duran duran RIO

Simon otm about the "My Own Way" chorus not "living up to the promise" of the verses.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, May 4, 2018 6:21 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no you're thinking of "planet earth"

so what are the differences between the various versions of the song "rio"?

Must admit, Turrican is on the button --- Japan is the root, albeit both share a conduit back to Roxy Music. And 6 month polls are a sure way to find somebody trolling their own thread.

"The Chauffeur" was such a striking track for its day,,, that video was one that can still be viewed alone for its artistic presentation,,, and likely so impactful, that its sheer inertia provided a wake for so much other fodder to ride upon.

When i finally got past the initial infatuation and actually started listening to the record, "Lonely in Your Nightmare" became a fast fave.

It's between those 2,,,, Rio, Prayer, and Wolf will vote well but should be tossed to the once-a-decade playlist.

voted the chauffeur as it's the only song on the album I like

great song tbf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EON3DnBbflQ

Ordinary World was my introduction to Duran Duran. Just after it came out I the Decade compilation which I played obsessively. When I got round to buying the albums a bit later, it was really exciting to hear the singles that didn't make Decade (Careless Memories, My Own Way, New Moon On Monday). At first My Own Way just seemed so fresh as it was new to me, many years later it's still one of my favorite songs of theirs. I love the single version with the ridiculously over the top strings and the faster tempo too. It's a shame the band don't seem to rate it highly. I wouldn't really change anything about this album. Lonely In Your Nightmare is probably the least essential song here if I was forced to pick.

I voted for Last Chance On The Stairway. I think it's the best thing they ever did. It's such a beautiful summary melody with some really incredible guitar playing from Andy. Obviously, like all the songs here, the bass playing is pretty special too. Even Simon gives a good vocal performance. Would have been a good choice if they'd needed a fifth single.

Even though I can understand why people think they went downhill after the first two albums, I still get a lot from the next two. Some really great album tracks on those albums along with the singles (American Science, Shadows On Your Side, The Seventh Stranger, Winter Marches On). Big Thing and Liberty are where the quality really dips for me.

Whenever I hear the title track, I remember waiting in a car in a McDonald's parking lot in what must have been the summer of 1983 with a 'Return of the Jedi' souvenir glass, and hearing it on the radio and thinking 'how is it possible that music can be this good'?

otm

<3

LJ do you know the Arcadia record? If not you might like it.

ooh, no i don't

dunno Japan either

The Arcadia record makes more sense as a Seven and the Ragged Tiger follow-up than Notorious does. There's a lot of Japan influence on that too, but more their moodier side.

If anything LJ, Simon's vocal melody on Election Day is your flavour of catnip.

So far this makes perfect sense...as a continuation of my recent 80s Yes tip

He's obviously singing Goodbye Ears Forever, lol

OK this is no Rio and it doesn't have those eternally blissful bass/keyboard patterns but it's pretty good! Until The Promise which is kind of hilariously crap haha

Japan is gonna plow you a new furrow when you get around to them

ooh er

What Jon not Jon said.

omg i cannot wait for lj to get into japan

For some reason I assumed he'd heard 'em already, but clearly not!

Haha, I'm surprised by this too!

Always get Japan confused with Loudness because I'm a racist, I guess.

I have the 82 US Club edition of the LP, which I think is the 2nd Kershenbaum remix LP tracklist. If anyone has a great breakdown of the Rio LP variations that is not the Wiki page, please share. I'm not sure which version of the LP is the 'best' but I know there are many variations. Any preferences?

This might go some way to explaining what variations are out there.

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/duran-duran-rio-us-album-version.316647/

Oh, that leads to some deeper nerdery on the subject here.

http://www.ionpool.net/duran/rio.html

Yes, was just going to post that link, which seems to be much better at defining the variations. Thank you!

yeah that's a great link

i like the version of "rio" on the "carnival" ep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDpYkomy8dM

The Chauffeur is probably in my top ten favourite songs of all time

Voting for Hold Back the Rain with a caveat that I prefer the mix on the CD version of the album to the slightly longer one from the original LP (the instrumental bridge is better I think). I like all these songs though.

what glass splinters lie so deep in your mind?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

sing, blue silver!

poor my own way

the worst song on this record is great

take another green but it's not the same

As much as I love 'The Chauffeur', I can't get on board with the idea of it being the best track on this!

Brad otm

And the two songs with 3 votes are all-time classics

OTM. 'Hold Back the Rain' is one of the best choruses this band ever wrote and I adore the fretless bass on 'Lonely in Your Nightmare' - it's not quite Karn-level playing, but it's still fantastic.

Already on my must-read-immediately-when-published list.

I could not be more thrilled to share that I'm going to be writing a @333books on @duranduran's "Rio," one of my favorite albums in life and an LP I think is brilliant and influential. https://t.co/R4q3W0Opco pic.twitter.com/czcFzwfCpP

— Annie Zaleski (@anniezaleski) March 1, 2019

It's that time where I blast Rio again and marvel once more at how wonderful it is. This, of course, is always followed by the realisation that they were never this good over the course of a full-length ever again. It's something that's always annoyed me about Seven and the Ragged Tiger - they had it in them to do something so much better. They really should never have moved away from working away from Colin Thurston so quickly, too.

Cocaine is a helluva drug

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Also, y'all are on drugs, "Last Chance on the Stairway", "My Own Way", "Hold Back the Rain", and "Lonely in Your Nightmare" are all far better than "Rio".)

They really should never have moved away from working away from Colin Thurston so quickly, too.

Pretty sure this is the only time this sentiment has been expressed in human history.

Yeah, I'm pretty much the most hardcore Duranie on this board and even I'm, like, "Dude, they needed to move away from Colin Thurston in order to make the albums they made from Seven and the Ragged Tiger onward." Also, had they never worked with Alex Sadkin on 7&TRT they would have never had the inspiration for "Do You Believe in Shame", one of their saddest, most beautiful songs ever. Also, my favorite albums of theirs were either self-produced or produced by Mark Ronson, so.

yeah the guitars are perfect too, but they're like the adornments on top of this monstrously great architecture

― imago

I so want Graham Coxon to be the guitarist in this band, he pushes even harder against the grain of a song than Andy Taylor and would therefore have been an ideal foil to John. Every time I hear the Chauffer I anticipate a wobbly Coxon anti-solo that never arrives, it is a far better canvas for him than Damon's mockney showtunes.

Interesting. I think Andy could have played more assertively, and either (a) decided not to or (b) was actively discouraged from doing so by producers and engineers. His side projects and solo work display more independence.

I think in DD he understood his role and played it willingly, but I have no way of knowing this. Well do I remember that at the time of Rio, guitar bands were out and glossy Roland and Yamaha synths were in. Had guitars been more prevalent in the mix, D2 would have sounded out of step.

Long digression: That said, it still surprises me in hindsight to see how many New Wave acts were still fundamentally based around a four-piece rock band. I look at videos of Flock of Seagulls, Go-Gos, Devo, Talking Heads, Human League, Bangles, New Order, the Cure, even Depeche Mode sometimes and it looks suspiciously like the 70s template of a "band" - there's an acoustic drum set in the back middle, flanked by amps; cool-looking people holding conventional instruments on either side, somewhere there's a keyboard or two. Even in records that sound almost wholly synthesized, many acts continued to present pretty standard instrumentation when on MTV.

There are exceptions: Eurythmics, Ultravox, Pet Shop Boys,Thompson Twins, Thomas Dolby. If you were trying to form or join a band at this time (as I was), these acts seemed pretty inscrutable because like, where are all the sounds coming from and how are they getting made simultaneously by this one dork with a DX7?

I read somewhere that LeBon attributed DD's success in the States ​to the recruitment of Andy Taylor and the introduction of a hard rock guitar element to their sound. Which both makes sense and seems contrary to the role their dance remixes played in breaking America.

I don't think Coxon fully asserted himself either until Blur's 5th album, at least in terms of his position in the mix. But his sound is leaner and more cutting than Andy Taylor's. The similarity I perceive is that both guitarists play a role of saboteur. They differ more in degree than in kind.

There's defo something a bit "wrong decade" about what i'm suggesting tho. Blur were derivative enough of DD that it's usually easy to envision what GC might have played. I imagine the spiky Hendrix chords from 'Stereotypes' all over 'Union of the Snake', for example. In my head at least, the schizoid artistry of it is a match.

I read somewhere that LeBon attributed DD's success in the States ​to the recruitment of Andy Taylor and the introduction of a hard rock guitar element to their sound. Which both makes sense and seems contrary to the role their dance remixes played in breaking America.

Yeah that's interesting - quite a few of the brit synth/new romantic bands went in either a rock or a soul direction towards the mid-'80s (some did both I guess, like The Human League going from doing 'The Lebanon' to working with Jam & Lewis) and both of these moves seem like obvious attempts at reaching out to a US audience. I didn't know that about Duran's remixes though.

I direct y'all to Annie Zaleski's marvelous 33 1/3 book.

I find Deflatormouse's thought experiment interesting but at the same time, I just can't imagine those bands being different. I know this isn't profound or anything but music history - like all history - has a contingent element. The things happened as they did, and everything contributed.

Philosophically speaking it's a bit sus to imagine that you can change any one variable and keep everything else the same. Like, a John Lennon who didn't abuse any women could exist (and I wish he did). A John Lennon who didn't get shot, ditto. But does everything else stay constant in that alternate universe? I can't imagine (ahem) that it would. The particular circumstances aligned themselves this way, and we have the culture that resulted from those circumstances.

Blur were derivative enough of DD that it's usually easy to envision what GC might have played.

And indeed, Alex James wrote somewhere that when he was tasked with constructing a bassline for 'Girls & Boys', his guiding principle was, "What would John Taylor play?"

My friend is doing a Rio 40th special on twitch tonight at 8:00 PM CST with chat by Annie Zaleski!

https://m.twitch.tv/VJBigSuit

The main DD set starts at 9:00 PM CST, but come early and stay after for choice early MTV-era videos.

What a fucking incredible album, still.