Duran Duran: Classic or Dud?

WHERE THE BLOODY HELL WERE YOU GUYS WHEN I WAS IN GRADE SCHOOL OR HIGH SCHOOL?!

I got SO much shit from my classmates throughout grade and high schools for being a Duran fan. I either got asked, "Ew, you like those old people?" or, "Who are they?" I didn't even know there were any other fans out there until 1997, when I went online for the first time and found out that there WERE other fans out there.

God, I would've been in fangirl heaven if you'd have also been there.

If you don't like Duran Duran's music, just say so, understood? I am not having any more elitist malarkey concerning the band. I've forced down more than enough shit like that by practically everyone in the mainstream music media. If you don't like their music personally, you have every right to, but saying that they "suck" is also essentially saying that my taste in music "sucks" because I adore this band.

Look, Duran's music has saved my sanity time and again. "Ordinary World" and "So Long Suicide" are songs that have especially personal connotations to me. I have been a fan of the band through some of the rockiest of roads. I champion them and defend them and I am NOT about to have some random person tell me that all of that means nothing because it does. It may not to you, but it definitely does to me.

but you saying they're great if i think they suck is essentially saying that my taste in music sucks! so how dare you sing their praises? seriously, come on... this is a "classic or dud" thread. expect a few posts on the dud side.

but you saying they're great if i think they suck is essentially saying that my taste in music sucks! so how dare you sing their praises? seriously, come on... this is a "classic or dud" thread. expect a few posts on the dud side.

What? You make no sense to me. All I'm doing is going on about how much of a fan I am and how much I know about the band. This is the message I get from the jack coles of the world (and there are TONS of them):

"Oh God, Duran Duran sucks ass and you are a fool for being a fan of their music because it is horribly wretched and how can you even consider yourself to have any good taste whatsoever when you're such a huge fan of such shit? You just like them because they're attractive, face it -- you don't take music seriously because you like them and they wouldn't have been nearly as successful had they not been as physically attractive as they were, because their music certainly wasn't going to do it for them."

I can't even count how many times I've gotten this message -- from every single mainstream music press person and "serious music" fan I've come across out there. So excuse me for being a bit touchy. I do recognize that one could not like that kind of music and say, "Well, for me personally, they're completely dud." But I am not standing for anything that gives off the message of, "You are the world's biggest fool for caring as much about this one band as you do because they are so utterly untalented." I've had enough shit like that from the Rolling Stones and the Qs of the world.

I look up information on this group, The Field Mice (because I honestly have no idea who they are), if you point me in the direction of someone who is taken seriously in the music world (music press, music recording, etc.) who also acts as an advocate for Duran Duran and obviously loves their music.

Until then, I remain unmoved.

I was born in late 1979, and look at how passionate a fan of Duran Duran I am. I've seen them six times in concert. Granted, it wasn't the "fab five" lineup I was seeing at the time, but I'm a huge fan of all the lineups the band has had, including the "unofficial Duran reunion-ette" otherwise known as The Devils. (Stephen Duffy and Nick Rhodes, together again for the first time since early 1979!)

However, with any luck, next year I will be seeing the "fab five" lineup, as they (hopefully) support that new album thing they've been talking about for over a year and a half already!

Wyclef Jean (who I've never listened to but he's a mainstream music guy), he listed Rio as his #1 favorite album ever, I'm pretty sure.

Did they ever.

Dr C have you seen sense yet?

So any word on the new album?

Praise Dee, for she understands. High five sistah.

My husband likes the Field Mice. The worst he's ever had to deal with is paying too much for an import album. Cry me a fucking river.

The day a Field Mice fan is cornered in a middle school cafeteria and publicly taunted by mean-spirited 12 year olds for liking the band is the day fortunate hazel wins the debate. There's a difference between liking a band that critics don't acknowledge or appreciate and loving a band to an overwhelming degree and having everyone -- critics, record store clerks, friends, lovers, enemies, random people on the street, radio and video program directors -- openly and publicly shitting on them for fifteen years just because they were popular and pretty.

Considering that being popular and pretty are two of the most important things in the world in most western cultures, this is only slightly ironic.

Datz rich.

it's DURANIME!

Experience Duran Duran live on the current tour. Do they sound just like the record? Almost. They're tighter than a [insert YOUR lewd comment here].

Due: October 4th [UK] October 5th [US] on Epic

As far as the Field Mice comparison goes, I'm not really sure it's fair. Bobby Wratten has been vindicated those last few years (even though I know they were ridiculed in the eighties) with Trembling Blue Stars, recognized for the wonderful songwriter he is, but no such thing has happened to Duran Duran. I mean, the whole New Romantics movement is still considered vomit-inducing by many (most) music journalists.

I've gotten a chance to listen to some of the demo tracks that have been floating about online and I think the songs are quite solid. The lyrics aren't as obtuse, mainly because Simon's writer's block has meant that more of the lyric-writing responsibilities have been passed on down to the rest of the band, mostly Nick if the trend from Pop Trash has continued. Even though the demos were mostly produced by Nile Rodgers and the actual album itself is going to be produced by a few other producers, including Jason Nevins (apparently -- he's the one who did the remix of "Sunrise" for the Queer Eye soundtrack), I think they're not going to sound tremendously different. Maybe a bit more polished and hi-fi and maybe tracks such as "Pretty Ones" will be transformed into actual full-length ones, but still, not that much of a change.

I'm glad you included the new label in that news update. Duran signed with Epic a few months back, apparently agreeing to release two or three albums with the label. I have no idea what happened between them and Hollywood Records, which released Pop Trash in 2000, but I do know that even during the Thank You and Medazzaland era, Capitol were doing more publicity for the band than Hollywood ever did.

Also, heads up -- first single for the band is going to be "Sunrise", with a video directed by the Polish Brothers [never heard of them before in my life].

The video, directed by the Polish Brothers, was shot in four countries - US (California desert/John), Ibiza (on the beach, out in the countryside and at 10,000 capacity club - Manumission/Andy), Spain (up in the Pyrennes/Simon) and in London (Roger and Nick).

Sounds... weird. *shrug* Oh well. Better than the Flash video nightmare that was "Someone Else Not Me". (Yes, it was a video made purely from Flash. Made a pretty screen saver, but not a video.)

As for the title of the album -- trust me, it will probably factor in heavily with the theme of the album. Medazzaland, i.e. my favorite album of theirs, was an album filled with songs about the perplexing modern world, how the dizzying effects of so much change and chaos could affect someone in the same manner as would an injection of a hallucinatory sedative would. Pop Trash dealt with the trashy and disposable, from fame to the search for true love, in songs that were bookmarked by the not-so-trashy, i.e. one song about showing love toward someone else by setting them free, and another song about living life as if each day were the last day one were on Earth. Maybe Astronaut will have as much meaning.

Thus says the ever-eternal, "shit, I can't help being this way" optimistic fangirl.

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Oh? No way. So would you advise me to look forward to this video, then?

And the rest of the music journalists out there only seem to have a surface "love" for the artists of the genre, a "love" that never really seems to surface when it really counts, e.g. when it comes time to stating their own personal list of "greatest albums" or "greatest frontmen" (come on, Simon was just as energetic in concert in 2001 as he was in 1984, and he could sing better, too) or "best bassists" (John laid some mean bass lines) or "greatest artists from the '80s" (if you're going to pigeonhole them to only ten years of their twenty-six-and-going years of existence, at least tell me you thought they were GOOD during those years), or hell, even "favorite albums" or "singles" or whatever.

I remain unconvinced that a single music journalist out there Really Loves DD.

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.