Duran Duran: Classic or Dud?

http://www.durandurantimeline.com/years/prehistory.html

http://www.cookingvinyl.com/the_lilac_time/index.php

The Prefects were basically the first punk band in Birmingham(Subway Sect as well?) and the tangents article mentions John Taylor's love of the Nightingales. Steven "Tin Tin" Duffy formed Duran Duran, then left the band and joined up with ex-members of the Prefects for several bands, ending with Lilac Time featuring his brother Nick Duffy. The Prefects featured Eamon Duffy, another borther or Nick? I have to get this straight. They all used to play at the punk club Barbarellas, the Prefects even wrote a song about it. What is it with Birmingham and that movie?

(Okay, so that was just an excuse for me to recite some MORE Duran trivia that's permanently stuck in my head. *whew* I feel better now.)

uh, there's music journalists ON THIS VERY THREAD professing their love of DD. and the 80s are hot shit all over again now - there's tons of club kids who eat retro New Ro fetish for breakfast. Liking Duran Duran is no longer a contrary position in any way shape or form....

Hm, how many people take "club kids" seriously? You know, Duran Duran were ORIGINALLY a band that catered to "club kids" -- remember, they were once sorta the house band for the Rum Runner and were originally managed by that club's owners, and they were still a more adult "club" band up until the first single from Rio, "My Own Way" was released -- but did that help their case ca. 1982, when critics were lining up just to shit all over aformentioned album? Nope.

As for the whole "music journalists on this thread loving DD" thing -- well, yeah, I did completely forget about Ned there. Okay, so that's one person. Not even Ned can be Everywhere Man.

(Actually, that rant was partly inspired by my recent perusal of Spin magazine, which I was convinced would do a halfway decent job with all mentions of DD in its pages, but I HATED that issue because (a.) it proves to me that the only band members anyone at Spin seems to remember are Simon and John [thought process at the time of seeing a picture caption in the reviews section: You should do your fucking research, you fuckers -- the guy doing the sax solo in that raft in the "Rio" video was fucking ANDY HAMILTON! You know, the guy who actually played the fucking sax on that track?? NOT fucking John, you stupid asses!], (b.) they think the band were always a teen idol band, when the band didn't even begin being covered in the teen magazines until about late 1982 [see: the comic strip rendering of the SLB story in the back of the issue], and (c.) Charles Aaron, in mentioning Rio in the list of the "best New Wave albums ever!", wasn't even BRAVE enough to actually SAY ANYTHING NICE about that album! He just said the usual bullshit about the band being a bunch of stylish pretty boys. Hello? What's so fucking new about that kind of "journalism"? Please, at least mention how great A FEW of the songs are on that album! Please fast forward the fucking album and see how damn good "The Chauffeur" and "Last Chance on the Stairway" are! Please acknowledge how awe-inspiring "Hungry Like the Wolf" is, even after listening to it 10,000 or so times! Please talk about how lovely "Lonely in Your Nightmare" is! DON'T FUCKING GO INTO HOW "TEEN IDOL"-Y THE BAND WERE! THAT'S JUST TIRED OLD BULLSHIT!

*whew* Okay. I feel slightly better.)

(p.s.: Where's the love for Medazzaland around here? That is the most underrated Duran album and the biggest artistic accomplishment the band has ever made. They will NEVER top that album. NEVER.)

Then again, when Medazzaland is your third best album, what does that say about the quality of your material? Blah. Great singles, though.

True, that would be time-consuming. ;-)

A Dollar/Duran Duran collaboration would have been either horrifying or brilliant.

At least now I know who Animotion was trying to look like.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to slap myself silly for completely glossing over the love people have already expressed for Medazzaland on this thread. I guess I was in the midst of a blinding streak of loneliness because I've made misconceptions about ILM and thought I couldn't possibly engender hyper discussion about things such as how exciting it will be to get the SECOND singles box because, even though it doesn't do what the first one does and recreates the singles exactly, it does succeed in bringing forth all manner of obscure remixes and even more obscure b-sides, such as the two spoken-word tracks from the Big Thing era, "God (London)" and "This is the Way a Road Gets Made". One of them (I actually forget which one) is a track that features Simon uttering the infamous "fuck the Queen" quote. (Those of you who hadn't heard this already -- I kid you not.) Oh, and if the version of "Throb" they're including in this singles box is the rare instrumental version (yes, there are two versions of a b-side -- THE MADNESS!), I will have to eat this box set.

Heh. Thank you for that. I guess I have to make SOME use of this otherwise useless information, hm? (FYI, this is why I'm completely clueless about all sorts of other artists I should know more about -- I've devoted way too much cerebral disc space to the most minute data about ONE single musical artist. Obv.)

(Ned, I cannot thank you enough for the Rio review in AMG. That's the best review of a Duran recording I have ever seen in my entire life and I am eternally grateful to you for that.)

Some day I will buy a dollar copy of the first Duran Duran album!

Ooh Tim, you're going to want to get the remastered version of the DD debut album, hon. Because that is the ACTUAL debut album itself, with "To the Shore" and everything, instead of the 1983 re-release of the debut album Capitol ended up using in place of the actual debut, when it was transferring the entire Duran album catalog onto CD back in the late 1980s. This was referenced above in a post that complained about how the 1983 song "Is There Something I Should Know?" was stuck in the middle of an album full of 1981 songs. "To the Shore" is joyfully dark and affecting, which means it fits in well with the rest of the debut, unlike "ITSISK?"'s Seven & the Ragged Tiger-like synthpoppiness.

This remaster should set you back a bit more than just a dollar, but it will be well worth it.

i wonder if anything on 'Astronaut' will sound like Planet Funk's 'The Switch' or 'Stuck In The UK'

I have no idea what either of the second two songs you mentioned sound like, but I do know that if you wanted a possible preview of what Astronaut MIGHT sound like, you would pick up a copy of the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy soundtrack, which features the Jason Nevins remix of "Sunrise", i.e. the first single proposed for this new album. It's very Positive Thinking dancey, which is awesome, sure, but also sits a bit uncomfortably with me, since the band were having success being awesomely bitter and cynical with Medazzaland and Pop Trash.

Aw. Well, thank ya!

http://www.arjanwrites.com/arjanwrites/2004/08/astronaut.html

I saw that album cover first a couple of days ago and thought it looked pretty good. It's certainly a huge step up from the Medazzaland and Pop Trash (and Greatest, too!) album covers. It's not the most brilliant cover around (in fact, it sorta reminds me of the 7&TRT cover) but it's rather pretty. And the whole artwork theme is exactly that of the artwork presented for the promotional gear during the 25th anniversary tour late last year (and v. early this year).

s1ocki, I guess I'm sorta looking for more love of the band's ENTIRE career, not just the pre-1986 "Fab Five" era. For example, I happen to think that the most amazing artwork connected with the band's releases happened ca. The Wedding Album and I am a HUGE fan of the band's music from 1997 - 2000. And I think the most romantic Duran song out there is the Big Thing-era "Land". And besides, all this love doesn't seem to be making its way to any of the periodicals I scour on at least a semi-regular basis. Every time I read a Duran article or a Duran tidbit in some magazine or newspaper, invariably they will talk about the band's '80s teen idol status, shriek about how "cute" the band were back in the '80s, go on like '80s teenyboppers (thus ignoring the fact that Warren injected a hell of a lot of innovative energy into the band and influenced the band in other ways -- Nick is a vegetarian because of Warren's influence, for instance), or go on about some stupid, inane lowlight of the band's history (e.g. that stupid Q magazine special article that just seemed to focus on Simon's mishap with Drum back in 1985).

So I guess my answer to that is to just go on here and vent about it. And wonder, secretly to myself, why no one says a word about how stupid any of it is, why no one will acknowledge that hardly anyone will write anything serious about this band. I mean, come on -- the last time Duran were teen idols was NINETEEN years ago. Some college students weren't even born when the last teenybopper publication stopped doing any Duran articles. I think it's time to acknowledge they've paid their dues already and for the World Outside to give them the same break they've been giving U2 for nearly forever and a day.

Like it or not, those first two albums remain the most consistent set of songs they've managed to put together (The Wedding Album has too many tangents). I'd love for them to prove the critics wrong and reestablished their credibility, but I'm not holding my breath.

Seconded.

Fifthed - and while Duran's later-80s output gets slammed, I thought "Skin Trade", "All She Wants Is", and especially "I Don't Want Your Love" were all fantastic. Ditto the two big Arcadia singles, "Election Day" and "Goodbye Is Forever".

Duran Duran never wanted that, though.

(I also suppose this is a continuation of a thread I started around here several months back, hitting similar topics to the ones I brought up most recently. Many apologies for carrying over that discussion to this one, though maybe in the end this way is cleaner and more organized centrality.)

Undergoing Treatment
We are undergoing treatment
Watching others in the news
Studying our worst reviews
They say we’ll get over it
Disappear like dinosaurs
To the sound of small applause
Resign to the mid-price section

If you see me walking in the garden
Don’t ever ask me for an autograph
If you ever catch me in the arcade
Don’t even stop me for a photograph

We are undergoing treatment
'Til our ethic fits the scene
Laid out in Q Magazine
They crave our conformity
Mediocre to the bone
Terrified testosterone
But why do we still face the music?

If you see me walking in the garden
Don’t ever ask me...

Now and then you get the strangest notion
There’s something missing
But it keeps you guessing
Wild ambition can you really blame us?
Can you entertain us?
Can you give a little more?

If you see me walking in the garden
Don’t ever ask me for an autograph
If you ever catch me in the arcade
Don’t even stop me for a photograph

We are undergoing treatment
But will the doctors ever cure
These delusions of grandeur

Good night. (Yes, "good night".)

One:  Tantrum the Cat, how I'm lovin' you at this moment. Okay, so you're naming singles, but you're naming singles from BIG THING, which often gets passed up by people talking about Duran. It really is their most underappreciated album, IMHO. I mean, I can see how people who hate Liberty can hate it, esp since it took me about a year and a half to really get to like that album, but for me Big Thing has always been enjoyable.

Two:  fortunate hazel, you make an excellent point there re: "classic rock appeal". I suppose Serious Music People are always going to be looking backwards towards the '70s and the Big Arena Rock Bands as the standard bearers for what makes music good, and I can see how that would leave artists such as the Duran boys completely out in the cold, because as diverse as their musical output has been throughout their 25 years of existence, they have never done anything approaching Arena Rock, nor would they ever. I can see how U2, being Big Arena Rockers, would elicit accolades by the caseload from those individuals who still worship at the altar of the late '60s Beatles, yeah.

Three:  Atnevon, PLEASE tell me that you're one of those people who wished Duran released nothing but sequels to Rio. PLEASE tell me that. Because that's the only way I can process your comments and have them make sense to me. Medazzaland and Pop Trash were both genius to me, so much more preferrable to the band's first two albums, because the lyrical content reflected a band that was more cynical, more bitter, more sarcastic and less idealistic than the band who recorded songs about "aphids swarming in the drifing haze", and because the music was just so much more mature and complex. I can close my eyes and explore a universe completely different than the one I know whenever I listen to "Pop Trash Movie" or "Silva Halo". I can't really do that with "Friends of Mine" or "Lonely in Your Nightmare", no matter how much I love those older songs.

I guess my situation would be different from yours, though -- I've listened to the '81 debut and Rio so many times that all the songs on those two albums have completely lost the magic they used to work on me. I haven't listened to Rio in four or five months and I can STILL mentally play back every single track on that album. I haven't listened enough to the band's post-Notorious albums for that to happen to me. And, as hokey and completely insane as this may sound, the band's music from 1987 onward has helped me out THE MOST. I listened to The Wedding Album to help me get over my fears and apprehensions about entering high school and Medazzaland helped soothe my frayed nerves while I was in the process of graduating from high school and entering college. Later on, Pop Trash and Big Thing provided much-needed entertainment for me when I was in the midst of the most difficult period I've ever gone through in my life. I guess I'm showing my biases here, but maybe this will at least help you to understand why it is that I feel the way I feel on this issue.

Four:  cinniblount, I know how ILM is about U2. I know how much more love the ILM community shows toward Duran than they show toward U2. I really don't have any complaints about the general ILM attitude toward the band. However, in the Serious Music world outside ILM, the situations and attitudes are COMPLETELY reversed. Everywhere. With everyone. Including those publications I personally had held out hope for re: seeing them change their attitudes about the band, e.g. Spin magazine.

I guess I might have ulterior or quite personal reasons for wanting to see some really serious publication devote time to actually taking Duran Duran seriously as a band rather than just dwell on the few years they were "teen idols". See, I wasn't there for the ride back then. I never got the chance to see my favorite musical artist be popular with people in my age bracket. Even with the "comeback" back in 1993, I had to look long and hard for anything written about the band, only to be extremely disappointed about what I read. (I will take time to bring up the two lousy stars and the shallow "review" Rolling Stone gave The Wedding Album back in 1993 -- yeah, thanks a fucking lot.) It has always been my dream to be able to pop into a bookstore, pick up some publication that features my favorite musical artist, read it, and feel like my fanhood was being justified on a serious level (and then purchase it, obv), because I have long since given up hope that my fanhood would be justified on a "popularity" level. And while some of you might enjoy reading what I have to say about this band, it doesn't make up for the fact that I spent so many years of my fanhood feeling like I should be ashamed of myself for loving this band, that I was wasting my time and energies and money devoting myself to this band instead of going off and being a Pearl Jam fan like I was supposed to be. For YEARS I have been waiting for a change in that sort of attitude, only to find it's not coming.

I guess I'll just have to adopt the attitude fortunate hazel has proposed. In the meantime... I'm hoping that the reason that I've never found anyone here on ILM to connect with on a shared Duran fanhood level is because I've come across too strongly with my own fanhood, because that way there would be a solution to that problem, i.e. to not come across as strongly in that arena. It would be really good to have that sort of connection over here, with someone actually willing to discuss the band's music (instead of which member's the cutest or what fanhood-based memories they have of the band ca. 1984, both of which are discussion topics I cannot relate to).

(Okay, I'll leave this thread now.)

Anyway, there's news of a book that might be coming out. While I'm happy at the thought of Duran actually getting something new published about them -- the last time I think they ever had a book released about them was back ca. 1985 -- I feel slightly dismayed about it because I feel like I'll read the finished product and think that I could've done a better job with it. Because it's going to be written by a music journalist, see, and the last time I remember a music journalist writing a Duran book was when Toby Goldstein released a Duran book in the early '80s that was essentially lightweight and mistake-ridden reading. And every time I compare Goldstein's book to the book written and released at the same time by a then-fan named Cynthia C. Kent, I recognize just how much better Kent's book is, in terms of quality and accuracy.

But -- I don't know what's going to happen to this proposed new book. Right now it's at the proposal stage and so it might not even really get off the ground. But I feel like, even though I'm not a writer, I let an opportunity slip by. Which is insanity, I'm sure.

(And I'm never going to find a fellow fan around here to connect with intellectually, right?)