, had the crowd yell out his name during the roll call. And when that wasn’t good enough, he had them do it again after asking “What’s my full name?!” He looked smashing with his new facial hair and he wasn’t afraid to get a tad political at a few points during the set.

For “Ordinary World,” he offered a dedication to all of the troops coming home from the withdrawal of Iraq. At another point, Simon requested that George Bush and Tony Blair be tried for war crimes, causing a few noticeable boos from parts of the theatre.

But before anyone could get too political, Duran would crank up another pop gem and the crowd eagerly fell in line.

The only drag on the set came during one of my least favorite Duran songs of all time: the instrumental “Tiger Tiger.” For some reason, the band chose this song to introduce a momentum stopping Twitter interlude where attendees could tweet their thoughts to the band and the messages would appear on a screen behind them.

So essentially, we got to hear a brief intermission piece while people in the floor section (it was a bit fuzzy in the balcony seats) could read things like “Damn I look good tonight!” and “John is so HOTTT!!!” from their neighbors.

Thankfully, “Tiger Tiger” was the only setback (unless you encountered poor manners in the ladies room too) that I could find with Friday’s performance. If anything, Duran Duran demonstrated the right way to avoid the nostalgic trappings of a band that could easily fall into the hands of revival tours and state fair circuits. They’ve chosen to abridge their newer material with the best parts of their past making a seamless setlist of old and new.

Score one for Duran then, and while the crowd may need some work in order to match the band's perfect blend of nostalgia vs. modern chic, the first item a certain fan should follow is "If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie."


Setlist:

Before The Rain>Planet Earth
A View To A Kill
All You Need Is Now
Blame The Machines
Come Undone
Safe (In The Heat of the Moment)
The Reflex
The Man Who Stole A Leopard
Girl Panic
Is There Something I Should Know?
Tiger Tiger
Careless Memories
Leave A Light On
Ordinary World
Notorious
Hungry Like The Wolf
(Reach Up For The) Sunrise

(Encore)

Wild Boys>Relax
Rio

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise

It's Discord And Rhyme

I have to get out more often.

The band that opened for Duran Duran last night had a #13 Platinum single from last year.

I only noticed because some members of the crowd perked up when they played it, proving that singles evidently to get noticed by some people.

Neon Trees is a four piece with a touring guitarist that is on stage with them, while being noticeably behind the four actual members.

I often think that being a touring guitarist must be one of the more shittier jobs in the world of rock music. Somewhere between roadie and video producer.

Their music was good enough for me to at least check them out on Wikipedia, and it’s there when I first noticed.

That underneath all of that new wave hair gel and faux Mohawk of lead singer Tyler Glenn is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I drew up this neat joke suggesting that they should team up with Edgar Winter before I realized that Edgar is into Scientology and not a Mormon.

You can check out their video to that aforementioned hit to see if you’re a fan, but musically I can only take too much sugar before my teeth hurt.



Plus the dude really went overboard with his Duran Duran worship.

The best moment was when Glenn was going on and on about how much the music of the 80’s meant to him, name-checking bands like The Cure, Duran Duran, The Smiths….until he was interrupted by a guy who screamed “Flock of Seagulls.”

“I heard that…” shot back Tyler, before prancing over to the other side of the stage.

There’s a full review of the Duran set still to come, but here are some observations:

• The women in attendance managed to drown down the band at some points, both in cheering and in singing. There were moments where they hurt my ears.
• Most couples consisted of women dragging their sorry-assed men to the show, a few reluctantly. The rest of the men actually knew a few Duran Duran songs and would dance a bit during the popular songs.
• There was one couple-the kind with the reluctant spouse who didn’t give a rat’s ass about the band-that sat in the aisle ahead of us. The gentlemen was an African-American in his mid-50’s, and it was painfully obvious that he was dragged kicking and screaming to the show. I kept making up bits of dialog in my head, pretending to be the voice of this man, usually involving a bit of dialogue like “Look at these dumbass English crackers with their lipstick and eyeliner.” The couple left before the set ended.
• The chick in her thirties next to my wife kept hitting m’lady with her butt. She didn’t like it while I certainly didn’t see the harm in it.
• The suggestion to hit the assailant back with a good old fashioned pillow fight back at our room in the Hyat didn’t go over too well.
• There was a dude in his fifties at the front of the stage who referred to himself as Beyonce when Simon put the microphone near his mug.
• Everyone stayed put for the most part during the new stuff, with a bit more noticeable smartphone activity until a more famous song showed up.
• A bunch of Duran fans turned into Republicans.
• Or maybe they were Reagan fans back in the day.
• My wife and I had a complete role reversal than the rest of the couples in the crowd. While most wives dragged their husbands to the festivities, I dragged my wife.
• After the show, my wife was overheard stating “I didn’t know they did “Ordinary World.’”
• They added Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax” in the middle of “Wild Boys.”
• Fans in the crowd did the repeats at the end of “the figureheads have fell, fell, fell” just like the song.
• The Best Song they did was “Leopard” off the new one.

Duran Duran - Rio

I don’t have that ninth grade review of Rio, but I vaguely remember enough of it to paraphrase one of the “money shot” lines. I referred to the song “Hungry Like The Wolf,” noted the song lyric’s strong sexual imagery and declared it to be something that may to “too risque to find it’s way on to the Solid Gold show.”
For those of you that were too young to remember (read: all of you), “Solid Gold” was a television show where people would come and lip-synch their songs in front of a phony audience. It was very lame and not very many “cool” bands played on it.
Anyway, our town didn’t have MTV and, therefore, I didn’t really have too great of a visual image of the band. I probably saw the video to “Hungry Like The Wolf” once or twice, but I really thought that Duran Duran would turn out to be this highbrow new wave band and eventually get heroin addictions and record albums in Berlin with Eno.
So I write that bitchin line and what does my English teacher write on it? “I just saw them play this song on ‘Solid Gold’ last week. A-“
Let me return the favor, Duran Duran, and award you with my own ‘A-‘ for your best album, one that remarkably holds up better than expected and isn’t as embarrassing as my review of it. There, I said it.
I’ve concluded that Duran Duran owes a ton to Roxy Music. And while they couldn’t touch some of Roxy’s best work, Rio comes close and certainly bests the band’s late 70’s output like Flesh & Blood, the era that D.D. most resembles.
Unlike other Duran releases that are only as good as their singles, Rio’s lesser known tracks are not only noteworthy, but are on par with their more famous counterparts. What makes the album work so well is the band’s rhythm section of John and Rodger Taylor. John provides some nifty bass work full of funky slaps and pops while Rodger works both acoustic and electric drums with great precision. Make no mistake, it’s very white Anglophile funk, but there’s enough legitimate booty shaking thanks to Duran’s rhythm section to make their dance floor antics plausible.
The hits are concentrated on side one, but side two is fucking better. Slick, atmospheric and fuck-ready, the four songs on the second side of Rio are the best thing this band has ever done.
In closing, this is better-than-good pop music that, unlike the band’s other releases, is able to transcend the moment in which it was created and sound timeless when other contemporaries sound dated. And thanks to the success that Rio bestowed upon them, Duran Duran were never quite able to recreate the impeccable blend they achieved here.

Duran Duran - Seven And The Ragged Tiger

The first record review I ever wrote was for Duran Duran. It was for a Freshman English class where we were instructed to write a review…pro or con…on a movie, album, or any other form of entertainment. I chose the band’s second album, Rio.
I loved it.
I thought it was so awesome that I went out and bought the first album, thoughtfully repackaged by the folks at Capitol records who were out to make a buck off the band’s new fans like me. I didn’t like it as much as Rio and the band’s subsequent saturation caused a certain backlash in my mind.
They turned from a slick post-Bowie new wave band into a band that became excessively merchandised to young teenage girls. This may have already been happening before I knew it as it wasn’t until 1983 that our town finally got MTV. But at that time, right when the band released Seven And The Ragged Tiger, the “fab five” movement was in full swing. And I hated the band for it.
Even though I had this ability to float around various rock genres, there was nothing about Seven And The Ragged Tiger that could remotely pass as cool. Unless you had it in your collection to impress a chick with (there were people that did this), no heterosexual teenage boy would be caught dead with this album in their collection.
So how did I manage to hear it? Funny you should ask, by a friend of mine who happened to adore Duran Duran and who didn’t mind the band’s minor change in direction for album number three.
He also happened to be gay.
Looking back on it now, Seven And The Ragged Tiger is a pretty shitty attempt at an icy-sheened Roxy Music record. Which, in turn, makes it a tolerable Duran Duran record.
I had forgotten how successful this album was back in the day: with no less than three top ten hits (“The Reflex,” “New Moon On Monday,” and “Union Of The Snake,”), this record was keeping teenage girl’s vagina moist both on the way to/from school and in the seclusions of their bedrooms. It’s the remaining tracks that really suffer from the lack of visual stimulations. Seriously, there’s very little on cuts like “(I’m Looking For) Cracks In The Pavement” or “Shadows On Your Side” that will get you hot ‘n bothered. But throw in the image of an androgynous Nick Rhodes putting his index finger on a synthesizer key, and then I’m ready to get down to business.